Talk:Kathleen Ferrier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
I have to say that I have had reservations about Kathleen Ferrier - both her style of singing, which seems old fashioned now, and at times her pitching etc. Yet when all is said and done, there are very few other singers who have ever made recordings of her repertoire who have approached her level - Janet Baker is one, and there are a few others from other countries. I listened to the Kathleen Ferrier evening (8th October, 2003) on the BBC (Radio 3), and most people seemed to find that there was ultimately something magical about her, and her performances. Perhaps she was merely an icon for her time, though the programme gave glimpses of her singing music by Britten which suggested that she really was a serious artist - with not just a voice discovered by accident, but really someone who could actually control her voice, and know very well what she was singing. It is possible that the view of her as a sort of untrained folk singer who stumbled into singing the classical repertoire is in fact totally false, and she must have done something right, for in the space of not much more than a decade she recorded with a very large number of major conductors and orchestras - Klemperer, Walter, Furtwangler, Krauss, van Beinum, Enescu, Boult, Barbirolli, Karajan etc. She got on better with Walter and Barbirolli, but it is unlikely that she would have made such a strong impression if no-one other than these two wanted to play for/with her.
At the end of the evening, there was a recorded performance of Das Lied von der Erde with the Hallé and Barbirolli - which it turns out was recorded quite by accident by someone experimenting with his tape recorder. There are some bits missed out, and there is some interference, since it was a radio broadcast - basically the recording is pretty bad - but the overall effect was still very good. However, the final knockout for me was quite unexpected. Following the Mahler, there was a recording of Blow the wind southerly - which in context just blew me away. Most musicians seem to believe she was a great artist - and I see no reason following this broadcast to think otherwise. David Martland 18:44, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Although there is apparently no complete recording of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, there was reportedly a recording of part of Ferrier's performance of the Angel with piano accompaniment. It is now thought to be buried in the BBC archives, or lost. David Martland 23:14, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Just a minor detail — did K.F. really sing Orpheus in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice? Is that really a contralto-part? — 194.230.170.217 00:59, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Marriage
We say her marriage was "annulled". Is this right? Annulment is a somewhat rare event. It is much more likely to have been a simple divorce. JackofOz 13:52, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
