There are two issues
here, really. There are those who feel
that, when performances have circulated
as widely as these, a reviewer should
limit himself to commenting on the quality
of the transfers. I don’t agree and
I fully intend to deal with the music
and the performances too, but I will
start by considering whether there is
any point in adding the present CD to
your collection if you already have
Decca’s own transfers (based on the
master tapes), or in preferring this
version if you have neither, especially
in view of Mark Obert-Thorn’s claim
to "have also corrected the pitch
for each track, which was for the most
part flat in varying degrees on previous
Decca LP and CD transfers of the studio
recordings".
Well, I shall have
to admit that my comparisons are confined
to the six Quilter pieces which (both
arrangements and original songs) appear
on a Decca compilation dedicated to
Ireland, Quilter and Rubbra in their
"British Music Collection",
but the tale they tell is a pretty consistent
one. At first, in the original Quilter
pieces, I thought the difference in
pitch so minimal that I would not have
noticed it had it not been pointed out
to me, but Obert-Thorn does say "in
varying degrees" and in "Ye
banks and braes" and "Drink
to me only" the difference is quite
startling; the Decca transfers are about
a quarter of a tone down. Without bringing
in a lot of expensive and sophisticated
equipment I cannot actually check which
of the two is at correct concert pitch,
but my ear tells me that the Naxos transfer
sounds right whereas the Decca gives
the voice a doleful air. The colour
is just not credible. So I see no reason
to doubt that Obert-Thorn’s pitching
is correct.
But aside from that,
there is a considerable difference in
quality, especially noticeable, perhaps,
in "To daisies". In the Decca
transfer the piano sound is dry and
backward; with Naxos it has more bloom
and presence. With Decca the voice may
seem at first more focused, but after
quite a short time it comes to have
a metallic edge. It sounds shallow and
artificial. With Naxos it may sound
a little muzzier, though no more so
than it would if you were sitting some
way back in a hall listening to it.
But it also has more depth. You tire
of it less, for it envelops you rather
than hits you, and causes the legend
of the singer to relive more convincingly.
So, taking these songs as a sample,
there seems no doubt that Naxos is preferable.
There is, by the way, the mystery of
a seventh arrangement, "Down by
the Salley Gardens", which appears
on the Decca disc (duly down a quarter
of a tone) as the work of Quilter, whereas
it is here attributed to Herbert Hughes.
Since it was recorded on the same day
as another Hughes arrangement ("The
Lover’s Curse") and the two came
out back to back on the original 78
disc, I am sure that Hughes is correct,
and I see that in October 1968 "Gramophone",
reviewing the Ace of Clubs issue of
these performances, gave the arranger
as Hughes.
So much for the recordings.
As for the music, and the performances,
there is no getting away from the fact
that the myth is beginning to show its
age. This is very obvious in the folksong
arrangements. These innocent tunes,
dolled up for concert use, were immensely
popular in their day, but it increasingly
requires us to suspend our belief that
halls-full of people around the country
could listen to a range of mostly Northern
dialects conscientiously sung exactly
as they are written on the page in the
most beautiful King’s English without
seeing anything incongruous about it.
The problem is that many of the arrangements
are sufficiently simple and respectful
for us not to forget that these are
folksongs, and therefore our expectations
from them are at loggerheads with what
we actually get. Better, really, are
the Quilter arrangements in which the
composer appropriates the tune for his
own ends and we can simply listen to
it as an art song. Benjamin Britten
could be expected to do something along
these lines, of course, but he was ever
one pursue a simple idea to dogmatic
extremes and in "O waly, waly"
the initial impression of stark originality
gives way to monotony and sheer irritation.
Constant Lambert came up with the famous
dictum that the only thing you can do
with a folksong is to play it again
louder; Britten shows here that there
are other things you can do, and worse
ones.
But what of the actual
art songs? Well, Kathleen Ferrier came
at a midpoint in British singing history.
Nowadays singers are much more international
in their approach, they study a range
of languages from their college days
onwards, and they tend to apply a more
bel canto approach to English song (and
also to lieder), compared with the note-by-note
method – wholly word-oriented – adopted
by their predecessors. A good example
of modern "international"
singing of an English song is actually
to be found on that same Decca disc,
where Elly Ameling sings Quilter’s "Weep
you no more". On the other hand,
compared with a singer like Maggie Teyte,
Ferrier was already half the way along
that particular road, as Decca illustrate
all too well by inserting Jennifer Vyvyan’s
tragi-comic, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-style
rendering of "Love’s Philosophy"
in the middle of Ferrier’s group. So,
had she been allotted more time, maybe
she would have developed further along
these lines.
What cannot be doubted
is the richness and evenness of her
timbre, the clarity (even when taken
to excess) of her diction and the sense
of engagement she always creates. I
found her a little aggressive with Stanford’s
"Fairy Lough" but possibly
she was recorded too closely. She included
this piece in a recital in Rome in 1951
and here, with a more delicately imaginative
pianist (Giorgio Favaretto – a sort
of Italian Gerald Moore) and a muzzier
but more distant recording I was transported
to the magic lough up in the hills in
a way I am not on the Naxos recording
(and never have been in its Decca transfers
either). "Love is a Bable"
also benefits from Favaretto’s delicacy
in Rome. But "A Soft Day"
(not sung in Rome) is plainly deeply
felt, with exemplary treatment of the
difficult "drips, drips, drips
…" Frederick Stone sounds much
more engaged by the remaining pieces
and "Silent Noon" in particular,
comes across powerfully. Quilter group
are all impressive, once one has allowed
for the regal approach. "Drink
to me only", by the way, reveals
a very slight chink in her technical
armoury; some (not all ) of her A flats
and B flats are very fractionally flat.
It’s a treacherous zone for a low voice,
since it is just below the break. Having
noticed it once, I then started noticing
it in other places too. And, before
leaving Quilter, can I point out that
"Over the mountains" is not
an original composition but another
arrangement (I have corrected the details
above). Also, "Drink to me only"
may be a traditional melody, but Quilter
himself believed, and duly reported
on the score, that it was by one Colonel
Mellish.
On these lines, I must
also complain that Malcolm Walker’s
generally excellent note tells us that
Roberton’s arrangements include "Crimond
(Psalm 23)" and "All in an
April evening", but the latter
is an original composition. And Quilter
and Stanford gave their works opus numbers
(which I have duly reinstated) whereas
Parry, except for a few early works,
did not. And yet "Love is a bable"
is here listed as op.152 no.3. As I
understand it, somebody attempted to
work out posthumously a list of opus
numbers for Parry’s works, but I have
never seen this list and it never caught
on. The list of works in Jeremy Dibble’s
study of the composer gives no opus
numbers. And lastly, it is normal nowadays
to list Bridge’s works with their H
(Hindmarsh) number.
So, in conclusion,
time is gradually taking its distance
from the adored myth. Yet there is still
so much that is beautiful here and Naxos’s
transfers (as well as their price) provide
a good reason to explore.
Mention of the Rome
recital raises the issue that there
exists, I have always understood, a
certain body of Ferrier material in
the archives of various European radio
stations, not all of it duplicating
her commercially recorded repertoire.
While we must certainly be grateful
for these improved transfers, it would
be nice to think that this unissued
material might become more generally
available one day.
Christopher Howell
see also reviews
by Jonathan
Woolf and Em
Marshall
Kathleen Ferrier (contralto), Phyllis Spurr
(piano) (1, 2, 4-6, 8, 10-21), John Newmark
(piano) (7, 9), Frederick Stone (piano) (22-30)
