Kathleen Ferrier: A Tribute

Reviewed by WILLIAM DART

In March, mezzo-soprano Anne Lamont-Low and pianist Rachel Fuller took their Remembering Kathleen Ferrier programme around the country under the auspices of Chamber Music New Zealand.

It was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the English contralto's death but played regional centres only.

Now we can all experience the special magic that was Kathleen Ferrier in Kathleen Ferrier: A Tribute, a generous double CD from the Decca archives.

One of the great problems here is to separate the artist and her art. So much of Ferrier's singing takes on a new resonance when one thinks of her tragically premature death at the age of 41. Her 1949 recording of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder with Bruno Walter can be an unbearably moving experience, although, ironically, this was before there was any indication of the cancer that would take her life. When she tackled the composer's Um Mitternacht she was only months away from death. And you can hear this in the desperation and courage of the final burst of G major, reminding us that Walter said she would prefer to be remembered and spoken of in a major key.

There are those who would deride Ferrier, although Virgil Thomson was going quite a bit too far when he described her as "a third-rate English oratorio singer". This is a voice of distinctive character, individual musicianship and an almost sculptural beauty.

She proves herself a superlative Lieder singer in Brahms, Schumann and Schubert (including the 1949 recording of An die Musik used in Jane Campion's An Angel at my Table) although elsewhere, she falls prey to the changing fashions of the time.

Folk-song arrangements, popular calling cards for Ferrier, now seem rather ho-hum, although Down by the Salley Gardens and Kitty My Love give a few unexpected frissons in the gender department. Her Bach and Handel may lack the subtlety of inflection and the ornamentation we are used to today, but when a song is so beautifully pointed as Like as a love-torn turtle, it would be churlish to quibble.


Label: Decca 475 078-2, double CD