KATHLEEN FERRIER SINGS BACH

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

untitled

If contraltos grew on trees, Kathleen Ferrier would be the golden apple.

I meant contraltos, not mezzo-sopranos, who are often though not always halfway there sopranos. The true contralto, on the other hand, blossoms from the c below the treble staff to the c one octave above that and happily descends below that staff as deep as one octave below. Marian Anderson recorded that note at the end of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.

But I digress.

While any Kathleen Ferrier previously released or unreleased would indeed be cause for celebration, in the case of the recently released SOMM CD titled Kathleen Ferrier In Celebration of Bach I found myself surfing from track 9, in which the late English contralto sings a glorious Esurientes to track 16 where she delivers a magnificent Ah tarry yet my dearest Saviour from the Ascension Oratorio to tracks 26 and 28 of the Cantata no. 67, in both of which she sings recitatives that lead to arias by the other singers involved.

All told, I could only celebrate two arias by Ferrier. In the Magnificat, recorded live in Germany in 1950 with coughing by audience members included, in the Ascension Oratorio and in the Cantata no. 67, there is generally poor singing from those surrounding Ferrier; even the young Irmgard Seefried delivers an unidiomatically labored Quia respexit in the Magnificat while the usually reliable Otto Edelman sounds more like a Baron Ochs than a Bach basso.

Disappointing to say the least.

Word to record producers: if you are announcing the release of another Kathleen Ferrier album please make sure to include her definitive Erbarme dich from the St. Matthew Passion. How about the Agnus Dei from the B Minor Mass?

Put those two in your playlist to begin with and spare us the filler second-tier German and English singers. And please find a title for your release that does not mislead us.

Rafael de Acha http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”