The most haunting Nordic voices of the past two centuries—particularly those belonging to the tenor and soprano registers—have often seemed to reflect not only the distinctive vowels of the languages spoken in Sweden, Norway, and Finland but also the colors and textures of the landscapes in which they were created: the luminescence of fir-framed expanses of water on summer nights, the chromatic absoluteness—encompassing the entire color spectrum—of the snow and ice that transform those landscapes in winter. These are voices that shine without becoming dry, combining an unmasking purity of timbre with an all-embracing range of overtones.

It was qualities such as these that made a legend of the “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind in the Victorian age and that enabled the Norwegian singer Kirsten Flagstad to achieve a unique status among the great sopranos of the twentieth century. An analogous combination of disarming purity and rainbow richness sets the Swede Jussi Björling apart from all other tenors documented on disc.

The Björling sound was not however entirely unique to Jussi: his father David (1873–1926) trained as a tenor in New York and Vienna, sang three operas with some success, and provided his sons with a vocal technique that enabled them to perform professionally as children and stood them in good stead throughout their adult careers. Jussi's brothers Olle (1909–65) and Gösta (1912–57) both had appealing tenor voices, as did his eldest son Rolf (1928–93), and the recordings of these three singers reveal the imprint of a characteristic Björling sound.