Post by mattbarker on May 2, 2019 6:25:21 GMT
One of the great wants in classical music recordings is a recording of Kathleen Ferrier singing the role of the Angel in Elgar's oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.
She did a short test pressing 78 accompanied by piano in 1944 which has been released, but people keep hoping that somebody has recorded the whole work from a broadcast off the radio.
This all pre-supposes that a performance was broadcast on the radio at some point. Ferrier's first performance of the work was apparently November 1944 in Leeds and her final performance of anything was as Orpheus in February 1953 before she died of cancer - so a tragically short career.
Looking on BBC Genome and cross referencing with her published letters and diaries, things don't look promising. The closest I got was the broadcast from the Edinburgh Festival on 5 September 1952. She did sing in this performance, but rather peversely, the BBC only broadcast the first part of the work. The role of the Angel appears in part 2, which was not broadcast!
So I wondered, does anybody know if there was a broadcast of the Dream of Gerontius with Kathleen Ferrier in it?
Her diaries gives a performance in Dublin on 26th October 1952 so could it have been broadcast on Irish radio?
She did a short test pressing 78 accompanied by piano in 1944 which has been released, but people keep hoping that somebody has recorded the whole work from a broadcast off the radio.
This all pre-supposes that a performance was broadcast on the radio at some point. Ferrier's first performance of the work was apparently November 1944 in Leeds and her final performance of anything was as Orpheus in February 1953 before she died of cancer - so a tragically short career.
Looking on BBC Genome and cross referencing with her published letters and diaries, things don't look promising. The closest I got was the broadcast from the Edinburgh Festival on 5 September 1952. She did sing in this performance, but rather peversely, the BBC only broadcast the first part of the work. The role of the Angel appears in part 2, which was not broadcast!
So I wondered, does anybody know if there was a broadcast of the Dream of Gerontius with Kathleen Ferrier in it?
Her diaries gives a performance in Dublin on 26th October 1952 so could it have been broadcast on Irish radio?