SOMM’s Ferrier Album of 20th-Century Song

courtesy of Naxos of America

The last album of remastered archival recordings of the English contralto Kathleen Ferrier, entitled Kathleen Ferrier in New York, was released by SOMM Recordings at the very beginning of 2020. Almost exactly a year later, SOMM released its latest Ferrier offering, 20th Century British Treasures. Once again, Amazon.com has decided to release the content only as an MP3 album. Last year there was considerable delay between the MP3 release and the appearance of a Web page for the physical recording. This year, given that SOMM is based in Surrey in England, delivery of the physical version is likely to take considerable time, due to continuing pandemic conditions.

The three tracks of songs by Roger Quilter were recorded in the Decca studios in London on December 10 and 11, 1951. All of the other recordings were either taken from BBC broadcasts or BBC recital performances. The composers represented on these tracks are (in order of appearance) Hubert Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Villiers Stanford, Frank Bridge, Peter Warlock, Maurice Jacobson, Edmund Rubbra, William Wordsworth, Howard Ferguson, Benjamin Britten, and Lennox Berkeley. Like the Decca tracks, almost all of these selections were included among the fourteen CDs in the Decca Centenary Edition box, which was released in January of 2012. Nevertheless, the final selection on the 20th Century British Treasures CD, Berkeley’s Opus 27 setting for contralto and orchestra of four poems (translated into English) by Teresa of Ávila, has been publicly released for the first time.

Those (like myself) with an obsessive desire to account for “all things Ferrier” will therefore value this new release only for the concluding Berkeley selection, given that we already spend a fair amount of time listening to the Decca anthology. However, in that richer context, many of us may have observed that music, which may have been “treasured” during the twentieth century (perhaps due to Ferrier’s interpretations), has lost much of its impact in the current century, particularly among listeners not based in England. In that context I would suggest that, for those just becoming acquainted with the Ferrier legacy, 20th Century British Treasures is not a particularly good place to start.

As a result, I would recommend that the Centenary Edition is still the best resource for those wishing to listen to the finest audio documents of Ferrier interpretations. Indeed, given that Amazon has options for used copies of this release at reduced prices, the price of this abundant collection has become more reasonable than it was when the album first appeared. The fact is that the best way fo get hooked on Ferrier is to listen to her recordings with conductor Bruno Walter, and the best of those recordings was made in May of 1952 in Vienna with tenor Julius Patzak and Walter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Evensong at Church of the Advent

The next Evensong service to be held at the Church of the Advent of Christ the King will take place on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany in conjunction with the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Music will be provided, as usual, by Schola Adventus, the church’s resident choir directed by Paul Ellison. Selections will include settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis canticles from Herbert Howells’ Collegium Regale collection. The music of Charles Villiers Stanford will also be included with the third of his Opus 38 collection of three Latin motets, “Beati quorum via” (blessed are those whose way). Finally, the choir will sing Anton Bruckner’s setting of the “Tantum ergo” (therefore so great) verses. The music for the Preces versicles and responses will be by William Smith; and Ellison will provide processional and recessional organ music by Hubert Parry and Stanford.

The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. This is an inclusive parish of the Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. The service will begin at 4 p.m. this coming Sunday, February 16. Those wishing further information may call 415-431-0454.

Lacuna Arts Chorale Begins its Eleventh Season with Memorial Music by British Composers

Last night the Lacuna Arts Chorale, led by its Artistic Director Sven Edward Olbash, began its 2016–2017 season at The Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Cow Hollow, where the group serves as Artists-in-Residence. The full title of the program was A Voice from Heaven: music of Howells, Stanford, Parry, and Elgar; but the theme was a memorial one, anticipating the attention to those who have died through occasions such as Halloween and the Day of the Dead. The major work on the program was a piece that Herbert Howells called Requiem, which departed from the liturgical text from the Mass for the Dead, just as Johannes Brahms had done when he composed A German Requiem.

Howells composed his Requiem in 1932 for unaccompanied double choir and soloists in each of the four vocal ranges. The “Requiem aeternam” text appears twice (in Latin) in the third and fifth movements. The other movements are sung in English, taking their texts from psalms and antiphons. This piece received little attention until 1935, when Howells reworked it as a large-scale composition, entitled Hymnus Paradisi, for chorus and orchestra after the death of his son Michael in 1935. The a cappella version was not published until 1980, a few years before Howells’ own death.

Lacuna Arts specializes in double choir work, and last night Olbash divided them accordingly. The sanctuary space in which the performance took place consisted primarily of exposed wood. This created relatively dry acoustic conditions through which one could readily appreciate the many intricate elements of Howells’ polyphonic writing, as well as the spatial interplay of the two choirs. With the exception of several of the verses from Psalm 23 set for soprano (Winnie Nieh), the use of solo voices was extremely spare, primarily serving to highlight particular phrases from the text. Nevertheless, Howells seemed to be going for a particularly transcendent rhetoric in his solo soprano lines; and Nieh definitely rose (without trying to avoid the pun) to the occasion. Olbash’s overall interpretation gave the music the sense of a highly personal meditation, a rhetorical stance that was well served by the intimacy of the acoustic setting.

The first half of the program was devoted to selections from collections of two of Howells’ predecessors, Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry. It began with the first and last of the three motets that Stanford published as his Opus 38, the SATB “Justorum animae” (the souls of the just) and the SSATBB “Beati quorum via” (blessed are the undefiled), the first from the Book of Wisdom and the second from Psalm 119. These were brief texts (two verses in the first, one in the second) sung in Latin; and the second was sung by the reduced Lacuna Arts Ensemble (two sopranos, two mezzos, two altos, two tenors, and three basses). This smaller group also sang the first four of Parry’s six Songs of Farewell with texts by Henry Vaughan (SATB), John Davies (SATB), Thomas Campion (SSATB), and John Gibson Lockhart (SSATBB). Here, again, intimacy was the prevailing rhetorical stance, particularly in the musical interpretations of the poems set by Parry, which transcended the underling text structures for a sake of a better account of the spirit of each of the verbal offerings.

The program concluded with one of Edward Elgar’s last choral compositions, “They are at rest.” This is an SATB setting of a poem by John Henry Newman. In brought a sense of quiet closure to the program, rather in the spirit of how the “In paradisum” text brings closure to the Latin Requiem Mass setting. While the lines of the poem are uneven, Elgar endowed his setting with a serene sense of calm that encouraged those of us in the audience to “go in peace.”

All of this made for a thoroughly memorable choral experience. Those who missed it deserve to know that it will be given a second performance tomorrow (Sunday, October 30), beginning at 4 p.m. The Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin is located in Cow Hollow at 2325 Union Street, on the southwest corner of Steiner Street.