Kathleen Ferrier; "Romance"; ROSAMUNDE; Franz Schubert

This channel is the re-establishment of previous channels that have been sadly terminated. ========================= Kathleen Ferrier--contralto Bruno Walter---piano 1949 ==================== "Born: April 22, 1912 - Preston suburb of Higher Walton, Lancashire, England Died: October 8, 1953 - London, England In the 41 years that made her life, Kathleen Ferrier became one of the best-loved and most admired singers in the world. Ferrier’s voice was a true contralto - quite a rarity – not a forced-down mezzo, and her style of singing was uniquely British. The daughter of a school-teacher, Kathleen Ferrier left school at the age of 14 and became a telephone operator on the Blackburn exchange. Not the most promising of beginnings for a future interpreter of George Frideric Handel, Gustav Mahler and Gluck. Yet her background had been musical, her mother had insisted she had piano lessons from an early age, and her father was a music teacher and enthusiastic chorister who had instilled rigid principles of musicality into his daughter. If a piece was to be played it was to be played properly, and according to the composer’s intentions. By the time she was 17 she had passed her ARCM examination in piano and undoubtedly could, had she wished, have become a concert pianist. But, although she regularly entered piano competitions as an amateur, she chose marriage instead. Had that worked out, and had she become a mother, music would never have been more than a hobby, albeit a...