Kathleen Ferrier. A Memoir [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

If you doubted the legend of Kathleen Ferrier here is proof positive of her unique artistry and singular personality. A shooting star of a contralto who took the breath away from the sternest of critics.

Here are Neville Cardus, John Barbirolli, Benjamin Britten, Gerald Moore and others paying their final tributes to "Kath" - who so tragically died at 40, in 1953. If you've never heard this woman sing, punch up some of the wonderful bargains offered on this site. You'll never stop thanking me for it.

According to her teacher, Kathleen Ferrier started her career as a singer ten years late. She had shown early promise as a pianist, and she took the first step towards a change of career on her own initiative. Late to begin, she ended far too soon, and this short book is a little anthology of reminiscences and tributes by some of her major collaborators. Her true claim to greatness probably comes as much from her Mahler performances as from anything else, and these include the second symphony as well as the Song of the Earth and the Kindertotenlieder. Dr Bruno Walter partnered her in the two latter, he it was who introduced her to Mahler, and his is the last of the pieces here. Her teacher Roy Henderson contributes a lengthy and fascinating article, and we hear from Barbirolli, Britten and Gerald Moore in addition.

The book has been edited by Neville Cardus, lately music critic of The Guardian newspaper, and I may as well say that I find Cardus insufferable. He's at it as usual here - quoting his own words of wisdom and obviously full of awareness of their deep significance to everyone else. For all that, his is a valuable piece, sketching in Ferrier's Lancashire background and her early life - not that she had a late one. She married in her 20's, but it didn't last and nobody says why not, and if they're not saying I'm not asking. She seems to have had no later affairs or `relationships', and her main companions were her sister, her secretary and her devoted musical partners. The personality that comes across is straightforward and apparently likeable. She remained a Lancashire lass but she had too much intelligence and good taste to make an affectation out of it. She had to learn how a celebrity acts in such simple matters as walking on and off the stage as well as what used to be known as `deportment', but she also seems to have taken to it all without difficulty. What comes across strongly from Moore is just how much `presence' she had. She was tall, of course, and that presumably helped, but she seems to have possessed genuine public magnetism, and according to Moore the bigger the occasion the more she rose to it. There seems to have been nothing mean or arrogant in her makeup, but she was no particular respecter of persons either, as is apparent from a memorable snub she delivered to one pompous functionary whose notions of his own importance she clearly did not share. In private she was lively, witty and accomplished, quite at home with the lifestyle that her eminence entitled her to, but also in touch with her roots and apparently able (says Barbirolli) to turn out a fine meal of fish and chips as well as an unspeakable Lancashire speciality for which she retained a marked taste.

Britten is much the best writer of the contributors, and his chapter is naturally concerned with his association with Ferrier in his own compositions, in particular The Rape of Lucretia. From Barbirolli we get an account of her later years, but from Moore and Walter we derive a picture of the development of the artist. Handel, Bach and Elgar are all part of the great choral tradition of northern England, but she had to learn lieder, not to mention Mahler, not to mention Britten. The longest contribution is from her teacher Roy Henderson, a fascinating and detailed account of how an unassuming genius attained her full artistic stature. Nobody mentions my own favourite moment in all of her recorded output that I know - the magnificent `Das Grass steht wieder auf' from Brahms's Alto Rhapsody.

Nothing in her life became her more than the manner of her leaving it, a model of courage, fortitude and innocent grandeur. I don't sense that any contralto in all the years since has approached her stature. She has had critics since her time, but always Das Grass steht wieder auf, and it seems that her fame will last as in Mahler's parting phrase `Ewig...ewig'.