BBC4 re-run of 2003 Kathleen Ferrier documentary

[amateur51]

My seconds shall be calling on your seconds, sir!

(You're not the only one: Brassbandmaestro once said words to the effect that her voice gave him the creeps! We still talk.

But for me, if I were forced at gunpoint to name the single most beautiful sound that I had encountered in my life, I would say "The sound of Ferrier singing.")

I love her singing too, fhg - it always makes me smile

[aeolium]

But for me, if I were forced at gunpoint to name the single most beautiful sound that I had encountered in my life, I would say "The sound of Ferrier singing."

I know what you mean, fhg, but I'm not sure 'beautiful' is the right adjective here. I like what Britten said about encountering Ferrier's voice: "the only thing that moves me about singers, and that is that the voice is something which comes naturally from their personality and is a vocal expression of their personality. I loathe what is normally called a 'beautiful voice' because to me it's like an over-ripe peach which says nothing, and Katherine never had that."

I think that about Ferrier, the sheer personal quality in her voice, and all the singers I most admire - Patzak, Schöffler, Elisabeth Schumann, Gobbi, della Casa, Janowitz, and yes, Pears, whose voice is imo very far from 'beautiful' - have that immediately recognisable quality.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Good points, aeoli: I didn't mean "pretty", but an intensely warm, piercingly impassioned and almost unbearably moving sound that is what I think of when I use the word "beautiful" in this context.

... makes me smile, too, Ammie, just to think of it. (Although, at the end of Das Lied, for example, it can cut away all my psychological defences and leave me helplessly weeping at the beauty [that word again!] of it all: an experience it would be entirely wrong to describe as having "unmanned" me - I am rarely as completely human!)

[salymap]

And somehow the recordings that are most played now, [I]Blow the wind southerly, O Rest in the Lord,[I] don't show her quickness of mind and humour, but perhaps make her sound a different kind of person. She had a beautiful and moving voice but, to me, it never tied up with her love of jokes and general liveliness.

[Nick Armstrong]

My seconds shall be calling on your seconds, sir!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Q8AqYLKro

Good points, aeoli: I didn't mean "pretty", but an intensely warm, piercingly impassioned and almost unbearably moving sound that is what I think of when I use the word "beautiful" in this context.

... makes me smile, too, Ammie, just to think of it. (Although, at the end of Das Lied, for example, it can cut away all my psychological defences and leave me helplessly weeping at the beauty [that word again!] of it all: an experience it would be entirely wrong to describe as having "unmanned" me - I am rarely as completely human!)

It's Janet Baker who does that to me

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And somehow the recordings that are most played now, [I]Blow the wind southerly, O Rest in the Lord,[I] don't show her quickness of mind and humour, but perhaps make her sound a different kind of person. She had a beautiful and moving voice but, to me, it never tied up with her love of jokes and general liveliness.

Antidote?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV5JbDJXwyM&feature=fvst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuQC8Xn3fTw

... no youTube clip of Bridge's Go Not, Happy Day, alas, but that's another exultant shout of delight.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Q8AqYLKro

It's Janet Baker who does that to me

Don't blame you!

[HighlandDougie]

I don't like listening to her!

Oh Caliban, a tragic tale indeed, not to like listening to KF. It doesn't make for comfortable listening but, oh that voice when it emerges from the, how can I put it, deepest blackest depths in, say, Mahler's "Um Mitternacht" sends, to loosely paraphrase the French commentator in this month's "Diapason" (the programme's being shown on Arte here in French France tomorrow), shivers up one's spine.

[Stanley Stewart]

I've recently acquired the reprint of Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier (Boydell publishers). The cover shows her natural warmth, radiance and the mischievous glint in her eye, the taste for raunchy humour.

Here's to love.
Ain't love grand?
Just got a divorce ,
From my old man

Ain't stopped laughing
Since Judge's decision.
'Cos he's got the kids,
And the kids ain't hisin!


Also retrieved an LP from the BBC Artium record label, 1979, a series which transferred previously broadcast material to vinyl or cassette but, sadly, didn't seem to continue in the CD era. Other artists included Thomas Beecham, John Gielgud, Dennis Brain and Maggie Teyte. The KF disc is titled, The Singer and the Person and includes several of her performances and unpublished music recordings from the BBC Sound Archives. A private recording loaned by Winifred in which KF delivers a light-hearted interpretation of The Floral Dance at a party in New York is a real joy. Even her speaking voice is a delight to hear, on one track she talks about working with Bruno Walter in a 1949 broadcast,
" What the Edinburgh Festival has meant to me"; clear unaffected enunciation from a northern lass. I've now transferred this LP to CD-R; 70 mins and 30 secs, with the added advantage of separate tracking, 1 - 17, for immediate access. I'll listen again on 22 April and raise a glass to "Klever Kaff" with fond remembrance.

[salymap]

Yes, what a pity the cheerful light songs are notplayed when introducing the programme. Ilove her more serious things but she was not a solemn serious woman at all.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Also retrieved an LP from the BBC Artium record label, 1979, a series which transferred previously broadcast material to vinyl or cassette but, sadly, didn't seem to continue in the CD era. Other artists included Thomas Beecham, John Gielgud, Dennis Brain and Maggie Teyte. The KF disc is titled, The Singer and the Person and includes several of her performances and unpublished music recordings from the BBC Sound Archives. A private recording loaned by Winifred in which KF delivers a light-hearted interpretation of The Floral Dance at a party in New York is a real joy. Even her speaking voice is a delight to hear, on one track she talks about working with Bruno Walter in a 1949 broadcast,
" What the Edinburgh Festival has meant to me"; clear unaffected enunciation from a northern lass. I've now transferred this LP to CD-R; 70 mins and 30 secs, with the added advantage of separate tracking, 1 - 17, for immediate access. I'll listen again on 22 April and raise a glass to "Klever Kaff" with fond remembrance.

I have that BBC Artium disc too. The other one of that series I snapped up was Pears and Britten in broadcasts of 7 Schubert and 13 Wolf Lieder, most unavailable I would imagine in studio recordings. Treasurable (though not I suppose to PP-haters, poor souls).

[LeMartinPecheur]

Even further OT I guess but can anyone help with the provenance of the tracks on an an LP issued in 1984 by French Harmonia Mundi/ 'Rodolphe productions' (Licence Vecchi Productioni) RP 12407/ HM 57 with a dozen tracks of Ferrier but no details of track provenances or even of accompanist(s?).

Some of the repertoire is familiar (Wher'er you walk, Like as the lovelorn turtle, Hark the echoing air, Che faro, Love is a bable, The fairy lough, Ca' the yowes) but some of it less so - Lotti Pur dicesti (Arminio), Monteverdi Lasciatemi morire (Arianna), Schubert Lachen und Weinen, Brahms Sonntag, The Spanish Lady.

Google seems not to know the disc by catalogue number or by repertoire. Does anyone know more?

[Stanley Stewart]

BBC4 re-run of 2003 Kathleen Ferrier documentary

The plot thickens LMP. I have a hybrid collection of many of the titles your mention on Gala GL
318, 1993. CD Title: KF, Songs My Father Taught Me: Children's songs (in a tipsy mood after a party)Semele, Atalanta, Fairy Queen, Arianna, Arminio. The Floral Dance is the centrepiece of a 6mins53 secs opening track, "A light-hearted interpretation by Kathleen, who accompanies herself on the piano after her American tour in New York 1949. The name of Frederick Stone, piano, is liberally used throughout, particularly with Brahms Auf Dem See, Schubert, Rastlose Liebe and Wasserfluth, Brahms, Es schaueb die Blumen, Der Jager and Ruhe Sussliebchen, in a BBC Third Programme broadcast on Sept and April 1952. However, Where'er You Walk, Lasciatemi morire, Arminio, Pur Dicesti, Che faro, Lachen und Weinen, Sonntag and The Spanish Lady are listed as Accompanist unknown, Montreal, March 1950. KF was also interviewed in Montreal at this time, track 9.

[salymap]

TONIGHT at 11.25pm on BBC4

[Barbirollians]

There is a new documentary out tomorrow on DVD with a bonus disc of apparently some unpublished recordings - have duly ordered.

She was a wonderful singer - her three Ruckert Lieder are marvellous most of all Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen which is a desert island disc for me .