The
core of this release is a DVD shown
on BBC television and with it is a
CD that amplifies the biographical
and musical material. The documentary
uses her diary and letters and we
hear from Christopher Fifield, who
edited them for publication, and Paul
Campion, who compiled her discography.
We also get a segment from Campion’s
appearance on BBC television’s Mastermind
(Specialist Subject; the Life of Kathleen
Ferrier), which is perhaps pushing
it a bit. The biography gives us the
only known preserved film and newsreel
of Ferrier, variously elegant and
charming when arriving at Amsterdam’s
Schipol Airport for one of her many
Dutch tours and when gloriously inebriated
at a New York party – full of eyeball
rolling, and plenty of tomfoolery.
I’d rather have had the precious footage
uninterrupted but I understand that
this is a minority view. Her diaries
and letters are read by the actress
Patricia Routledge whose voice sounds
nothing like the rather RP accent
Ferrier adopted for her 1949 talk
on the Edinburgh Festival preserved
on the CD. A few open vowels point
to her Lancastrian birth but not much
more.
We
see and hear Britten, George Christie,
Evelyn Barbirolli and Janet Baker,
who mentions the rounded county vowels,
and from John Barbirolli and Bruno
Walter – both full of benign wisdom,
though Walter is recorded as having
asked Barbirolli what he’d done to
Ferrier’s voice; the English conductor
had got her to sing Chausson to increase
Ferrier’s range at the top. The blurry
reconstructions (taking a bow, greeting
friends) are filmed as if through
muslin – evocative for some or merely
decorative flannel for others. But
the music is poignantly chosen. When we hear from one contributor that,
increasingly confident in her international
success, “Ferrier dictated the terms”
we hear her on the soundtrack singing
I
Know Where I’m Going. As
we hear news of her cancer we hear
Erbame
Dich. Such moments of care are
telling.
The CD gives
us much known Ferrier but also some that will be unfamiliar.
There’s Che faro but
the Sargent version this time and Che puro ciel with Stiedry, whom Ferrier loathed. Is that Stiedry
humming along at 3.20? An
die Musik (with Phyllis Spurr) is rather scuffy – surely
a better copy could have been used – along with the famous Ferrier
gag title, Art Thou Troubled
By G. F. Handel. The folk songs are here – they could hardly
be otherwise – and the Handel/Boult complete with harpsichord
in Judas Maccabaeus and stunningly fine diction
in O thou that tellest. The turn over in the double-sided Bach – with
David McCallum the sweet-toned violin soloist – has been roughly
done. Walter appears as piano accompanist, approximate but full
of wisdom, from the live Usher Hall recital and as conductor
in the Mahler.
The bonus
features on the DVD include stills of original Decca record
covers and recording cards, a Decca discography and a picture
gallery. The later photographs preserve her unquenchable spirit
despite unremitting pain – a beauty dimmed and made gaunt through
suffering.
Jonathan Woolf
DVD 
DOCUMENTARY
