I looked at the booklet
cover, with its "Great Singers
- Ferrier" headline and prominent
photograph, and promptly did a double-take.
I know she was a "Great Singer",
but surely not even Kathleen Ferrier
could have satisfied the vocal demands
of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony?
No, of course not, and yes, I do know
better than that. However, suppose that
I didn’t? I could have been one
distinctly disappointed punter when
I got this treasure home!
I guess that 2003 being
the 50th. anniversary of
Ferrier’s sad and untimely death must
be the motivation behind Naxos’s contravention
of just about any "Trades Descriptions"
legislation going. She is involved in
only about one third of the total running
time, whereas conductor Bruno Walter
is firing on all cylinders throughout.
By my reckoning, that makes the only
justifiable categorisation of this CD
"Great Conductors - Walter",
and Naxos would do well to correct this
as soon as is practicable. Having said
that, I hope they retain the wonderful
photograph - no-one can deny that Kathleen
Ferrier is a sight more pretty than
Bruno Walter!
These two recordings
were made on the blurred boundary between
the "old" 78 r.p.m. era and
the "new" 33 r.p.m. era, a
boundary further blurred by the emergent
magnetic tape technology. According
to Mark Obert-Thorn’s customary and
useful "Producer’s Note",
the earlier (1945) recording was actually
made on LP lacquer masters which were
then copied to 78 r.p.m. masters for
production. When LP finally arrived
in the shops, the original masters were
transferred to magnetic tape, which
was then used to produce LPs. The latter
(1949) recording was mastered directly
onto magnetic tape, and went straight
on to LP. To have the two side-by-side
on this CD is thus fascinating in itself.
Restoration of such
recordings is a different ball-game
from that of restoring 78s. The newer
technologies overcame the constraints
of the older, reducing the noise and
distortion inherent in the recording
and production processes. However, as
is ever the case, these new technologies
brought their own new limitations, most
notably that of tape "dropouts".
However MO-T reports that, in its LP
incarnation, the earlier recording preserves
some of the "thumps" that
were a feature of the lacquer mastering
process, so - if you’ll forgive the
pun - all is not entirely clear-cut.
From the sound on this
CD I imagine that, unless he had access
to LP pressings unsullied to an improbable
degree, MO-T must have made at least
some use of "de-clicking".
Likewise the residual hiss, being slightly
granular in quality, points towards
the application of "de-hissing".
However, the fact that the hiss is plainly
though not obtrusively audible indicates
that a deal of care and judgement has
been exercised in reaching a compromise
between "de-lousing" and preserving
the quality of the original recorded
sound.
MO-T suggests that
the latter recording "remains quite
vivid", and that the earlier one
"present[s] the sound with a fidelity
years ahead of its time". Well,
I am old enough (just!) to have bought,
in my early days, several monaural LPs.
I have enduring memories of listening,
wide-eyed and open-mouthed, to those
records. In more recent years, I got
round to wondering whether those memories
are exaggerated by both the inflammatory
nature of the young mind and the nostalgia-inducing
passage of time. However, conversations
with like-minded friends have convinced
me that the impressions of sound quality
carried in such memories are essentially
accurate. I’m thus as sure as
I can be that these recordings are,
in the context of their milieu, pretty
well as MO-T describes them.
The rough ball-park
is somewhere between good quality AM
and monaural FM radio. Only if you are
daft enough to insist on the hi-est
of fi without exception should you give
this disc a miss on grounds of sound.
Why "daft enough"? Because,
in a nutshell, these performances are
indeed the "treasure" to which
I alluded in a somewhat throwaway manner
in my first paragraph!
Looking first at Kindertotenlieder,
we find Ferrier’s lush contralto in
full bloom, an utterly gorgeous sound
that set me wondering, "Why don’t
we have any real contraltos like
this any more?" It seems to be
true, doesn’t it? Nowadays, with the
fading of stars like Ludwig and Baker,
you look around and there seem to be
only mezzo-sopranos masquerading as
contraltos.
It’s not simply the
tone of her voice, spine-tingling as
that is. It’s also a matter of the control.
Ferrier’s voice had a vibrato but, unlike
many a yowling cat that I could mention
(but won’t, for fear of libel action!),
kept the lid on it even when she ascended
to the upper reaches of her range. More
so than many, she seemed to have separate
knobs to control dynamic and pitch.
These controls are all-important keys
to the door of exalted musical expression.
Expression is itself
the key to Kindertotenlieder.
Rückert’s words and Mahler’s music
both dealt very sensitively, not to
say diplomatically, with an extremely
delicate subject, so it’s hardly surprising
that you need a singer of comparable
capabilities to perform them. Ferrier
seems to have been one of very few who
possessed that capability. To have both
Ferrier and Bruno Walter, with his direct
line of descent from Mahler himself,
together on record might seem like a
gift from the gods. In fact that might
be precisely what it is. You can read
in Malcolm Walker’s booklet note how
record company contracts - Ferrier was
with Decca and Walter with Columbia
- came precious close to scuppering
the partnership altogether. Fortunately,
sense was seen, resulting in this Columbia
recording and, by reciprocation, the
Decca recording of Das Lied von der
Erde. Ultimately, the gods were
embarrassingly bountiful!
Ferrier modifies her
tone in response to the emotional shading
of each song - in the first her declamation
is full and confident, in the second
more tentative and "floated".
That separate knob for dynamic has a
remarkable range of adjustment, which
is most evident in the fractured "nursery
rhyme" of the third song ("Wenn
dein Mütterlein"). The first
outburst (around 1'24) has astonishing
force, which might be a mundane reason
for the slight "catch" in
her voice at about 2'30. Yet, less than
a minute later, she expresses "Oh
Du!" with melting tenderness, and
goes on to bring a huge surge of emotion
to the extension of this phrase, before
tailing off in "exhaustion".
The voice is set well
forward of Mahler’s mostly chamber-scale
orchestra, yet orchestral detail is
never under any real threat. In fact,
Walter and the engineers have clearly
been at pains to maximise the abundance
of such details. Perhaps surprisingly
for such a dark work, the presence afforded
the silvery glockenspiel is remarkable.
Then again, perhaps not, as Mahler knew
well enough what he was about and Walter,
of all the conductors who have ever
recorded Mahler, knew the composer’s
mind better than anyone. Whether or
not you view these pinpricks of light
against that sombre backdrop as symbolic,
there is no denying the feeling of an
icicle being prodded between your shoulder-blades.
Neither is there any denying the skill
and understanding with which Walter
marshals his forces, both in terms of
the flexibility of line and balance
of colours - never has Mahler’s orchestration
sounded more "wood-cut" than
it does here. Of course, some of the
credit for that must go to the fabulous
solo and ensemble playing of the VPO!
The last song ("In
diesem Wetter") is the one perhaps
most at variance with modern interpretations.
Adopting a fairly deliberate pace, Walter
does not "milk" the violence.
By giving himself exactly the right
amount of elbow-room, Walter seems to
achieve two things. Firstly, the raging
elements are very definitely - and properly
- experienced from the inside
of the house, their threat muted by
the intervention of some stout stone
walls. Secondly, he opens out the amazing
colours inherent in Mahler’s score in
a way that just isn’t possible if the
"heavy mob" is given its head.
If proof were needed, just listen to
the pizzicati that Walter elicits from
the VPO strings - cutting viciously
through the texture rather than swilling
around within it.
At the same time -
and maybe I should say "thirdly"!
- Ferrier doesn’t have to either babble
her words or yell her head off, but
sing her line in a voice not
so much panic-stricken as laden with
fear and regret. In the slow coda, Walter
resists the obvious temptation to let
the music wallow interminably. By keeping
it moving, he finds the feeling of a
simple lullaby, in which Ferrier’s tone
becomes delicate but not pianissimo,
her song frail but also reassuringly
prayerful.
Given the constraints,
the sound is marvellous, cushioned in
a warm bloom courtesy of the Kingsway
Hall. True, the bass is a bit confined,
and the sound does harshen a little
in extremis, but it’s nothing
to write home about.
Turning to what must
be, given the presentation, described
as the "fill-up", there are
further wonders to behold in Walter’s
view of the Fourth Symphony,
a curiously apposite companion-piece
to Kindertotenlieder. Walter
sets his stall out in no uncertain terms:
from the word "go" his pacing
is leisurely and elastic, but disciplined.
He rides the tempi like a seasoned horseman,
operating the music’s marvellous machinery
within unforced, "natural"
limits which are always related to a
consistent, underlying pulse. This discipline
is extended to the dynamics where climaxes,
although by no means under-nourished,
are never cranked up to fever pitch.
At the other extreme, pianissimi are
likewise never allowed to dissolve into
inaudible whispers. Dare I suggest that
latter-day conductors tend to succumb
to this temptation in the ever-more-difficult
search for "something new"
to say about the music? If so, then
it is something of an irony that we
can find that "something new"
simply by picking up this CD and turning
back the clock nearly 60 years.
In the first movement,
Walter unerringly evinces the apparent
simplicity that Mahler intended: there
is a pervasive feeling of an orchestral
"playground" such that the
big climaxes sound not so much aggressive
as the play getting "over-boisterous".
His ear must have been phenomenal. There
are details in this recording that,
if I have been aware of them previously,
I have passed over as unimportant. In
Walter’s hands, everything seems
important!
For example, at the
central climax I was suddenly conscious
of the continuous whooshing of the tam-tam.
Consequently, at the reprise of this
climax (leading up to the big statement
of the second subject), I was aware
that the incessant string of cymbal
crashes didn’t just pop up out of nowhere.
It’s not that I hadn’t heard the tam-tam
before now: the difference was that
Walter had somehow connected
the tam-tam and the cymbals, integrating
them into the logical fabric of the
music.
Implicit in what I’ve
just said is that there is a clarity
in the performance and recording that
is exceptional - and I’m tempted to
go along with MO-T and omit the qualifying
"for its time"! Walter and
his New Yorkers find a veritable kaleidoscope,
from the gruff growlings of the double
basses upwards. You can hear the contrabassoon,
never mind the "sleigh-bells",
and wherever the woodwind are called
on to colour the strings, that colour
comes up as bright as new paint!
So it is in the macabre
second movement, again fairly expansive
but kept mobile so that the soupily
sentimental bits don’t drown in their
own sentimental soup. Walter finds a
rainbow lurking in the dark shadows,
and the fiddler really does sound scrawny.
Then again, how often do we hear the
huge bass glissando at the end of this
movement?
Contrariwise, Walter’s
view of the great adagio movement is,
relatively, less leisurely. He may dispatch
it in under 17½ minutes, but it doesn’t
sound like it, largely because he’s
focusing above all on projecting the
lovely line of the music, following
its contours and letting it flow with
completely natural expression. Even
so, there’s no lack of dramatic contrast
- I had to keep reminding myself just
when this recording was made!
The finale brings the
one really big question mark about this
performance. The soloist is Desi Halban,
a soprano with a not especially pretty
voice, having a distinct tendency to
a certain shrillness and surging that
may have the family cat running for
cover! It sounds as if she is situated
in the vicinity of the back-desk violas,
which is probably just as well. If that
is indeed where she was standing, I
wonder who came up with the idea, and
the sort of diplomacy to pull it off?
To be ruthlessly fair, in compensation
Halban does have plenty of character,
lending considerable thespian expression
to the often lurid text, in which a
"child’s picture of heaven"
has precious little to do with sitting
around on clouds playing boring old
harps.
Walter’s basic tempo
is a sturdy "march", from
which he deviates with his now customary
elasticity. The Big Surprise comes in
the final, dream-like stanza. There
is no linger-longer drifting wistfully
into a lazy sunset here. As near as
dammit Walter takes it at tempo primo,
a robust andante! Maybe Walter was making
sure that the textual thread was not
severed, but this is the one tempo over
which I have my doubts, because there
is a particular sweetness in the way
that Mahler spins out the melody that
cries out for some relaxation. Maybe
I’ll get used to it?
Make no mistake, though,
in its historical context this recording
is phenomenal. The acoustics of Carnegie
Hall may be a bit on the dry side, but
that’s simply part of the price to be
paid for the ground-breaking clarity
of the sound - the other part being
the less rotundly warm quality of the
New Yorkers as compared with their Viennese
counterparts. Full marks to MO-T for
another excellent rescue mission.
I suspect that most
people will buy this CD for the performance
of the headlined "Great Singer",
and I’d say it’s certainly worth its
modest asking price for just that. Nevertheless
I hope that all such folk will end up
equally enchanted by the work of the
footnoted "Great Conductor".
Make no mistake, Kathleen Ferrier may
deservedly have the top billing, but
Bruno Walter is the real star of this
show.
Paul Serotsky
see also review
by John Quinn
Kathleen Ferrier (†), Desi Halban (*),
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (*), New York Philharmonic-Symphony
Orchestra (†)/Bruno Walter