Heddle Nash - Recordings

Recordings

Many of Nash's recordings have been reissued on compact disc. He made his first recordings for Columbia Records during the late 1920s and early 1930s. These were mostly of operatic titles, including arias from The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Lehár's Frederica, Jeptha, L'elisir d'amore and Rigoletto, plus a number of English songs and ballads. His 1932 Columbia recording of the serenade from Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth, sung in English, became a best-seller, making a little-known item of music extremely popular in his homeland. In 1927, he participated in the recording of complete English-language versions of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana with the forces of the British National Opera. In 1935, he recorded a complete Act IV of Puccini's La bohème conducted by Beecham. Nash was the tenor in Beecham's first LP recording of Messiah, issued in 1953. The Gramophone wrote, "Those who are apt to remember him as an essentially lyrical tenor should turn up his "Sound an Alarm" from Judas Maccabaeus, which is nothing if not robust."