In the Chansons madécasses, she is accompanied by the flautist Doriot Anthony Dwyer, the cellist Jules Eskin and the pianist Martin Katz.

[2] The cover of the album was designed by Christopher Austopchuk under the art direction of Henrietta Condak, and features a photograph of von Stade taken by Valerie Clement.

[6][7] Shéhérazade, he wrote, was usually sung by a soprano, but, like Baker before her, Frederica von Stade had demonstrated that the cycle could be successfully performed by a mezzo-soprano too.

She sang his Greek folk melodies with a happy insouciance and his Hebrew songs with an appropriate focused intensity, but her outstanding performances in her filler items were in the Chansons madécasses, "which still have the power to shock even fifty-five years after they were written".

Baker had sung these evocations of Madagascar sensuously, but von Stade had marginally surpassed her, with "a timbre just a little better suited to their earthy voluptuousness".

Its components were balanced meticulously, Frederica von Stade's colleagues played their instruments well and her own performances were characterized by "her musicianship, tonal purity and idiomatic handling of the texts".

In Shéhérazade, he wrote, Jessye Norman's[6] reading had "a more sensuous luxury of gorgeous tone", von Stade's "more tang, more appetite, more liveliness".

Von Stade's singing of the Chansons madécasses was beautifully expressive too, "with the evening stillness and relaxation of the last song marvellously well caught".

[9] Steane returned to the album in Gramophone in January 1998, reviewing a compilation CD[10] which coupled von Stade's Shéhérazade with her later recordings of Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Claude Debussy's La damoiselle élue.

But for the most part, her Shéhérazade was fine, exemplified in "L'indifférent" by "the caress (an exquisitely gentle portamento) in the 'séduisante' and the forlornly wistful invitation 'Entre'".