Mahler / Brahms: Das Lied von der Erde / Alto Rhapsody

Here is a dream team for Mahler’s Song of the Earth: Richard Lewis in amazing voice, esteemed Mahlerian Sir John Barbirolli together with his most admired and beloved friend “Katie” Ferrier. The recording was made in Manchester in April 1952, about a month before the Viennese recording with Bruno Walter which has since passed into gramophone legend. Composed when he had recently been diagnosed with a heart problem, the work Mahler described to Walter as “his most personal” was destined never to be heard by its composer. The shadow of death had also already fallen across the “Rose of Lancaster.”

Those who possess the Decca recording (now out on Naxos!) will delight in having this disc as well, although the first seven bars are missing and the recorded sound suffers from some interference in track 10, the end of Der Abschied (Bah!). The Hallé Orchestra are in splendid form, the woodwind particularly plangent, as the soloist sings Ich suche Ruhe für mein einsam Herz!

The filler is Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody, which could have been composed for Ferrier, a solemn, yet optimistic work, with much of the material having echoes in the Deutsche Requiem.

About the singer

Kathleen Ferrier’s career was tragically brief, she died of cancer in 1953 at just 41, only a decade after her professional singing debut, yet left a body of recordings still regarded as touchstones of British vocal artistry. Her friendship with Barbirolli, audible in the warmth of this collaboration, was one of the closest of her career; he conducted at several of her most celebrated performances and later spoke of her as a uniquely instinctive musician. Benjamin Britten was another close collaborator, writing the role of Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia for her voice. This Manchester Mahler recording predates by weeks the Decca/Bruno Walter account made in Vienna that has since become the more widely cited historical reference for the work.