MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor; Kindertotenlieder – Kathleen Ferrier, contralto/BBC Symphony/ Sir Adrian Boult/Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Otto Klemperer (Kindertotenlieder)/ Bonus: Kathleen Ferrier Radio Interview with Eric McLean – Testament

by | Aug 28, 2008 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor; Kindertotenlieder – Kathleen Ferrier, contralto/BBC Symphony/ Sir Adrian Boult/ Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Otto Klemperer (Kindertotenlieder)/ Bonus: Kathleen Ferrier Radio Interview with Eric McLean

Testament SBT2 1422, (2 CDs) 57:38; 72:41 [Distrib. by Harmonia mundi] ****:


The concert 29 November 1947 in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios marked the British premier of the Mahler D Minor Symphony (1902), as performed by BBC Symphony under Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983). Boult had been an ardent supporter of Mahler’s music since 1920, when he attended the famed cycle given by Willem Mengelberg in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw’s anniversary gift to Mengelberg for twenty-five years’ service. In 1927 and 1930 Boult led the City of Birmingham Orchestra in Mahler’s G Major Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, then the Ninth in 1934 with the BBC. That this performance exists at all is due to the effort of Edward Agate, who had amassed a number of broadcast performances on acetates.

Given the less than ideal conditions of recording, the Boult inscription remains remarkably clear and sonically focused. Some swish and crackles do intrude on the progress of the music, but the pantheistic buoyancy and frenetic drive of woodwinds, horns, and harps, the martially spirited hallucination of Nature’s opulent song, drives many a pungent musical period home. The crisp audacity of the music, its sentiment and vigor, impress us deeply in this reading, which projects menace and mystery. The BBC horn section enunciates the ominous main theme of the monster first movement with clarion irony, while the later gambols in the landscape maintain a childish, albeit Brechtian, innocence. The Tempo di Menuetto enjoys a disingenuous, diaphanous texture, a coy lilt of the Austrian laendler and vestiges of a more classical age. Boult mixes Mendelssohn pixies with moments of klezmer, scampering intuitions of the complementary Fourth Symphony. The leisurely Scherzando exploits the trumpet’s ability to play La Folia in a slightly off-kilter version, the rest of the orchestra often suggestive a misty carousel.  A lusty, hazy march ensues in writhing counterpoint, hectic and neurotic, with Boult’s not opting for any polite softening of Mahler’s sardonic urbanity. Its last rush combines the ferocity of the First Symphony Scherzo with a new-found, cosmic bombast.

Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953) makes her appearance after the fateful, drooping harp motif of the Sehr langsam, the words of Nietzsche now resonating with her especial pathos. When the strings take up the large theme, the peculiar poignancy of Mahler’s mystical humanity quite pierces the soul.  The pregnant pauses, then Ferrier’s entry with horns and harp, acquire an unearthly stealth, as if we were about to purloin the sacred fire at Olympus. The children’s choir conveys a warm carol that would melt the heart of Alistair Sim in his classic rendition of the cold Scrooge or warm the heart of Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon. Once again, Ferrier exults in the balanced, eerily erotic music that provides the vision of Heavenly slaughter in the G Major Symphony.  The huge last movement extends the valedictory sentiment of Beethoven’s Op. 135 F Major Quartet, here an ethereal elegy of plaintive power. A horn call and violin plainsong, mixed with oboe, announce a resigned albeit tormented comfort in the transience of mortal objects. Several perorations ensue, each more agonized and fraught with cosmic yearning–and sustained, tympanic pedal–than the last. The last pages reach an astonishing apotheosis, a grand, solemn march of reverberant nobility and power.

The collaboration on the Kindertotenlieder (12 July 1951) from Amsterdam with Ms. Ferrier and the often emotionally stolid Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) did not leave happy memories with Ferrier, who objected to Klemperer’s adamantine authoritarianism – she enjoyed a more symbiotic relationship in this music with Bruno Walter. Yet, the personal strain between the two artists proves beneficial for this fevered music, rife with the anxieties of distraught parenthood. Ferrier’s charcoal-voiced anxiety for the safety of the children’s souls becomes ever more bleak and submissive. The recorded sound barely excels the quality of the Third Symphony, and the swish of the original disc masters insinuates itself frequently. The oboe and horn soli that accompany Ferrier in the second and third songs imbue in them the quality of a dark, Bach cantata. A last ray of hope flickers in the almost convulsive Oft denk’ich sie sind nur ausgengangen, in which the horn, violin, and flute add to the self-delusive mix. The last song, even given Rueckert’s authorship, could have been penned by Thomas Hardy in one of his more deterministic, fatal moods. The storm consumes the speaker and her last vestiges of faith, the harmonies a huge maw that swallows the vitality from all but the sweetly nostalgic colors in Ferrier’s voice, surrounded by the lulling of flutes and strings.

In her eight-minute interview at the end of the program (10 March 1950, Montreal), she recalls how an audience’s smiles can repay an arduous journey. She looks forward to an oratorio version Orfeo with the Little Orchestra Society under Thomas Scherman and another concert with Bruno Walter. Ferrier recalls Glyndebourne and Britten for her opera debut. She anticipates a summer requiring her appearance at the Bach Festival in Vienna and then Edinburgh.  Ferrier notes that with a singer, the voice must be there, but a teacher can make or mar a singer’s voice and technique. She admits to not having sung French repertory, but she hopes to master Chausson, her Lancashire accent notwithstanding. Britten’s Spring Symphony comes under discussion, a series of songs, and Ferrier’s own contribution of a lyric by Auden–she calls it “a lovely work, very gay.” No trace in her speaking voice of the terrible doom that already marked the short time remaining to her.

— Gary Lemco

 

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