Kathleen Ferrier
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2011
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kathleen Ferrier was a British contralto singer who died in 1953 from breast cancer. Her professional career had lasted just 14 years but in that time she had had become an international star, singing at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and Carnegie Hall; and had worked with such luminaries of post-war music as Benjamin Britten, Sir John Barbirolli, and Bruno Walter. Not bad for someone who had no formal training as a singer and who had left school to work in the Blackburn telephone exchange. Ferrier never lost her common touch, never became a prima donna, and retained her liking for beer, cigarettes, and risque jokes. In this programme, broadcaster Sue MacGregor tells Matthew Parris why she admires Ferrier's work. Joining the discussion is conductor Christopher Fifield who edited Ferrier's letters.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading this great lives podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:41.0 | For more information and details of other podcasts just visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:45.0 | The great life we're talking about this week was a classical singer, but |
| 0:52.0 | somehow the word doesn't begin to do justice to her appeal. |
| 0:56.0 | Here's a little of what I imagine must be her most famous recording. Blow the wind south valley, southerly, valley, |
| 1:05.0 | southerly, southerly, |
| 1:08.0 | blow the wind south of the Barney Blue Sea. |
| 1:16.0 | It's the instantly recognizable sound of the contralto, Kathleen Ferrier. |
| 1:21.0 | My guest who's chosen Kathleen Ferrier is someone whose voice is probably even more |
| 1:26.3 | familiar to Radio 4 listeners, the radio presenter Sue McGregor. Sue, please note that I haven't said veteran, vintage, |
| 1:34.7 | Duayenne legend or any of the other words of which you must be heartily sick by now. |
| 1:38.9 | But let's be straightforward. |
| 1:41.4 | You've been in broadcasting a long time. You joined the BBC in |
| 1:45.1 | 1967 and you've been working for the South African Broadcasting Corporation |
| 1:49.3 | before that. Yes, I started there rather young on what was called the English service and it was at that time that I first, I think, became conscious of Kathleen Ferrier because I heard her on curiously the Afrikaans service which was in the Afrikaans language |
| 2:07.3 | but it had much more classical music on it than the English service did and I remember hearing blow the wind |
... |
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