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1950 Kathleen Ferrier Arrau Beecham Baillie De Vito Britten Pears Barbirolli
Denis Matthews Isobel Baillie Joan Cross Richard Lewis
Original printed souvenir programme for the 1950 Leeds Triennial Musical Festival, with full details of all 8 concerts
Ferrier was the soloist in Dvorak, Brahms and Elgar, in three concerts, one with Beecham, two with Barbirolli.
Arrau played with the Yorkshire Symphony, under Maurice Miles. De Vito performed Brahms under Beecham
Leeds Town Hall
30 September, 2-7 October 1950
Photographs of the dignitaries and artists
H. M. The King, H. M. The Queen, H. R. H. The Princess Royal, Lord Mayor of Leeds (Ald. F. H. O'Donnell), Lady Mayoress of Leeds (Mrs. F. H. O'Donnell), Sir George Martin K. B. E., Noel Middleton
Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli, Maurice Miles, John. W. Shaw
Gwen Catley, Isobel Baillie, Joan Alexander, Kathleen Ferrier, Anne Wood, Marjorie Thomas, Nancy Evans, Heddle Nash, Richard Lewis, Peter Pears, Trefor Jones, Bruce Dargavel, Novakowski
Trevor Anthony
Claudio Arrau, Denis Matthews, Margaretta Scott, Evelyn Rothwell, Gioconda de Vito, Herbert Bardgett, Melville Cook, Robert L. Gordon
The Eight Concerts
30 September 1950
Elgar arr. God Save the King
Handel Anthem : Zadok the Priest
Schubert Mass in A flat
Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550
Delius Dance Rhapsody No. 1
Isobel Baillie soprano
Nancy Evans contralto
Richard Lewis tenor
Trevor Anthony bass
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Thomas Beecham conductor
2 October 1950
Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle
Chabrier Rhapsody, Espana
Brahms Violin Concerto in D major
Richard Strauss The Dance of the Seven Veils (Salome)
Isobel Baillie soprano
Marjorie Thomas contralto
Heddle Nash tenor
Bruce Dargavel bass
Gioconda de Vito violin
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Thomas Beecham conductor
3 October 1950
Dvorak Stabat Mater
Debussy Cortege and Air de Danse
Rossini La Scala di Seta
Dvorak Slavonic Rhapsody No. 3 in A flat major
Gwen Catley soprano
Kathleen Ferrier contralto
Trefor Jones tenor
Trevor Anthony bass
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Thomas Beecham conductor
4 October 1950
Rubbra Motet for Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 55, 'Morning Watch'
Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 6 in E minor
*Honegger Choral Work : King David
*Margaretta Scott narrator
Joan Alexander soprano
Anne Wood contralto
Richard Lewis tenor
Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra
Maurice Miles conductor
5 October 1950
Handel Dettinger Te Deum (3rd Part)
Debussy Three Nocturnes
Brahms Alto Rhapsody
Mozart Pianoforte Concerto in C minor, K.491
Sibelius Symphony No. 5 in E flat
Denis Matthews piano
Kathleen Ferrier contralto
Halle Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli conductor
6 October 1950 at 11
Holst Hymn of Jesus (To be conducted by the Chorus Master)
Beethoven Pianoforte Concerto No. 4 in G major
Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major
Brahms Symphony No. 2
Claudio Arrau piano
Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra
Maurice Miles conductor
6 October 1950 at 7.30
Beethoven Overture, Egmont
Strauss Oboe Concerto
Haydn Symphony No. 88 in G, 'Letter V'
Britten Spring Symphony (including Choir of 100 Boys) To be conducted by the composer**
Evelyn Rothwell piano
Joan Cross soprano
Anne Wood contralto
Peter Pears tenor
Halle Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli, Benjamin Britten conductors
** However, according to www.leodis.net (a photographic archive of Leeds) 'Britten had been taking the final rehearsals of his Spring Symphony which he was due to conduct at the 1950 Triennial Festival. Just before the performance, the composer succumbed to bursitis, a painful condition affecting his arm movements. Britten's place on the conductor's podium was taken by Festival Chorus Master Herbert Bardgett.' The same webpage shows a photograph of Britten rehearsing the Halle for this performance. The Spring Symphony had been premiered the previous year at the Holland Festival, on 14 July, under Edward van Beinum
7 October 1950
Elgar The Dream of Gerontius
Elgar arr. God Save the King
Kathleen Ferrier contralto
Richard Lewis tenor
Novakowski bass
Halle Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli conductor
Guarantors - list
Principals - list of all artists, orchestras and conductors taking part in the 1950 Festival :
Conductors - Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli, Maurice Miles, Herbert Bardgett
Singers - Isobel Baillie, Joan Cross, Gwen Catley, Joan Alexander, Kathleen Ferrier, Nancy Evans, Anne Wood,
Marjorie Thomas, Richard Lewis, Peter Pears, Heddle Nash, Trefor Jones, Trevor Anthony, Bruce Dargavel,
Novakowski
Soloists - Claudio Arrau, Denis Matthews, Gioconda de Vito, Evelyn Rothwell, Margaretta Scott, Melville
Cook, Robert L. Gordon
Orchestras - Royal Philharmonic, Halle, Yorkshire Symphony
Festival Chorus - complete list of members
Future events : List of towns in UK tour of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra under Maurice Miles (no dates or programme details); Humpty Dumpty at the Theatre Royal, Leeds, with Jack Storey, Joy Beattie, Don Saunders, Bonnie Downs; Aladdin at the Alhambra, Bradford, with Zena Dell, Claude Chandler, Rob Currie
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56 pages + covers, centre stapled
Condition : Very good. Very minor wear with some dust marking to cover, edge wear and touch of rust to staples; a faint hint of a vertical bruise; contents all clean and bright. A very nice copy
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dame Isobel Baillie DBE (9 March 1895 – 24 September 1983) was a Scottish soprano, popular in opera, oratorio and lieder. She was regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest oratorio singers.
Isobel Baillie was born in Hawick, Scottish Borders, in 1895. She worked in a music shop and as a clerk at Manchester Town Hall, and made her debut with the Hallé Orchestra in 1921. After studies in Milan, she won immediate success in her opening season in London in 1923. Her favourite work was Handel's Messiah, of which she gave over 1,000 performances during her career. She was often in demand for choral works; apart from Messiah, she was noted in Haydn's The Creation, Mendelssohn's Elijah, and Brahms's A German Requiem. In 1933 she became the first British performer to sing in the Hollywood Bowl in California. In 1937 Arturo Toscanini chose her to sing Brahms' Requiem.
Her performances in Gluck's Orpheus (always in English) and Gounod's Faust were very popular. However, her strength was in British music, including Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music (of which she was one of the original singers) and Elgar's The Kingdom.
She taught at the Royal College of Music (1955-57, 1961-64), Cornell University (1960-61) and the Manchester School of Music (from 1970). She gave tuition to Kathleen Ferrier and often performed with her.
She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1951, and was promoted in 1978 to Dame Commander (DBE).
She died in Manchester in 1983.
Gioconda de Vito (26 July 1907 – 14 October 1994) was an Italian-British classical violinist. (The dates 22 June 1907 and 24 October 1994 also appear in some sources.)
She was born, one of five children, in the town of Martina Franca near Lecce in southern Italy, to a wine-making family. Initially she played the violin untaught, having received only music theory lessons from the local bandmaster. Her uncle, a professional violinist based in Germany, heard her attempting a concerto by Charles de Bériot when she was aged only eight, and decided to teach her himself. At age 11, she entered the Pesaro Conservatory to study with Remy Principe. She graduated at age 13, commenced a career as a soloist, and at age 17 became Professor of Violin at the newly founded conservatory in Bari. In 1932, aged 25, she won the first International Violin Competition in Vienna. After she played the Bach Chaconne in D minor, Jan Kubelík came up to the stage and kissed her hand (she later appeared under the baton of Kubelik’s son Rafael Kubelík).
She then taught at Palermo and Rome, at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. She had earlier been presented to Benito Mussolini, who greatly admired her playing, and he used his influence to get her the Rome post. World War II interrupted what would otherwise have been the most productive period of her burgeoning career. In 1944 she was given the unique honour of a lifetime professorship at the Academy.
In 1944 she premiered the Violin Concerto of Ildebrando Pizzetti. She made the first of her relatively few recordings after the war. In 1948 she made her London debut under Victor de Sabata, playing the Brahms concerto. This was very successful, and led to performances at the Edinburgh Festival and with fellow artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. By 1953, she was considered Europe's No. 1 woman violinist, while remaining virtually unknown in the United States.
She played under Wilhelm Furtwängler a number of times, and had a great affinity for his approach. In 1957 they also played a Brahms sonata at Castel Gandolfo for Pope Pius XII, the choice of Brahms being the Pope's own request. The following year she played the Mendelssohn concerto for the pontiff. A member of the audience later sent her a letter saying that he was no longer an atheist, because her playing of the slow movement had made him realise there was a God.
During that concert, she realised she had reached the pinnacle of her career, and decided to retire in only another three years. She told the pope of her decision. Pius XII tried for an hour to dissuade her, saying she was far too young to retire so early, but to no avail. But she still had three years. During that time, Gioconda de Vito collaborated with Edwin Fischer, who was near the end of his career. During their recording sessions for the Brahms sonatas Nos. 1 and 3, he had to go to London for medical attention; and he died soon after.
She retired in 1961, aged only 54, not just from concert appearances, but from playing the violin at all. She preferred not even to teach. On one occasion, on holiday in Greece, she encountered Yehudi Menuhin on a beach, and she agreed to play some duets with him at his villa. When they got back there, he realised he did not have a spare violin, so that sole opportunity to play once more came to nothing.
She never played in the United States, although Arturo Toscanini and Charles Munch repeatedly asked her to. (She had played Bach for Toscanini in Paris in the 1930s, and he commented: "That's the way Bach should be played".) However, she did appear in Australia (1957), Argentina, India, Israel and Europe; and in the Soviet Union, where she was juror for the first Tchaikovsky Violin Competition, at the invitation of David Oistrakh.
Her repertoire was small. It excluded most works written after the 19th century (for example, the Elgar, Sibelius, Bartók, Berg, Bloch and Walton concertos) – the sole exception seems to be the Pizzetti concerto. Her particular favourites were "the three Bs" - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Her major recordings were issued in 1990 as "The Art of Gioconda de Vito". They include a Bach Double Violin Concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, conducted by Anthony Bernard.
Private life
In 1949, she married a Briton, David Bicknell, an executive with EMI, and she lived in the UK from 1951, although her English was always rudimentary and she often needed a translator. Bicknell died in 1988, and Gioconda de Vito died in 1994, aged 87.
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears (Farnham, 22 June 1910 – Aldeburgh, 3 April 1986) was an English tenor and life-long partner of the composer Benjamin Britten.
He was educated at Lancing College and went on to study music at Keble College, Oxford, serving as organist at Hertford College, but left without taking his degree. He later studied voice for two terms at the Royal College of Music. He claimed that it was hearing the tenor Steuart Wilson singing the Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew Passion which 'started me off'.
He met Britten in 1936, when he was a member of the BBC Singers. Pears and Britten gave their first recital together in 1937 at Balliol College, Oxford University. They left for America together as conscientious objectors when WWII became inevitable. Upon their return to England in 1942, they performed Britten's Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo together at Wigmore Hall on 23 September, and then recorded them for EMI, their first recording together.
Many of Britten's works contain a main tenor role written specifically for Pears. These include the Nocturne, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, the Canticles, the operas Peter Grimes and Albert Herring (title roles), The Beggar's Opera (Macheath), Owen Wingrave (Sir Philip Wingrave), Billy Budd (Captain Vere), The Turn of the Screw (Quint), Death in Venice (Aschenbach) and the three Church Parables.
Pears was co-librettist for A Midsummer Night's Dream, and created one of his few comic roles in it: As Flute the Bellows-mender he performed a drag parody of Joan Sutherland in the mad scene of Lucia di Lammermoor.
His voice was controversial, the vocal quality being unusual, described as "dry" and "white" and that "it took some getting used to". It was cruelly said that he had one good note, E-natural a third above middle C, which is why the crucial aria of Peter Grimes, "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades", is mainly written on that note. Its quality did not always record well, but there is no doubt that he had unusually good articulation and vocal agility, of which Britten also took advantage. His delivery, and Britten's compositional style, was mercilessly (and accurately) satirised by Dudley Moore in Beyond the Fringe (Little Miss Muffet).
He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in October 1974 as Aschenbach in Death in Venice. He sang regularly at the Royal Opera House and other major opera houses in Europe and the United States.
During his life he was considered a notable interpreter of Franz Schubert's Lieder, usually with Britten as accompanist. He also gave notable performances as the Evangelist in Johann Sebastian Bach's Passions.
Pears was knighted in 1978.
He is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul's Church in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. The grave of his partner, Benjamin Britten lies next to his, close to the grave of Imogen Holst, a close friend.
Claudio Arrau León (February 6, 1903 – June 9, 1991) was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning from the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.
Arrau was born in Chillán, the son of eye doctor Carlos Arrau and Lucrecia León Bravo de Villalba, a piano teacher. He belonged to an old, prominent family of Southern Chile. His ancestor Lorenzo de Arrau was sent to Chile by King Carlos III of Spain. Through his great-grandmother, María del Carmen Daroch del Solar, Arrau was a descendant of the Campbells of Glenorchy, a Scottish noble family.
Arrau was a child prodigy, giving his first concert at age five. At age seven he was sent on a Chilean government grant to study in Germany, at the Stern conservatory of Berlin where he was a pupil of Martin Krause, who had studied under Franz Liszt. At the age of 11 he could play Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, considered to be one of the most difficult sets of works ever written for the piano, and also Brahms's Paganini Variations. Arrau's first recordings were on Aeolian Duo-Art player piano music rolls.
In 1937, Arrau married German Jewish mezzo-soprano Ruth Schneider, and they had three children: Carmen (1938-2006), Mario (1940-1988) and Christopher (1959). The Arraus spent summers at their residence in Andover, Vermont.
Claudio Arrau spent his last days residing in Douglas Manor, NY.
Many claimed that his rich, weighty tone lent his interpretations a distinctive voice, some saying it sounded thick and muddy and others praising its rounded tone, saying it sounded as though Arrau were almost playing the organ or "plowing" his "paws" into the "flexible" keyboard. According to American critic Harold Schonberg, Arrau always put "a decidedly romantic piano tone in his interpretations".
Arrau was an intellectual and a deeply reflective interpreter. He has been in touch with Jung's psychology since his twenties.
Arrau's attitude toward music is very serious. He preached fidelity to the score. Although he often played with slower and more deliberate tempi from his middle age, Arrau had a reputation for being a fabulous virtuoso early in his career. According to Joseph Horowitz in his book Conversations With Arrau (1982), many critics feel his overall approach became less spontaneous and more reserved and introspective after the death of his mother, to whom he was extremely close.
Arrau was the teacher of Karlrobert Kreiten and Ruth Nye. Garrick Ohlsson, Arnulf von Arnim, David Rubinstein, Stephen Drury, John Cobb, Mario Miranda, the Pekinel sisters, Ines Leyva and Pilar Leyva also received lessons from Arrau.
Arrau recorded the complete piano music of Robert Schumann, and edited his works for publication, as well as all Beethoven piano sonatas in Urtext edition. He is also famous for his recordings of Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Liszt, Chopin, Schubert and Debussy, among others.
At the time of his death at 88 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, Arrau was working on a compact disc recording of the complete works of Bach for keyboard, and had Haydn, Mendelssohn, Reger, Busoni and Boulez's 3rd Sonata in preparation. His remains were interred in his native city of Chillán, Chile.
The Robert Schumann Society established the Arrau Medal in 1991. It has been awarded to András Schiff, Martha Argerich and Murray Perahia.
Awards and Recognitions
* Gold Medal, The Royal Philharmonic Society. 1990
* Honorary Member, The Royal Philharmonic Society. 1988
* National Prize of Art of Chile. 1983
* Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur of France
* Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Oxford
* First Honorary Member, The Robert Schumann Society
* Beethoven Medal of New York
* Chevalier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. 1965
* Hans von Bülow Medal of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. 1978
* Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany. 1970
* Homage from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Kurt Westphal, on behalf of the orchestra,
called him "heir to the throne of Gieseking and Busoni". 1968
* Doctor of Music, University of Chile. 1959
* Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Concepción (Spanish). 1959
* Gold Medal of the City of Concepción
* Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Chile. 1949
* Gold Medal of the Chilean Government. 1944
* Winner of the Grand Prix of the Concours International des Pianistes. The jury was composed
of Arthur Rubinstein, Joseph Pembaur, Ernest Schelling, Alfred Cortot and José Vianna da
Motta. Cortot exclaimed: "Cela c'est un pianiste. C'est merveilleux". Geneva, 1927
* Honour Prize of the Stern Conservatory (German), becoming Professor. 1925
* Liszt Prize in 1919 (after 45 years without a first place winner), and again in 1920
* Schulhoff Prize. Berlin, 1918
* End of studies at the Stern Conservatory, receiving an "Exceptional Diploma". Berlin, 1917
* Grant of the Stern Conservatory. Berlin, 1916
* First Prize in the Rudolph Ibach Competition (he was the only participating boy). Berlin, 1915
* Gustav Holländer Medal for young artists. Berlin, 1915
* Grant of the Chilean Congress for musical studies in Berlin. 1911
Quotes
An interpreter must give his blood to the work interpreted. — Claudio Arrau
Since in music we deal with notes, not words, with chords, with transitions, with color and expression, the musical meaning always based on those notes as written and nothing else - has to be divined. Therefore any musician, no matter how great an instrumentalist, who is not also an interpreter of a divinatory order, the way Furtwängler was, or Fischer-Dieskau is, is somehow one-sided, somehow without spiritual grandeur. — Claudio Arrau
Maurice Miles (Conductor, Arranger) Born: 1908 - Epsom, England. Died: June 26, 1985 [from www.bach-cantatas.com]
The English conductor, Maurice Edward Miles, studied at the Wells Cathedral School. He won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London where he came under the tutelage of conductors such as Sir Henry J. Wood and Julius Harrison. He later studied also at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
Maurice Miles conducted the Northern Philharmonic in several of its Leeds concerts in 1945-1946 and was appointed principal conductor of the newly formed Yorkshire Symphony in 1947 remaining in that post until 1954 (he was replaced by Nikolai Malko). The orchestra played many 20th century works, including more than thirty by British composers in his first season alone. His repertoire was eclectic, and he gave a rare performance of Arthur Honegger's oratorio King David at the 1950 Leeds Triennial Musical Festival. He also directed a Festival of British Music in Leeds in 1951 (Festival of Britain year). He was conductor of the City of Belfast Orchestra in 1955-1956, first principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra (which was created as a full time professional orchestra in 1966) in 1966-1967, and conductor of the Belfast Philharmonic Society from 1955 to 1967.
Maurice Miles' specialities were never likely to become fashionable. Arnold Bax and Arthur Butterworth were among the composers he championed. He gave the first performance of Gerald Finzi's beautiful Dies Natalis in the Wigmore Hall in 1940, and conducted Geoffrey Bush's Symphony No. 1 at the Proms in 1958. As well as his work in Northern Ireland Maurice Miles was a frequent conductor of the BBC Welsh Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He spent decades advocating unfashionable composers with unglamorous orchestras. The Promenade Concerts, choral festivals and schools' concerts came within his conducting ambit.
Maurice Miles taught conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London (from 1953), and at the Royal Military School of Music Kneller Hall (1969). In 1977 he produced a guide to conducting (published by Novello) with the title 'Are you beating Two or Four?' - and subtitled 'Some hints to help you make up your mind'! He published orchestral transcriptions of Jesus My Dearest Friend (J.S. Bach) and Blessed Virgin Expostulation (H. Purcell).
Maurice Miles was married to Eileen Spencer Wood and had one son and two daughters.
Sir John Barbirolli, CH (2 December 1899 – 29 July 1970) was a British conductor and cellist. Barbirolli was particularly associated with the Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, which he conducted for nearly three decades. He was also music director of the New York Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony, and conducted many other orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic. He was particularly associated with the music of English composers such as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He also developed a strong reputation as a conductor of the music of Gustav Mahler.
Early years 1899-1937
Giovanni Battista Barbirolli was a Londoner, from a musical family. His father and uncle were violinists in London theatre orchestras, notably the Leicester Square Empire, though they had also played at La Scala, Milan, under Arturo Toscanini. Thus the young John Barbirolli (as he became known) was destined to be a string player, a specialist in British music, and to have a love of Italian opera.
Barbirolli won a scholarship to study at Trinity College of Music, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music where the Sir John Barbirolli Collection of photographs and memorabilia is now archived. As a young cellist he made some acoustic records, played in the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), notably at the first performance of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, and was soon after the soloist in the second performance of the work. In the 1920s he turned to conducting and formed a chamber orchestra which recorded new works for the National Gramophonic Society, notably Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, which may have been responsible for His Master's Voice avoiding the work until after Elgar's death.
Between 1929 and 1933 he conducted opera at Covent Garden. From 1933 to 1936 he conducted the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow.
Barbirolli became known for his ability to secure effective performances at short notice, and in the 1930s made many recordings with the LSO and London Philharmonic, accompanying concerti with leading soloists such as Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, most of which remain classics today.
Conductor of New York Philharmonic 1937-1942
In 1937 Barbirolli achieved a coup when he was invited to succeed Arturo Toscanini as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, a tremendously prestigious post. Although his five seasons there were a musical triumph, as surviving recordings show, he was under constant attack from the hostile New York press, notably the critic Olin Downes, who was a strong champion of Toscanini. Barbirolli also had to cope with rivalry from the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra, also based in New York, which was conducted by Toscanini and paid higher salaries.
Work in later years 1942-1970
In 1942 Barbirolli was invited to renew his contract but to do so would have had to become a US citizen, which he was unwilling to do. At this point, an invitation to take up the post of chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra transformed his career.
The increase in scope for concerts had prompted the Hallé to end the increasingly unsatisfactory arrangement of sharing half their players with the BBC, which had saved them in the slump years, and to engage a top-rank conductor. Only four of the shared players chose to join the Hallé, so when Barbirolli arrived he had to rebuild the orchestra in weeks, a task he fell to with enthusiasm. His "new Hallé" recorded symphonies by Arnold Bax and Vaughan Williams, made in wartime Manchester. There was also a series of highly-acclaimed stereo recordings released by Pye in the United Kingdom and by Vanguard Records and Angel Records in the United States.
Barbirolli conducted the orchestra for 25 years in many cities, including at the Cheltenham Festival, where he premiered many new works. He also conducted the BBC and other London orchestras in concert and on record, and towards the end of his life renewed his association with EMI, which produced a legacy of fine recorded performances, many of which have been available continuously.
His last two concerts were held in the St Nicholas Chapel, King's Lynn, as part of its 1970 Festival. Despite collapsing from ill-health during the Friday afternoon, he produced magnificent renderings of Elgar's Symphony No 1 and Sea Pictures. The last work he conducted was Beethoven's Symphony No 7 on the Saturday before his death.
Barbirolli is remembered as an interpreter of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Mahler, as well as Schubert, Beethoven, Sibelius, Verdi and Puccini, and as a staunch supporter of new works by British composers, in which his advocacy rivaled those of conductors Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Henry Wood. Vaughan Williams bestowed the nickname "Glorious John" on Barbirolli as a sign of esteem. He was a mentor to the extraordinarily gifted cellist Jacqueline du Pré.
He was knighted in 1949 and made a Companion of Honour in 1969.
Family
His first marriage was to singer Marjorie Parry. His second marriage from 1939 to his death was to the British oboist Evelyn Rothwell, born 1911 at Wallingford, England, who became Lady Barbirolli. She died at the age of 97 in January 2008.
Notable premieres
•Benjamin Britten, Violin Concerto with Antonio Brosa as soloist, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, New York, 28 March 1940
•Britten, Sinfonia da Requiem, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, New York, 30 March 1941
•Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sinfonia antartica, Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, 1953
•Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 8, 1956
Legacy
Barbirolli Square in Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, England is named in his honour, with a statue of him by Byron Howard (2000). The square includes the modern concert venue, the Bridgewater Hall.
The Barbirolli Hall is the main hall in St Clement Danes School in Chorleywood, formerly St Clement Danes Grammar School, of which Barbirolli was a student when it was located in Houghton Street, London. The Elgar Cello Concerto has since been performed twice in the hall by cellist John Brennan and St Clement Danes student Thomas Isherwood.
A commemorative blue plaque was placed on the wall of the Bloomsbury Park Hotel in Southampton Row, Holborn, London in May 1993 to mark Barbirolli’s birthplace.
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH (29 April 1879 – 8 March 1961) was a British conductor and impresario. From the early twentieth century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of Britain and, according to Neville Cardus, was the first British conductor to have a regular international career.
From a wealthy industrial family, Beecham used the money at his disposal to transform the operatic scene in England from the 1910s until the start of World War II, staging seasons at Covent Garden, Drury Lane and His Majesty's Theatre with international stars, his own hand-picked orchestra and a wide range of repertoire.
In the concert hall, London still has two orchestras founded by Beecham: the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic. He also maintained close links with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé Orchestras in his native county of Lancashire. His repertoire was eclectic, sometimes favouring lesser-known composers over famous ones. His specialities included composers whose works were rarely played in Britain before Beecham became their advocate, such as Frederick Delius and Hector Berlioz.
He was known for his wit, and many "Beecham stories" are still told nearly fifty years after his death.
Beecham was born in St. Helens, Lancashire, England, in a house adjoining the Beecham's Pills factory founded by his grandfather, Thomas Beecham (1820–1907). His parents were Joseph Beecham, the elder son of Thomas, and Josephine Burnett. In 1885, by which time the family firm was making very substantial sums of money, Joseph Beecham moved his family to a mansion in Ewanville in the Blacklow Brow area of Huyton, now in Merseyside. Their former home was demolished to make room for an extension to the pill factory.
Beecham was educated at Rossall School between 1892 and 1897, after which he hoped to attend a music conservatoire in Germany, but his father forbade this, and instead Beecham went to Wadham College, Oxford. He did not find university life to his taste and successfully sought his father's permission to leave Oxford in 1898. He studied composition privately with Charles Wood in London and Moritz Moszkowski in Paris.[5] As a conductor, Beecham was self-taught.
Beecham first conducted in public in St Helens, in October 1899, with an ad hoc ensemble comprising local musicians and players from the Hallé and Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras. A month later, he stood in at short notice for the celebrated conductor Hans Richter at a concert by the Hallé to mark Joseph Beecham's inauguration as mayor of St Helens. Beecham's professional début as a conductor was in 1902 at the Shakespeare Theatre, Clapham, with Michael Balfe's The Bohemian Girl for the Imperial Grand Opera Company. He was also composing music in these early years but concluded that he was not good enough and concentrated on conducting.
In 1906 he was invited to conduct a chamber orchestra, in a series of concerts at the Bechstein Hall, adopting the title the New Symphony Orchestra.Throughout his career, Beecham frequently chose to programme works to suit his own tastes rather than those of the paying public. In his early discussions with his new orchestra, he proposed works by a long list of barely-known composers such as Méhul.[8] During this period, Beecham first encountered the music of Frederick Delius, which he loved deeply and with which he became closely associated for the rest of his life.
Beecham quickly concluded that to compete with the existing London orchestras, the Queen's Hall Orchestra and the recently-founded London Symphony Orchestra, he needed to expand his forces from sixty players to full symphonic strength and to play in larger halls. For two years starting in October 1907, Beecham and the enlarged NSO gave concerts at the Queen's Hall. He made no concessions to the box office: he put on a programme described by his biographer as "even more certain to deter the public then than it would be in our own day." The principal pieces were Vincent d'Indy's symphonic ballad La fôret enchantée, Smetana's symphonic poem Šárka, and Édouard Lalo's practically unknown Symphony in G major. Beecham retained an affection for the last work: it was the subject of his very last recording sessions more than fifty years later.
In 1908 Beecham and the New Symphony Orchestra parted company, disagreeing about artistic control, and in particular the deputy system. Under this system, orchestral players, if offered a more lucrative engagement, could send a substitute to a rehearsal or a concert. The treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society described it thus: "A, whom you want, signs to play for your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to the first rehearsal. B, without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D, whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away." Henry Wood had already banned the deputy system in the Queen's Hall Orchestra (provoking rebel players to found the London Symphony Orchestra), and Beecham followed suit. The New Symphony Orchestra survived without him and subsequently became the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra.
In 1909, Beecham founded the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. He did not poach from established symphony orchestras, but instead he recruited from theatre bandrooms, local symphony societies, the palm courts of hotels and music colleges. The result was a youthful team – the typical age of his players was twenty-five. They included names that would become celebrated in their fields, such as Albert Sammons, Lionel Tertis, Eric Coates, and Eugene Cruft.
Because he persistently programmed works that did not attract the public, Beecham's musical activities at this time consistently lost money. From 1899 to 1909 he was estranged from his father, and his access to the Beecham family fortune was strictly limited. In 1899 Joseph had secretly committed his wife to an asylum. Thomas and his elder sister Emily took legal action to secure her release and to obtain her annual £4,500 alimony. For this, Joseph Beecham disinherited them. From 1907 Beecham had an annuity of £700 left to him in his grandfather's will, and his mother subsidised some of his loss-making concerts, but it was not until father and son were reconciled in 1909 that Beecham was able to draw on the family fortune to promote opera.
From 1910, subsidised by his father, Beecham realised his ambition to mount opera seasons at Covent Garden and other houses. In the Edwardian opera house, the star singers were regarded as all-important, and conductors were seen as ancillary. Between 1910 and 1939 Beecham did much to change the balance of power.
His Majesty's (now Her Majesty's) Theatre
In 1910, Beecham either conducted or was responsible as impresario for 190 performances at Covent Garden and His Majesty's Theatre. During the year, he mounted 34 different operas, most of them either new to London or almost unknown there. Beecham later admitted that in his early years he chose to present operas that were too obscure to attract the public. His assistant conductors were Bruno Walter and Percy Pitt. During Beecham's 1910 season at His Majesty's, the rival Grand Opera Syndicate put on a concurrent season of their own at Covent Garden, bringing London's total opera performances for the year to 273 performances, far more than the box-office demand could support. Of his 34 operas staged in 1910, only four made money: Richard Strauss's new operas Elektra and Salome, receiving their first, and highly-publicised, performances in Britain, and The Tales of Hoffmann and Die Fledermaus.
In 1911 and 1912 the Beecham Symphony Orchestra played for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, both at Covent Garden and at the Krolloper in Berlin, under the batons of Beecham and Pierre Monteux, Diaghilev's chief conductor. Beecham was much admired for conducting the complicated new score of Stravinsky's Petrushka at two days' notice and without rehearsal when Monteux was unavailable. While in Berlin, Beecham and his orchestra, in Beecham's words, caused a "mild stir", scoring a triumph: the orchestra was agreed by the Berlin press to be an elite body, one of the best in the world. Where, asked Die Signale, the principal Berlin musical weekly, did London find such magnificent young instrumentalists? The violins were credited with rich, noble tone, the woodwind with lustre, the brass, "which has not quite the dignity and amplitude of our best German brass", with uncommon delicacy of execution.
Beecham's 1913 seasons included the British première of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden, and a season at Drury Lane announced as Sir Joseph Beecham's Grand Season of Russian Opera and Ballet. There were three operas, all starring Feodor Chaliapin, and all new to Britain: Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Ivan the Terrible. There were also 15 ballets, with leading dancers including Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina. Also included were Debussy's Jeux and his controversially erotic Afternoon of a Faun, and the first performances in Britain of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, six weeks after its first performance in Paris. Beecham shared Monteux's private dislike of the piece, much preferring Petrushka. Beecham did not conduct during this season; Monteux and others conducted the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. The following year, Beecham and his father presented Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov and Borodin's Prince Igor with Chaliapin, and Stravinsky's The Nightingale.
During the First World War, Beecham strove, often without a fee, to keep music alive in London and Manchester (where he formed grandiose plans for a new opera house). He conducted for, and gave financial support to, three institutions with which he was connected at various times: the Hallé Orchestra, the LSO and the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 1915 he formed the Beecham Opera Company, with mainly British singers, performing in London and the provinces, and Manchester especially owed to Beecham a significant widening of its operatic experience. In 1916, Beecham received a knighthood in the New Year Honours, and succeeded to the baronetcy on his father's death later that year.
After the war, there were joint Covent Garden seasons with the Grand Opera Syndicate in 1919 and 1920, but these were, according to a biographer, pale confused echoes of pre-1914. These seasons included forty productions, of which Beecham conducted only nine. By then Beecham's financial affairs were in a condition that demanded his temporary withdrawal from musical life to put them in order.
Influenced by an ambitious financier, James White, Sir Joseph Beecham had agreed to buy the Covent Garden estate from the Duke of Bedford and float a limited company to manage the estate commercially. Under the terms of his agreement of 6 July 1914, Sir Joseph contracted to buy the estate for £2 million. He paid an initial deposit of £200,000 and covenanted to pay the balance on 11 November. Within a month, however, World War I broke out, and new official restrictions on the use of capital prevented the completion of the contract. The estate and market continued to be managed by the Duke's staff, but in October 1916 the situation was further complicated by the death of Joseph Beecham. A Chancery suit was instituted to unravel his affairs, and eventually it was agreed, and confirmed by a court order, that a private company should be formed, with Joseph Beecham's two sons as directors, to complete the contract. On 30 July 1918, the Duke and his trustees conveyed the estate to the new company, subject to a mortgage of £1.25 million, the balance of the purchase price then still outstanding.
Beecham and his brother Henry had to sell enough of their father's estate to discharge this mortgage. For over three years Beecham was absent from the musical scene, working to sell property worth over £1 million. By 1923 enough money had been raised, and in 1924 the Covent Garden property and the pill-making business at St Helens were united in one company, Beecham Estates and Pills. The nominal capital was £1,850,000, of which Thomas Beecham had a substantial share.
The London Philharmonic
After his absence, Beecham first reappeared on the rostrum with the Hallé in Manchester in March 1923, then in London with the combined Royal Albert Hall Orchestra (the renamed New Symphony Orchestra) and London Symphony Orchestra with the contralto soloist Clara Butt in April 1923.[36] The main work was Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.[37] No longer with an orchestra of his own, Beecham established a relationship with the London Symphony Orchestra and negotiated with the BBC over the possibility of establishing a permanent radio orchestra.
In 1931, Beecham was approached by the rising young conductor, Malcolm Sargent, with a proposal to set up a permanent, salaried orchestra with a subsidy guaranteed by Sargent's patrons the Courtauld family. Originally Sargent and Beecham envisaged a reshuffled version of the London Symphony Orchestra, but the LSO, a self-governing co-operative, baulked at weedings-out and replacements of underperforming players, and in 1932 Beecham lost patience and agreed with Sargent to set up a new orchestra from scratch. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, as it was named, consisted of 106 players, including a few young players straight from music college, many established players from provincial orchestras and some poached from the LSO. The players included Paul Beard, George Stratton, Anthony Pini, Gerald Jackson, Léon Goossens, Reginald Kell, James Bradshaw and Marie Goossens.
The Queen's Hall, the London Philharmonic's first home
The orchestra made its debut at the Queen's Hall on 7 October 1932, conducted by Beecham. After the first item, Berlioz's Carnaval Romain Overture, the audience went wild, some of them standing on their seats to clap and shout. During the next eight years, the LPO appeared nearly a hundred times at the Queen's Hall for the Royal Philharmonic Society alone, played for Beecham's opera seasons at Covent Garden, and made more than three hundred gramophone records.
By the early 1930s, Beecham had again secured a substantial control of the Covent Garden opera seasons. Wishing to concentrate on music-making rather than management, Beecham assumed the role of artistic director, and Geoffrey Toye was recruited as managing director. In 1933, Tristan und Isolde with Frida Leider and Lauritz Melchior was a success, and the season continued with the Ring cycle and nine other operas. The 1934 season featured Conchita Supervia in La Cenerentola, and Lotte Lehmann and Alexander Kipnis in the Ring. Clemens Krauss conducted the British première of Strauss's Arabella. During 1933 and 1934 Beecham repelled attempts by John Christie to form a link between Christie's new Glyndebourne Festival and the Royal Opera House. Beecham and Toye fell out over the latter's insistence on bringing in a popular film star, Grace Moore, to sing Mimi in La bohème. The production was a box-office success, but an artistic failure. Beecham manoeuvred Toye out of the managing directorship in what Sir Adrian Boult described as an 'absolutely beastly' manner.
In the seasons of 1935 to 1939, Beecham, now in sole control, presented international seasons with eminent guest singers and conductors. Beecham himself conducted between a third and half of the performances each season. He intended the 1940 season to include the first complete performances of Berlioz's The Trojans, but the outbreak of World War II caused the season to be abandoned. Beecham did not conduct again at Covent Garden until 1951, and by then it was no longer his fiefdom.
German tour
Beecham took the London Philharmonic on a controversial tour of Germany in 1936. There were complaints that he was being used by Nazi propagandists, and Beecham complied with a Nazi request not to play the Scottish Symphony of Felix Mendelssohn, who was a Christian by faith but a Jew by birth. In Berlin, Beecham's concert was attended by Adolf Hitler. When he saw the dictator applauding, Beecham remarked, "The old bugger seems to like it!" After this tour, Beecham refused to accept further invitations to give concerts in Germany, though he conducted Orpheus and Euridice and Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Oper under den Linden the following February and recorded The Magic Flute in the Beethovensaal in Berlin in 1937 and 1938.
As his sixtieth birthday approached, Beecham had planned a year's complete rest from music, intending to go abroad for sun-warmed leisure. The outbreak of World War II on 3 September 1939 obliged him to shelve his plans, instead fighting to secure the future of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whose financial guarantees had been withdrawn by their backers when war was declared.
Beecham left Britain in the spring of 1940, later explaining, "I was informed there was an emergency, so I emerged." Beecham went to Australia and then to North America. He became music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 1941. In 1942 he joined the Metropolitan Opera as joint senior conductor with his former assistant Bruno Walter. He began with his own adaptation of Bach's comic cantata, Phoebus and Pan, followed by Le Coq d'Or. His main repertoire was French: Carmen, Louise (with Grace Moore), Manon, Faust, Mignon, and The Tales of Hoffmann. In addition to the Seattle and Met orchestras, Beecham was guest conductor with eighteen American orchestras.
In 1944, Beecham returned to Britain. Musically his reunion with the London Philharmonic was triumphant, but the orchestra, which had formed itself into a self-governing co-operative in his absence, attempted to hire him on its own terms as its salaried artistic director. "I emphatically refuse", concluded Beecham, "to be wagged by any orchestra... I am going to found one more great orchestra to round off my career." Walter Legge had founded the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1945. Beecham conducted its first concert, but was not disposed to accept a salaried position from Legge, his former assistant, any more than from his former players in the LPO.
In 1946, Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, obtaining an agreement with the Royal Philharmonic Society that the new orchestra should replace the LPO at all the Society's concerts. As in 1909 and in 1932, Beecham's assistants went to work in the freelance pool and elsewhere. Beecham later agreed with the Glyndebourne Festival that the RPO should be the resident orchestra at Glyndebourne each summer. He secured backing, including from record companies in the U.S. as well as Britain, with whom lucrative recording contracts were negotiated. Original members of the RPO included Gerald Jackson, Reginald Kell, Archie Camden, Leonard Brain, Dennis Brain and James Bradshaw. The orchestra later became celebrated for its regular team of woodwind principals, often referred to as The Royal Family, consisting of Jack Brymer (clarinet), Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Terence McDonagh (oboe), and Gerald Jackson (flute).
1950s and later years
By 1950 the RPO was able to undertake a strenuous tour through the U.S., Canada and South Africa. During the North American tour, Beecham conducted forty-nine concerts in almost daily succession. Beecham was furious and hurt at being excluded from Covent Garden after the war. State-funded for the first time, the opera company operated quite differently from Beecham's pre-war regime. Instead of short, star-studded seasons, with a major symphony orchestra, director David Webster was attempting to build up a permanent ensemble of home-grown talent performing all the year round, in English translations. Extreme economy in productions and great attention to the box-office were essential, and Beecham was not felt to be suited to participate in such an undertaking. This was illustrated in 1951 when Beecham was at length invited back to Covent Garden. Offered a chorus of eighty singers for Die Meistersinger, he insisted on augmenting their number to 200. He also, contrary to Webster's policy, insisted on performing the piece in German. In 1953 at Oxford, Beecham presented the world première of Delius's first opera, Irmelin, and his last operatic performances in Britain were in 1955 at Bath, with Grétry's Zémire et Azor.
Between 1951 and 1960, Beecham conducted at the Royal Festival Hall no fewer than 92 times. Characteristic Beecham programmes of the RPO years included symphonies by Bizet, César Franck, Haydn, Schubert and Tchaikovsky; Strauss's Ein Heldenleben; concertos by Mozart and Camille Saint-Saëns; a Delius/Sibelius programme; and many of his favoured shorter pieces. Though in his seventies, Beecham did not stick uncompromisingly to his familiar repertoire. After the sudden death of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, Beecham in tribute conducted the two programmes his younger colleague had been due to present at the Festival Hall; these included Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3, Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole, Brahms's Symphony No 1, and Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra.
In the summer of 1958, Beecham conducted a season at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina, consisting of Verdi's Otello, Bizet's Carmen, Beethoven's Fidelio, Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah and Mozart's Magic Flute. These were his last operatic performances. His last illness prevented his operatic debut at Glyndebourne in a planned Magic Flute and a final appearance at Covent Garden conducting Berlioz's The Trojans.
Sixty-six years after his first visit to America, Beecham made his last, beginning in late 1959, conducting in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Washington. During this tour, he also conducted in Canada. He flew back to London on 12 April 1960 and thereafter never left England] Beecham's final concert was at Portsmouth on 7 May 1960. The programme, all characteristic choices, comprised the Magic Flute Overture, Haydn's Symphony No. 100 (the Military), Beecham's own Handel arrangement, Love in Bath, Schubert's Symphony No. 5, On the River by Delius, and the Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah.
Thomas Beecham died of a coronary thrombosis at his London flat, aged 81. He was buried two days later in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey. Owing to changes at Brookwood, his remains were exhumed in 1991 and reburied in St Peter's churchyard at Limpsfield, Surrey. His grave is situated approximately 10 metres from that of the composer Frederick Delius. Sir Thomas was succeeded in the baronetcy by his elder son, Adrian Welles Beecham.
Personal life
Beecham with Lady Cunard as Britannia: a 1919 caricature
Beecham was married three times. In 1903 he married Utica Celestina Welles, daughter of Dr Charles S. Welles, of New York, and his wife Ella Celeste, née Miles. She was a direct descendant of Gov. Thomas Welles. Beecham and his wife had two sons, Adrian, born in 1904 and Thomas, born in 1909. After the birth of the second child, Beecham began to drift away from the marriage. Beecham was involved as co-respondent in a much-publicised divorce case in 1911, by which time he was no longer living with his wife and family. Utica ignored advice that she should divorce him and secure substantial alimony: she did not believe in divorce. She never remarried after Beecham divorced her (in 1943), and she outlived her former husband by sixteen years, dying in 1977.
In 1909 or early 1910, Beecham began an affair with Maud Alice (known as Emerald), Lady Cunard (d. 1948). Although they never lived together, it continued, despite other relationships on his part, until his remarriage in 1943.[36] She was a tireless fund-raiser for his musical enterprises. Biographers are agreed that she was in love with him, but that his feelings for her were milder. In 1943 she was devastated to learn (not from him) that he intended to divorce Utica to marry Betty Humby. During the 1920s and 1930s he also had an affair with Dora Labbette (1898–1984), a soprano sometimes known as Lisa Perli, with whom he had a son, Paul Strang.
In 1943 Beecham married Betty Humby, a concert pianist 29 years his junior. Beecham and his second wife were a devoted couple until her death in 1958. In 1959, two years before his death, he married his former secretary, Shirley Hudson, who had worked for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's administration since 1950.
The earliest composer whose music Beecham regularly performed was Handel. Beecham's versions of Handel ignored the 'professors, pedants, pedagogues.' Beecham followed Mendelssohn and Mozart in editing Handel's scores to meet contemporary requirements. At a time when Handel's operas were scarcely known, Beecham knew them so well that he was able to arrange three ballets, two other suites and a piano concerto from inter alia, Admeto, Alcina, Ariodante, Clori Tirsi e Fileno, Lotario, Il Parnasso in Festa, Il Pastor Fido, Radamisto, Rinaldo, Rodrigo, Serse, Teseo and The Triumph of Time and Truth.
With Haydn, too, Beecham was far from an authenticist, using unscholarly nineteenth century texts, avoiding the use of the harpsichord, and phrasing the music romantically. He recorded the twelve 'London' symphonies, but in concerts generally stuck to numbers 93, 97, 99, 100 and 101. Beecham played The Seasons regularly throughout his career, recording it for EMI in 1956, and in 1944 added The Creation to his repertoire.
For Beecham, Mozart was "the central point of European music," and so he treated the composer's scores with more deference than he gave most others. He edited the incomplete Requiem and made English translations of at least two of the great operas, introducing Covent Garden audiences who had rarely if ever heard them to Così fan Tutte, The Impresario and Abduction from the Seraglio, and regularly programming The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. He considered the best of the piano concertos to be "the most beautiful compositions of their kind in the world" and played them many times with Betty Humby-Beecham and others.
Beecham was not known for his Bach but nonetheless chose Bach (arranged by Beecham) for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, and gave the Third Brandenburg Concerto in one of his memorial concerts for Furtwängler (described by The Times as "a travesty, albeit an invigorating one.")
Beecham's attitude to Beethoven was ambivalent. He regularly made rude remarks about Beethoven's music. On the other hand, he conducted all the symphonies during his career; he made studio recordings of Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8, and a live recording of the Missa Solemnis. He accompanied the Fourth Piano Concerto with pleasure (recording it with Arthur Rubinstein and the LPO), but avoided the Emperor when possible.
In Brahms's music, Beecham was selective. In his memoirs he made no mention of any Brahms performance after the year 1909. He never conducted the Fourth Symphony, rarely conducted the First, programmed the Third occasionally and made a speciality of the Second.
Beecham was a great Wagnerian, despite his frequent expostulation about the composer's length and repetitiousness: "We've been rehearsing for two hours – and we're still playing the same bloody tune!" Beecham conducted all the works in the regular Wagner canon with the exception of Parsifal, which he presented at Covent Garden but never with himself in the pit. The chief music critic of The Times observed: "Beecham's Lohengrin was almost Italian in its lyricism; his Ring was less heroic than Bruno Walter's or Furtwängler's, but it sang from beginning to end."
Richard Strauss found a lifelong champion in Beecham, who introduced Elektra, Salome, Der Rosenkavalier and other operas to England and played Ein Heldenleben from 1910 until his last year: his final recording of it was released shortly after his death. Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel, the Bourgeois Gentilhomme music and Don Juan also featured his repertory, but not Also Sprach Zarathustra or Tod und Verklärung. Strauss had the first and last pages of the manuscript of Elektra framed and presented them to "my highly honoured friend... and distinguished conductor of my work."
Of 19th century composers, Berlioz featured prominently in Beecham's repertoire throughout his career, and in an age when the composer's works were far from over-exposed, Beecham presented most of them and recorded many. Along with Sir Colin Davis, Beecham has been described as one of the two "foremost modern interpreters" of this composer. Both in concert and the recording studio, Beecham's choices of French music were characteristically eclectic. He avoided Ravel but regularly programmed Debussy. Fauré did not feature often, though the Pavane was an exception, and Beecham's 1959 recording of the Dolly Suite has rarely been out of the catalogues since its first release. Bizet was often in his programmes, and other French composers favoured by Beecham included Gustave Charpentier, Léo Delibes, Henri Duparc, André Ernest Modeste Grétry, Lalo, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Offenbach, Saint-Saëns and Ambroise Thomas. Many of Beecham's later recordings of French music were made in Paris with the Orchestra National de la Radiodiffusion Française. "C'est un dieu", their concertmaster said of Beecham, in 1957.
Of the more than two dozen operas in the Verdi canon, Beecham conducted eight during his long career: Il Trovatore, La traviata, Aida, Don Carlos, Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera, Otello and Falstaff. As early as 1904, Beecham met Puccini through the librettist Giuseppe Illica, who had written a libretto for Beecham while he was still attempting to become a composer. At the time of their meeting, Puccini and Illica were revising Madama Butterfly after its disastrous première. Beecham seldom conducted that work, but conducted Tosca, Turandot and La bohème. His 1956 recording of Bohème, with Victoria de Los Angeles and Jussi Björling has seldom been out of the catalogues since its release. After making the recording, he observed that Bohème was one of his three favourite operas; he did not name the other two.
Delius, Sibelius and "Lollipops"
Except for Delius, Beecham was generally antipathetic to, or at best lukewarm about, the music of his native land and its most acclaimed composers.Beecham's championship of Delius promoted the composer from relative obscurity. The great authority on Delius, Eric Fenby, referred to Beecham as "excelling all others in the music of Delius... Groves and Sargent may have matched him in the great choruses of A Mass of Life, but in all else Beecham was matchless, especially with the orchestra." Beecham put on a Delius Festival in 1929 and presented his operas and concert works throughout his career. Beecham also led the programme of the Delius Society to record the composer's works.
The only other major 20th century composer apart from Delius to engage his sympathies was Jean Sibelius, who recognised him as a fine conductor of his music (though Sibelius tended to be lavish with praise of anybody who conducted his music). When the composer was celebrating his ninetieth birthday, he and Beecham listened to recordings of Sibelius's music, played at full volume, clearly relishing the sounds, while the Royal Philharmonic players fled the room. In a live recording of his 8 December 1954 concert performance of Sibelius's Second Symphony with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall, Beecham can be heard uttering encouraging shouts at the orchestra at climactic moments.
Beecham was dismissive of some of the established classics, saying for example that he would happily give up all of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos for Massenet's Manon. But he was famous for presenting slight pieces as encores, which he called "lollipops". Some of the best-known were Berlioz's Danse des sylphes (La Damnation de Faust); Chabrier's Joyeuse Marche and Gounod's Le Sommeil de Juliette.
Recordings
The composer Richard Arnell reported that Beecham preferred making records to concert giving: "He told me that audiences got in the way of music-making – he was apt to catch someone's eye in the front row." Beecham began making recordings in 1910, when the acoustical process forced orchestras to use only principal instruments, placed as close to the recording horn as possible. His first recordings, for His Master's Voice (HMV), were devoted to excerpts from Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann and Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. In 1915, Beecham began recording for the Columbia Graphophone Company.
Electrical recording technology (introduced in 1925–26) made it possible to record a full orchestra with much greater frequency range, and Beecham quickly recorded in the new medium. Longer scores had to be broken into four-minute segments to fit on 12-inch 78-rpm discs, but Beecham was not averse to recording piecemeal – his well-known 1932 disc of Chabrier's España was recorded in two sessions three weeks apart.
Columbia Records produced many of his recordings, using EMI crews in London. From 1926 to 1932, Beecham made nearly 150 78-rpm sides, including an English version of Gounod's Faust and the first of three recordings of Handel's Messiah. He began recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1933, recording more than 300 78-rpm sides for Columbia, including music by Mozart, Rossini, Berlioz, Wagner, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, and Delius.
Although Beecham signed a contract with RCA Victor on in 1941, it was three years before he recorded with that company. Instead, he made his first American recordings, for Columbia, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in June 1942. There was a recording ban imposed by the American Federation of Musicians in the United States after those recordings were made (in New York's Liederkranz Hall), which continued until 1944. Although Columbia was among the first companies to settle with the musicians union, Beecham recorded primarily for RCA until he became unhappy with their refusal to adopt the new long-playing recordings introduced by Columbia in 1948. (RCA waited two years before releasing 33-1/3-rpm discs.) So, Beecham returned to Columbia and recorded again in New York City in December 1949. There were also recordings for Columbia with the Philadelphia Orchestra in February 1952.
Beecham lived long enough to make recordings in stereo, beginning in 1955. He professed ignorance about the process despite having participated in experimental stereophonic recordings in Britain in the early 1930s, including a performance of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. His 1955 stereo recordings included performances of Sibelius's late symphonic poem Tapiola, later reissued as the very first Seraphim Records LP disc, and his incidental music to The Tempest. Most of his later recordings were made by EMI and released on HMV in the United Kingdom and on the Angel or Capitol labels in the U.S. Two complete operas were recorded in stereo, Abduction from the Seraglio and Carmen.
EMI and the BBC prepared several albums featuring excerpts from Beecham's rehearsals, recording sessions, and concerts, as well as interviews with Beecham and musicians who had known him, containing many examples of Beecham's extempore wit. At one rehearsal, when a tuba player fluffed a note, Beecham called out "Thank you, and now would you pull the chain?" While making his famous 1956 recording of La bohème, Beecham asked Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill to do a second take of their duet, even though the first take had been approved. Asked why, he answered, "Because I simply love to hear those boys sing it!"
Among his last recordings was a much-discussed RCA Victor recording of Sir Eugene Goossens's arrangement for a full modern orchestra of Handel's Messiah. His very last recordings were made in December 1959, some of which were released after his death.
Beecham's relations with fellow British conductors were not always cordial. Sir Henry Wood regarded him as an upstart and was envious of his success; the scrupulous Sir Adrian Boult found him "repulsive" as a man and a musician; and Sir John Barbirolli mistrusted him. Sir Malcolm Sargent worked with him in founding the London Philharmonic, and was a friend and ally, but was nevertheless the subject of many witty but unkind digs from Beecham who, for example, described Herbert von Karajan as "a kind of musical Malcolm Sargent." Beecham's relations with foreign conductors were often excellent. He did not get on well with Arturo Toscanini, but he liked and encouraged Wilhelm Furtwängler, admired Pierre Monteux, fostered Rudolf Kempe as his successor with the RPO, and was admired by Fritz Reiner, and Herbert von Karajan.
Despite his lordly drawl, Beecham remained a Lancastrian at heart. "In my county, where I come from, we're all a bit vulgar, you know, but there is a certain heartiness – a sort of bonhomie about our vulgarity – which tides you over a lot of rough spots in the path. But in Yorkshire, in a spot of bother, they're so damn-set-in-their-ways that there's no doing anything with them!"
Beecham was, and remains, much quoted. The book Beecham Stories was published in 1978 consisting entirely of his bons mots and anecdotes about him. Some Beecham stories are apocryphal (Neville Cardus admitted to inventing some himself). Some are variously attributed to Beecham or one or more other people, including Arnold Bax and Winston Churchill. The story is told of how, around 1950, Beecham met a lady whom he recognised but whose name he couldn't remember. After some preliminaries about the weather, and desperately racking his memory, he asked how she was.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Thomas Beecham
"Oh, very well, but my brother has been rather ill lately."
"Ah, yes, your brother. I'm sorry to hear that. And, er, what is your brother doing at the moment?"
"Well... he's still King", replied Princess Mary.
Honours and commemorations
Beecham was knighted in 1916 and succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father later that year. In 1938 the President of France, Albert Lebrun, invested him with the Légion d'honneur. He was a Commendatore of the Order of the Crown of Italy. He was made a Companion of Honour in the 1957 Queen's Birthday Honours, and was an honorary Doctor of Music of the universities of Oxford, London, Manchester and Montreal.
Beecham by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin is a play celebrating Sir Thomas. Written in 1979, it starred Timothy West in the title role and drew on a large number of Beecham stories for its material. It was later adapted for television, with members of the Hallé Orchestra taking part in the action and playing pieces associated with Beecham.
In 1980 the Royal Mail put the image of Beecham on its 13½p postage stamp in a series portraying British conductors, the other three featuring Wood, Sargent and Barbirolli. The Sir Thomas Beecham Society preserves Beecham's legacy through its website and release of historic recordings.
Published books
A Mingled Chime, (an autobiography)
John Fletcher (1956), Oxford, Clarendon Press. (The Romanes Lecture for 1956).
Frederick Delius (1959), London, Hutchinson & Co. Revised 1975, with Introduction by Felix Aprahamian and Discography by Malcolm Walker (Severn House).
Kathleen Mary Ferrier, CBE (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. Her death from cancer, at the height of her fame, was a shock to the musical world and particularly to the general public, which was kept in ignorance of the nature of her illness until after her death. She was especially known in Britain for her unaccompanied recording of the Northumbrian folk tune Blow the Wind Southerly, which was played regularly on BBC Radio for many years after her death.
The daughter of a Lancashire village schoolmaster, Ferrier showed early talent as a pianist, and won numerous amateur piano competitions while working as a telephonist with the General Post Office. She did not take up singing seriously until 1937, when after winning a prestigious singing competition at the Carlisle Festival she began to receive offers of professional engagements as a vocalist. Thereafter she took singing lessons, first with J.E. Hutchinson and later with Roy Henderson. After the outbreak of the Second World War Ferrier was recruited by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), and in the following years sang at concerts and recitals throughout England. In 1942 her career was boosted when she met the conductor Malcolm Sargent, who recommended her to the influential Ibbs and Tillett concert management agency. She became a regular performer at leading London and provincial venues, and made numerous BBC radio broadcasts.
In 1946, Ferrier made her stage debut, in the Glyndebourne Festival premiere of Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia. A year later she made her first appearance as Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, a work with which she became particularly associated. By her own choice, these were her only two operatic roles. As her reputation grew, Ferrier formed close working relationships with major musical figures, including Britten, Sir John Barbirolli, Bruno Walter and the accompanist Gerald Moore. She became known internationally through her three tours to the United States between 1948 and 1950 and her many visits to continental Europe.
Ferrier was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 1951. In between periods of hospitalisation and convalescence she continued to perform and record; her final public appearance was as Orfeo, at the Royal Opera House in February 1953, eight months before her death. Among her many memorials, the Kathleen Ferrier Cancer Research Fund was launched in May 1954; the Kathleen Ferrier Scholarship Fund, administered by the Royal Philharmonic Society, has since 1956 made annual awards to aspiring young professional singers.
Early life
Childhood
The Ferrier family originally came from Pembrokeshire in South West Wales. The Lancashire branch originated in the 19th century, when Thomas Ferrier (youngest son of Private Thomas Ferrier of the Pembrokeshire Regiment) settled in the area after being stationed near Blackburn during a period of industrial unrest.[1] Kathleen Ferrier was born on 22 April 1912, in the Lancashire village of Higher Walton where her father William Ferrier (the fourth child of Thomas and Elizabeth, née Gorton) was the head of the village school. Although untrained musically, William was an enthusiastic member of the local operatic society and of several choirs, and his wife Alice (née Murray), whom he married in 1900, was a competent singer with a strong contralto voice.[2] Kathleen was the third and youngest of the couple's children, following a sister and a brother; when she was two the family moved to Blackburn, after William was appointed headmaster of St Paul's School in the town. From an early age Kathleen showed promise as a pianist, and had lessons with Frances Walker, a noted North of England piano teacher who had been a pupil of Tobias Matthay. Kathleen's talent developed quickly; in 1924 she came fourth out of 43 entrants at the Lytham St Annes Festival piano competition, and in the following year at Lytham she achieved second place.[3]
Telephonist and pianist
Because of William's impending retirement and the consequent fall in the family's income, Ferrier's hopes of attending a music college could not be realised. In August 1926 she left school to start work as a trainee at the GPO telephone exchange in Blackburn.[4] She continued her piano studies under Frances Walker, and in November 1928 was the regional winner in a national contest for young pianists, organised by the Daily Express. Although unsuccessful in the London finals which followed, Ferrier won a Cramer upright piano.[5] On 10 March 1929 she made a well-received appearance as an accompanist in a concert at Blackburn's King George's Hall.[6] After further piano competition successes she was invited to perform a short radio recital at the Manchester studios of the BBC, and on 3 July 1930 made her first broadcast, playing works by Brahms and Percy Grainger.[7] Around this time her training period at the telephone exchange ended, and she became a full-fledged telephonist.[8]
In 1931, aged 19, Ferrier passed her Licentiate examinations at the Royal Academy of Music. In that year she started occasional singing lessons, and in December sang a small mezzo-soprano role in a church performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. However, her voice was not thought to be exceptional; her musical life centred on the piano and on local concerts, at King George's Hall and elsewhere.[7] Early in 1934 she transferred to the Blackpool telephone exchange and took lodgings nearby, to be close to her new boyfriend, a bank clerk named Albert Wilson.[9] While at Blackpool she auditioned for the new "speaking clock" service which the GPO was preparing to introduce. In her excitement, Ferrier inserted an extra aspirate into her audition, and was not chosen for the final selection in London.[10][11] Her decision in 1935 to marry Wilson meant the end of her employment with the telephone exchange, since at that time the GPO did not employ married women.[12] Of Ferrier's career to this point, the music biographer Humphrey Burton wrote:
For more than a decade, when she should have been studying music with the best teachers, learning English literature and foreign languages, acquiring stage craft and movement skills, and travelling to London regularly to see opera, Miss Ferrier was actually answering the telephone, getting married to a bank manager and winning tinpot competitions for her piano-playing.[13]
Marriage
Ferrier met Albert Wilson in 1933, probably through dancing, which they both loved. When she announced that they were to marry, her family and friends had strong reservations, on the grounds that she was young and inexperienced, and that she and Wilson shared few serious interests.[8] Nevertheless, the marriage took place on 19 November 1935. Shortly afterwards the couple moved to Silloth, a small port town in Cumbria, where Wilson had been appointed as manager of his bank's branch. The marriage was not successful; the honeymoon had revealed problems of physical incompatibility, and the union remained unconsummated.[14] In a tribute article written for the 50th anniversary of Ferrier's death, the journalist Rupert Christiansen wrote of Ferrier's sexuality that "there is absolutely no justification for the idea that she was a lesbian, but she may have been sexually frigid".[15] Outward appearances were maintained for a few years, until Wilson's departure for military service in 1940 effectively ended the marriage. The couple divorced in 1947, though they remained on good terms. Wilson subsequently married a friend of Ferrier's, Wyn Hetherington; he died in 1969.[16]
Early singing career
The parish church at Aspatria, Cumbria, the scene of Ferrier's first professional singing engagement in 1937
In 1937 Ferrier entered the Carlisle Festival open piano competition and, as a result of a small bet with her husband, also signed up for the singing contest. She easily won the piano trophy; in the singing finals she sang Roger Quilter's To Daisies, a performance which earned her the festival's top vocal award. To mark her double triumph in piano and voice, Ferrier was awarded a special rose bowl as champion of the festival.[17]
After her Carlisle victories, Ferrier began to receive offers of singing engagements. Her first appearance as a professional vocalist, in autumn 1937, was at a harvest festival celebration in the village church at Aspatria.[18] She was paid one guinea.[n 1] After winning the gold cup at the 1938 Workington Festival, Ferrier sang Ma Curly-Headed Babby[20] in a concert at Workington Opera House. Cecil McGivern, producer of a BBC Northern radio variety show, was in the audience and was sufficiently impressed to book her for the next edition of his programme, which was broadcast from Newcastle on 23 February 1939. This broadcast—her first as a vocalist—attracted wide attention, and led to more radio work, though for Ferrier the event was overshadowed by the death of her mother at the beginning of February.[21][22] At the 1939 Carlisle Festival, Ferrier sang Richard Strauss's song All Soul's Day, a performance which particularly impressed one of the adjudicators, J. E. Hutchinson, a music teacher with a considerable reputation. Ferrier became his pupil and, under his guidance, began to extend her repertoire to include works by Bach, Handel, Brahms and Elgar.[22][23]
When Albert Wilson joined the army in 1940, Ferrier reverted to her maiden name, having until then sung as 'Kathleen Wilson'. In December 1940 she appeared for the first time professionally as 'Kathleen Ferrier' in a performance of Handel's Messiah, under Hutchinson's direction.[24] In early 1941 she successfully auditioned as a singer with the Council for the Encouragement of the Arts (CEMA), which provided concerts and other entertainments to military camps, factories and other workplaces. Within this organisation Ferrier began working with artists with international reputations; in December 1941 she sang with the Hallé Orchestra in a performance of Messiah together with Isobel Baillie, the distinguished soprano.[25] However, her application to the BBC's head of music in Manchester for an audition was turned down.[24][26] Ferrier had better fortune when she was introduced to Malcolm Sargent after a Hallé concert in Blackpool. Sargent agreed to hear her sing, and afterwards recommended her to Ibbs and Tillett, the London-based concert management agency.[27] John Tillett accepted her as a client without hesitation after which, on Sargent's advice, Ferrier decided to base herself in London. On 24 December 1942 she moved with her sister Winifred into an apartment in Frognal Mansions, Hampstead.[28][29][30]
Stardom
Growing reputation
Ferrier gave her first London recital on 28 December 1942 at the National Gallery, in a lunch-time concert organised by Dame Myra Hess.[31] Although she wrote "went off very well" in her diary,[32] Ferrier was disappointed with her performance, and concluded that she needed further voice training. She approached the distinguished baritone Roy Henderson with whom, a week previously, she had sung in Mendelssohn's Elijah.[31] Henderson agreed to teach her, and was her regular voice coach for the remainder of her life. He later explained that her "warm and spacious tone" was in part due to the size of the cavity at the back of her throat: "one could have shot a fair-sized apple right to the back of the throat without obstruction".[33] However, this natural physical advantage was not in itself enough to ensure the quality of her voice; this was due, Henderson says, to "her hard work, artistry, sincerity, personality and above all her character".[34]
On 17 May 1943 Ferrier sang in Handel's Messiah at Westminster Abbey, alongside Isobel Baillie and Peter Pears, with Reginald Jacques conducting.[35][36] According to the critic Neville Cardus, it was through the quality of her singing here that Ferrier "made her first serious appeal to musicians".[37] Her assured performance led to other important engagements, and to broadcasting work; her increasingly frequent appearances on popular programmes such as Forces Favourites and Housewives' Choice soon gave her national recognition.[15] In May 1944, at EMI's Abbey Road Studios with Gerald Moore as her accompanist, she made test recordings of music by Brahms, Gluck and Elgar.[n 2] Her first published record, made in September 1944, was issued under the Columbia label; it consisted of two songs by Maurice Greene, again with Moore accompanying.[39] Her time as a Columbia recording artist was brief and unhappy; she had poor relations with her producer, Walter Legge, and after a few months she transferred to Decca.[40]
In the remaining wartime months Ferrier continued to travel throughout the country, to fulfil the growing demands for her services from concert promoters. At Leeds in November 1944 she sang the part of the Angel in Elgar's choral work The Dream of Gerontius, her first performance in what became one of her best-known roles.[41] In December she met John Barbirolli while working on another Elgar piece, Sea Pictures; the conductor later became one of her closest friends and strongest advocates.[42] On 15 September 1945 Ferrier made her debut at the London Proms, when she sang L'Air des Adieux from Tchaikovsky's opera The Maid of Orleans.[43][44] Although she often sang individual arias, opera was not Ferrier's natural forte; she had not enjoyed singing the title role in a concert version of Bizet's Carmen at Stourbridge in March 1944, and generally avoided similar engagements.[45] Nevertheless Benjamin Britten, who had heard her Westminster Abbey Messiah performance, persuaded her to create the role of Lucretia in his new opera The Rape of Lucretia, which was to open the first postwar Glyndebourne Festival in 1946. She would share the part with Nancy Evans.[46] Despite her initial misgivings, by early July Ferrier was writing to her agent that she was "enjoying [the rehearsals] tremendously and I should think it's the best part one could possibly have".[47]
Ferrier's performances in the Glyndebourne run, which began on 12 July 1946, earned her favourable reviews, although the opera itself was less well received.[48] On the provincial tour which followed the festival it failed to attract the public and incurred heavy financial losses.[49] By contrast, when the opera reached Amsterdam it was greeted warmly by the Dutch audiences who showed particular enthusiasm for Ferrier's performance.[50] This was Ferrier's first trip abroad, and she wrote an excited letter to her family: "The cleanest houses and windows you ever did see, and flowers in the fields all the way!"[51] Following her success as Lucretia she agreed to return to Glyndebourne in 1947, to sing Orfeo in Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice. She had often sung Orfeo's aria Che farò ("What is life") as a concert piece, and had recently recorded it with Decca. At Glyndebourne, Ferrier's limited acting abilities caused some difficulties in her relationship with the conductor, Fritz Stiedry; nevertheless her performance on the first night, 19 June 1947, attracted warm critical praise.[52]
Ferrier's association with Glyndebourne bore further fruit when Rudolf Bing, the festival's general manager, recommended her to Bruno Walter as the contralto soloist in a performance of Mahler's symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. This was planned for the 1947 Edinburgh International Festival. Walter was initially wary of working with a relatively new singer, but after her audition his fears were allayed; "I recognised with delight that here potentially was one of the greatest singers of our time", he later wrote.[53] Das Lied von der Erde was at that time largely unknown in Britain, and some critics found it unappealing; nevertheless, the Edinburgh Evening News thought it "simply superb".[54] In a later biographical sketch of Ferrier, Lord Harewood described the partnership between Walter and her, which endured until the singer's final illness, as "a rare match of music, voice, and temperament."[55]
Career apex, 1948–51
On 1 January 1948 Ferrier left for a four-week tour of North America, the first of three transatlantic trips she would make during the next three years. In New York she sang two performances of Das Lied von der Erde, with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic. Alma Mahler, the composer's widow, was present at the first of these, on 15 January.[n 3] In a letter written the following day, Ferrier told her sister: "Some of the critics are enthusiastic, others unimpressed".[58] After the second performance, which was broadcast from coast to coast, Ferrier gave recitals in Ottawa and Chicago before returning to New York and embarking for home on 4 February.[59]
During 1948, amid many engagements, Ferrier performed Brahms's Alto Rhapsody at the Proms in August, and sang in Bach's Mass in B minor at that year's Edinburgh Festival. On 13 October she joined Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra in a broadcast performance of Mahler's song cycle Kindertotenlieder. She returned to the Netherlands in January 1949 for a series of recitals, then left Southampton on 18 February to begin her second American tour.[60] This opened in New York with a concert performance of Orfeo ed Euridice that won uniform critical praise from the New York critics.[61] On the tour which followed, her accompanist was Arpád Sándor (1896–1972), who was suffering from a depressive illness that badly affected his playing. Unaware of his problem, in letters home Ferrier berated "this abominable accompanist" who deserved "a kick in the pants".[62] When she found out that he had been ill for months, she turned her fury on the tour's promoters: "What a blinking nerve to palm him on to me".[63] Eventually, when Sándor was too ill to appear, Ferrier was able to recruit a Canadian pianist, John Newmark, with whom she formed a warm and lasting working relationship.[64]
Shortly after her return to England early in June 1949, Ferrier left for Amsterdam where, on 14 July, she sang in the world premiere of Britten's Spring Symphony, with Eduard van Beinum and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.[65] Britten had written this work specifically for her.[66] At the Edinburgh Festival in September she gave two recitals in which Bruno Walter acted as her piano accompanist. Ferrier felt that these recitals represented "a peak to which I had been groping for the last three years".[67] A broadcast of one of the recitals was issued on record many years later; of this, the critic Alan Blyth wrote: "Walter's very personal and positive support obviously pushes Ferrier to give of her very best".[68]
The following 18 months saw almost uninterrupted activity, encompassing a number of visits to continental Europe and a third American tour between December 1949 and April 1950. This American trip broke new ground for Ferrier—the West Coast—and included three performances in San Francisco of Orfeo ed Euridice, with Pierre Monteux conducting. At the rehearsals Ferrier met the renowned American contralto Marian Anderson, who reportedly said of her English counterpart: "My God, what a voice—and what a face!"[69] On Ferrier's return home the hectic pace continued, with a rapid succession of concerts in Amsterdam, London and Edinburgh followed by a tour of Austria, Switzerland and Italy.[70] In Vienna, the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was Ferrier's co-soloist in a recorded performance of Bach's Mass in B minor, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan. Schwarzkopf later recalled Ferrier's singing of the Agnus Dei from the Mass as her highlight of the year.[71]
Early in 1951, while on tour in Rome, Ferrier learned of her father's death at the age of 83.[72] Although she was upset by this news, she decided to continue with the tour; her diary entry for 30 January reads: "My Pappy died peacefully after flu and a slight stroke".[73] She returned to London on 19 February, and was immediately busy rehearsing with Barbirolli and the Hallé a work that was new to her: Ernest Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer. This was performed at Manchester on 28 February, to critical acclaim.[74] Two weeks later Ferrier discovered a lump on her breast. She nevertheless fulfilled several engagements in Germany, the Netherlands and at Glyndebourne before seeing her doctor on 24 March. After tests at University College Hospital, cancer of the breast was diagnosed, and a mastectomy was performed on 10 April.[75] All immediate engagements were cancelled; among these was a planned series of performances of The Rape of Lucretia by the English Opera Group, scheduled as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Later career
Failing health
Ferrier resumed her career on 19 June 1951, in the Mass in B minor at the Royal Albert Hall. She then made her usual visit to the Holland Festival, where she gave four performances of Orfeo, and sang in Mahler's Second Symphony with Otto Klemperer and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.[77] Through the summer her concert schedule was interspersed with hospital visits; however, she was well enough to sing at the Edinburgh Festival in September, where she performed two recitals with Walter and sang Chausson's Poème with Barbirolli and the Hallé.[78] In November she sang Land of Hope and Glory at the reopening of Manchester's Free Trade Hall, a climax to the evening which, wrote Barbirolli, "moved everyone, not least the conductor, to tears".[79] After this, Ferrier rested for two months while she underwent radiation therapy; her only work engagement during December was a three-day recording session of folk songs at the Decca studios.[80]
In January 1952 Ferrier joined Britten and Pears in a short series of concerts to raise funds for Britten's English Opera Group. Writing later, Britten recalled this tour as "perhaps the loveliest of all" of his artistic associations with Ferrier.[81] Despite continuing health problems, she sang in the St Matthew Passion at the Royal Albert Hall on 30 March, Messiah at the Free Trade Hall on 13 April, and Das Lied von der Erde with Barbirolli and the Hallé on 23 and 24 April.[82] On 30 April Ferrier attended a private party at which the new Queen, Elizabeth II, and her sister, Princess Margaret, were present.[n 4] In her diary, Ferrier notes: "Princess M sang—very good!".[82] Her health continued to deteriorate; she refused to consider a course of androgen injections, believing that this treatment would destroy the quality of her voice.[84] In May she travelled to Vienna to record Das Lied and Mahler's Rückert-Lieder with Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic; singer and conductor had long sought to preserve their partnership on disc. Despite considerable suffering, Ferrier completed the recording sessions between 15 and 20 May.[85][86]
During the remainder of 1952 Ferrier attended her seventh successive Edinburgh Festival, singing in performances of Das Lied, The Dream of Gerontius, Messiah and some Brahms songs.[87] She undertook several studio recording sessions, including a series of Bach and Handel arias with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in October.[88] In November, after a Royal Festival Hall recital, she was distressed by a review in which Neville Cardus criticised her performance for introducing "distracting extra vocal appeals" designed to please the audience at the expense of the songs.[89] However, she accepted his comments with good grace, remarking that "... it's hard to please everybody—for years I've been criticised for being a colourless, monotonous singer".[90] In December she sang in the BBC's Christmas Messiah, the last time she would perform this work. On New Year's Day 1953 she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's New Year Honours List.[91]
Final performances, illness and death
As 1953 began, Ferrier was busy rehearsing for Orpheus, an English-language version of Orfeo ed Euridice to be staged in four performances at the Royal Opera House in February. Barbirolli had instigated this project, with Ferrier's enthusiastic approval, some months previously.[92] Her only other engagement in January was a BBC recital recording, in which she sang works by three living English composers: Howard Ferguson, William Wordsworth and Edmund Rubbra.[93] During her regular hospital treatment she discussed with doctors the advisability of an oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries), but on learning that the impact on her cancer would probably be insignificant and that her voice might be badly affected, she chose not to have the operation.[94][95]
The first Orpheus performance, on 3 February, was greeted with unanimous critical approval. According to Barbirolli, Ferrier was particularly pleased with one critic's comment that her movements were as graceful as any of those of the dancers on stage.[96] However, she was physically weakened from her prolonged radiation treatment; during the second performance, three days later, her left femur partially disintegrated. Quick action by other cast members, who moved to support her, kept the audience in ignorance. Although virtually immobilised, Ferrier sang her remaining arias and took her curtain calls before being transferred to hospital.[97] This proved to be her final public appearance; the two remaining performances, at first rescheduled for April, were eventually cancelled.[98] Still the general public remained unaware of the nature of Ferrier's incapacity; an announcement in The Guardian stated: "Miss Ferrier is suffering from a strain resulting from arthritis which requires immediate further treatment. It has been caused by the physical stress involved in rehearsal and performance of her role in Orpheus".[99]
Ferrier spent two months in University College Hospital. As a result she missed her CBE investiture; the ribbon was brought to her at the hospital by a friend.[100] Meanwhile her sister found her a ground-floor apartment in St John's Wood, since she would no longer be able to negotiate the many stairs at Frognal Mansions.[101] She moved to her new home in early April, but after only seven weeks was forced to return to hospital where, despite two further operations, her condition continued to deteriorate.[102] Early in June she heard that she had been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first female vocalist to receive this honour since Muriel Foster in 1914.[103] In a letter to the secretary of the Society she wrote of this "unbelievable, wondrous news [which] has done more than anything to make me feel so much better".[104] This letter, dated 9 June, is probably the last that Ferrier signed herself. [n 5] As she weakened she saw only her sister and a few very close friends, and, although there were short periods of respite, her decline was unremitting.
Kathleen Ferrier died at University College Hospital on 8 October 1953, aged 41; the date for which, while still hopeful of recovery, she had undertaken to sing Frederick Delius's A Mass of Life at the 1953 Leeds Festival.[107] She was cremated a few days later, at Golders Green Crematorium, after a short private service.[108] She left an estate worth £15,134, which her biographer Maurice Leonard observes was "not a fortune for a world-famous singer, even by the standards of the day".[109][n 6]
Assessment and legacy
The news of Ferrier's death came as a considerable shock to the public. Although some in musical circles knew or suspected the truth, the myth had been preserved that her absence from the concert scene was temporary.[108][n 7] The opera critic Rupert Christiansen, writing as the 50th anniversary of Ferrier's death approached, maintained that "no singer in this country has ever been more deeply loved, as much for the person she was as for the voice she uttered". Her death, he continued, "quite literally shattered the euphoria of the Coronation" (which had taken place on 2 June 1953).[15] Ian Jack, editor of Granta, believed that she "may well have been the most celebrated woman in Britain after the Queen."[112] Among the many tributes from her colleagues, that of Bruno Walter has been highlighted by biographers: "The greatest thing in music in my life has been to have known Kathleen Ferrier and Gustav Mahler—in that order".[55][113] Very few singers, Lord Harewood writes, "have earned so powerful a valedictory from so senior a colleague".[55] At a memorial service at Southwark Cathedral on 14 November 1953 the Bishop of Croydon, in his eulogy, said of Ferrier's voice: "She seemed to bring into this world a radiance from another world".
From time to time commentators have speculated on the directions Ferrier's career might have taken had she lived. In 1951, while recovering from her mastectomy, she received an offer to sing the part of Brangäne in Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde at the 1952 Bayreuth Festival. According to Christiansen she would have been "glorious" in the role, and was being equally sought by the Bayreuth management to sing Erda in the Ring cycle.[15][114] Christiansen further suggests that, given the changes of style over the past 50 years, Ferrier might have been less successful in the 21st century world: "We dislike low-lying voices, for one thing—contraltos now sound freakish and headmistressy, and even the majority of mezzo-sopranos should more accurately be categorised as almost-sopranos". However, she was "a singer of, and for, her time—a time of grief and weariness, national self-respect and a belief in human nobility". In this context "her artistry stands upright, austere, unfussy, fundamental and sincere".
Shortly after Ferrier's death an appeal was launched by Barbirolli, Walter, Myra Hess and others, to establish a cancer research fund in Ferrier's name. Donations were received from all over the world. To publicise the fund a special concert was given at the Royal Festival Hall on 7 May 1954, at which Barbirolli and Walter shared the conducting duties without payment. Among the items was a rendition of Purcell's When I am laid in earth, which Ferrier had often sung; on this occasion the vocal part was played by a solo cor anglais. The Kathleen Ferrier Cancer Research Fund helped establish the Kathleen Ferrier Chair of Clinical Oncology at University College Hospital, in 1984. As of 2012, it was continuing to fund oncology research.
As the result of a separate appeal, augmented by the sales proceeds of a memoir edited by Neville Cardus, the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund was created to encourage young British and Commonwealth singers of either sex. The Fund, which has operated from 1956 under the auspices of the Royal Philharmonic Society, initially provided an annual award covering the cost of a year's study to a single prizewinner.[117][118] With the advent of additional sponsors, the number and scope of awards has expanded considerably since that time; the list of winners of Ferrier Awards includes many singers of international repute, among them Felicity Palmer, Yvonne Kenny, Lesley Garrett and Bryn Terfel.[119] The Kathleen Ferrier Society, founded in 1993 to promote interest in all aspects of the singer's life and work, has since 1996 awarded annual bursaries to students at Britain's major music colleges.[120] The Society organised a series of events to commemorate the centenary of Ferrier's birth in 2012.[121] In February 2012 Ferrier was one of ten prominent Britons honoured by the Royal Mail in the "Britons of Distinction" stamps set. Another was Frederick Delius.
A biographic documentary film, La vie et l'art de Kathleen Ferrier – Le chant de la terre was directed by Diane Perelsztejn and produced by ARTE France in 2012. It featured interviews with her near relatives, friends and colleagues to produce a fresh view of her life and contributions to the arts.
Recordings
Ferrier's discography consists of studio recordings originally made on the Columbia and Decca labels, and recordings taken from live performances which were later issued as discs. In the years since her death, many of her recordings have received multiple reissues on modern media; between 1992 and 1996 Decca issued the Kathleen Ferrier Edition, incorporating much of Ferrier's recorded repertoire, on 10 compact discs. The discographer Paul Campion has drawn attention to numerous works which she performed but did not record, or for which no complete recording has yet surfaced. For example, only one aria from Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, and none of her renderings of 20th-century songs by Holst, Bax, Delius and others were recorded. Only a small part of her St John Passion was captured on disc.
Two recordings were especially popular, being bought as records and played regularly as favourites on BBC Radio in shows such as Desert Island Discs, Housewives' Choice and Your Hundred Best Tunes. These were her unaccompanied rendition of the Northumbrian folk tune, "Blow the Wind Southerly", and the aria Che farò ("What is life?") from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice. These were the A-sides of the records and the corresponding B-sides, which also became familiar, were "The Keel Row" and "Art thou troubled?" from Handel's Rodelinda. These records sold in large numbers which rivalled other stars of the time such as Frank Sinatra and Vera Lynn. Today her recordings still sell hundreds of thousands of copies each year.
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