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This charming and curiously
affecting disc conjoins two famous British
singers, born a generation apart. Ferrier
and Baillie first met in 1941 when they
sang Messiah. They began duet recordings
together in 1945. The reason they did
so, as Bryan Crimp’s notes relate, was
due to Ferrier’s refusal to sing any
further solo recordings for producer
Walter Legge. She enlisted Isobel Baillie’s
assistance to complete her contractual
obligations in duet recordings after
what seems to have been an amorous lunge
from Legge or as Crimp puts it in a
masterpiece of oratory "the Casanova
in Legge succeeded in so offending Ferrier
that she refused point blank to fulfil
her recently signed contract."
(In his biography of Ferrier, Maurice
Leonard quoted her teacher Roy Henderson,
who remembered an incident in which
Legge had apparently tried it on with
Ferrier in a taxi).
However they came about
and whatever the tonal improbabilities
may have seemed they make a fine pairing.
Sound the Trumpet is delightfully lithe
and lively with a fine vocal blend and
their unison singing in the other Purcell
duets (from The Indian Queen and King
Arthur) is full of affection and doubtless
they were using the old Moffat edition
- a name familiar for his realisations
of "old" music in Britain.
Apart from the fresh and verdant Mendelssohn
settings the rest of the disc is given
over to the singers’ solo recordings.
Baillie is in ever-youthful
voice; she’d first recorded in 1924
and was something of a veteran of the
studios but they always struggled to
capture her pure tone and it’s well
known that she sometimes turned away
from the microphone when recording.
Her solo Purcell is attractive and only
increases in pleasure when one listens
to Gerald Moore – his rolled chords
in Stript of their green our groves
appear are splendid. She’s delicious
in Arne – gorgeously apt upward portamento
in Where the bee sucks with a
splendidly witty Moore trill. Her traditional
songs are verdant, even though her Brahms
is perhaps on a less exalted level.
There is some unusual Ferrier material
here as well, including the 1944 test
pressings of Gluck, Elgar and Brahms.
Her Handel was always impressive; she
may privately and saucily have mocked
her own perceived portentous delivery
of some arias but the Handel-Somervell
Come to me, soothing sleep
has always been and remains a favourite
of mine for its beautiful gravity. Her
Maurice Greene is marked by rapt diminuendi
in I will lay me down in peace
(with its simple but effective Roper
arrangement) and the splendidly ‘old
school’ O Praise the Lord. We
get a glimpse of the famous what-might-have-been,
one of those what-if counterfactuals
so beloved of military historians and
record collectors, in her Angel in Gerontius
in this test recording. We also
find her ready for Brahms’ gravity in
Liebestreu, here termed Constancy
and like everything on the disc sung
in English.
The test pressings
have been released before but not in
nearly such good sound as here. All
the transfers in fact are first class.
These discs have been something of a
lacuna for Ferrier admirers and they
will be pleased to make their acquaintance
and savour their charm.
Jonathan Woolf
Isobel Baillie (soprano) and Kathleen Ferrier
(contralto)