Decca

The English contralto Kathleen Ferrier had a voice like no other. She was born 100 years ago.

One hundred years ago, a musical marvel was born. She grew up in a tiny hamlet in the North of England, but made a huge impression on the world of classical music.

"Unique" is an overused word, yet it truly fits the sound of Kathleen Ferrier's voice. If you've never heard it, prepare to be amazed — stop reading now and click on the link below.

Her voice was a true contralto, radiant and rich with velvety purple tones reaching deep into a manly range. In addition to the sheer beauty of her sound, there's a palpable sense of communication. All the greatest singers have it — from Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf to John McCormack and George Jones — and when you hear them, it sounds like they are singing to you and you alone. Ferrier had it in spades.

To mark the 100th anniversary of her birth on April 22, 1912, Decca has issued a 14-CD Ferrier box set that includes an hour-long documentary on her life and career. It's a treasure-trove of incredible singing, from a complete recording of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice to British folk tunes to riveting live broadcasts of songs by Schubert, Schumann and Brahms from the 1949 Edinburgh Festival.

Ferrier was an unlikely candidate to become one of classical music's most extraordinary singers. She had no upper level institutional musical training. She excelled at the piano as a kid, but her only singing took place in the bathroom of her Lancashire home. At age 14, her parents, worried by finances, took her out of school and she landed a job at the telephone exchange of the local post office.

Later she met and married a bank manager. In 1937, on a lark, she took him up on a bet that she wouldn't dare enter a regional singing competition. She took home first prize and along with it the confidence to start accepting singing engagements around Northern England.

In just a few short years, while World War II was ripping Europe apart, Ferrier's career bloomed. By war's end, she had moved to London, hired an agent, signed a recording contract and begun attracting leading figures in music, including conductors Bruno Walter and John Barbirolli and composer Benjamin Britten, who wrote for her the lead role in The Rape of Lucretia. She made her stage debut in Britten's opera at Glyndebourne in 1946.

Of all of these men Ferrier probably cherished most her time with Walter. "To learn with him the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler, is to feel that one is gaining knowledge and inspiration for the composer himself," she wrote in a letter. "It is very exciting and sometimes almost unbearably moving."

With Walter, Ferrier found herself on the forefront of a Gustav Mahler revival. The composer's music was banned during the war in countries occupied by Germany, and Walter, as a personal friend of the composer, was keen to bring it back.

Kathleen Ferrier: A Voice Not Forgotten

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde - "Der Abschied" (excerpt)

• Artist: Kathleen Ferrier
• Album: Centenary Edition: The Complete Decca Recordings
• Song: Das Lied von der Erde - "Der Abschied"

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• Album: Centenary Edition: The Complete Decca Recordings
• Artist: Kathleen Ferrier
• Label: Decca
• Released: 2012

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Perhaps the greatest of the Ferrier-Walter-Mahler projects was the 1952 recording in Vienna of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). When Mahler wrote the work's final movement, "Der Abschied" (The Farewell), he showed it to Walter, who said, "I was profoundly moved by that uniquely passionate, bitter, yet resigned and benedictory sound of farewell and departure, that last confession of one upon whom rested the finger of death." Mahler, only in his 40s, had been recently diagnosed with a heart condition that would eventually lead to his early death.

What makes this particular recording special, beyond the riveting performance by Ferrier, is the fact that she was dying of breast cancer while singing Mahler's soaring, valedictory music. Ferrier died peacefully in her sleep Oct. 8, 1953 at just 41.

It was a huge loss for Britain. Ferrier had become almost as beloved as the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II. It was an even bigger loss for music, as a voice like Ferrier's appears only very rarely. Her friends and colleagues remember her as a simple, warm person, radiant with life, obsessed with music and equipped with a bawdy sense of humor — all attributes that leap from these recordings.

Enlarge Dániel Vass/ECM Records

On Garth Knox's new album, Saltarello, the adventurous violist creates surprising musical juxtapositions.

Dániel Vass/ECM Records

On Garth Knox's new album, Saltarello, the adventurous violist creates surprising musical juxtapositions.

Garth Knox was born to play the viola. As a youngster, he already had two sisters who played violin and a brother who played cello. "So for the family string quartet," Knox says, "it was very clear from the start which instrument I would play."

On his new album, Saltarello, Knox traverses almost 1,000 years of music history, playing not only the viola but also the medieval fiddle and the viola d'amore, a forgotten member of the viola family with an extra set of strings vibrating underneath the fingerboard. Knox says the instrument appeared and then disappeared in musical history.

"A lot of babies were thrown out with the bath water," he says in an interview with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel. "And I thought the viola d'amore was a particularly big baby that had been thrown away by mistake. I and others are trying to bring it back and show just how beautiful it can be."

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Hildegard Von Bingen / Guillaume De Machaut: 'Ave, Generosa' / 'Tels Rit Au Matin'

• Artist: Garth Knox
• Album: Saltarello

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• "Work(s) [Ave, Generosa - Tels Rit Au Ma[T]In Qui Au Soir Pleure]"
• Album: Saltarello
• Artist: Garth Knox
• Label: ECM
• Released: 2012

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Kaija Saariaho: 'Vent Nocturne (Dark Mirrors)'

• Artist: Garth Knox
• Album: Saltarello

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• Released: 2012

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The instrument appears in the album's opening track — "Black Brittany," an arrangement of a traditional Irish song — and in a stripped-down version of a Vivaldi concerto. Instead of the standard orchestral accompaniment, Knox arranged the work for just two instruments: the viola d'amore and a cello.

"I noticed over the years that baroque players like to lighten things up and make it clearer by reducing the number of people playing," Knox says. "And I thought it would be nice just to see how far I could go, and in this Vivaldi piece I think we've reached the limit. I think it gains something. I think it's exciting to hear it played like this."

The oldest music on Saltarello is by the 12th century abbess and composer Hildegard von Bingen; Knox plays it on the medieval fiddle, an instrument that he says looks like what you see depicted in Renaissance paintings.

"You usually see angels playing them," Knox says. "They usually have five strings, and their bridge is flat and you can play all the strings all the time, which is the idea. It's a very beautiful instrument, and it has a very earthy sound."

Immediately following the ancient sounds, Knox jumps more than 900 years to a new piece, Vent Nocturne (Dark Mirrors), written for him by Kaija Saariaho. It's all part of Knox's musical journey.

"I thought it would be very interesting to put things together which normally you don't hear together," Knox says, "and see just what the differences are."

Enlarge Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

At 101, Roman Totenberg was teaching students up to the very end of his life.

Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

At 101, Roman Totenberg was teaching students up to the very end of his life.

[Roman Totenberg was a child prodigy who became a violin virtuoso, as well as a master teacher who passed along his command of craft and his love of music — and life — to thousands. He was also the man you wanted to sit next to at the table because he was so funny. Totenberg died this week at the age of 101, surrounded by loving family, friends and students. We asked his daughter, Nina Totenberg, for this remembrance. — Scott Simon]

My father's death was as remarkable as his life. Last week, as word spread through the music community that he was suddenly dying, his former students began flocking to his home, driving sometimes hours through the night to get there. We even had to dissuade a Polish violinist and composer from hopping a plane for the States.

There's no crying in baseball, or in music. And so he told these amazing musicians to play for him. No matter how accomplished they were, he was still their teacher. Eyes closed, he listened, conducting with his right hand, slowing the tempo here and there for better phrasing, or clapping to keep the tempo up, and even asking for the violin to demonstrate a piece of fingering. One former student, playing the Brahms Violin Concerto at his bedside, couldn't hear his whispered words, so she gently put her ear to his lips. With elegant distinctness, he said quite clearly, "The D was flat."

As they left, the former students all said some version of the same thing. "He changed my life." Soloist Mira Wang, who came from China at age 19 to study with him decades ago, said simply, "My parents gave me life. He taught me how to live it. "

My father's career really began on the streets of Moscow during a famine, when he played for bread and butter that fed his family.

"Invariably, the people give us white bread and butter and other things to eat, which we'd take home," my father recalled. "And that was actually the first impression of the value of the art — what can it bring to you to survive, so to say."

Roman Totenberg made his debut as a soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic when he was 11. Over the course of time, he would solo with every major orchestra in the U.S. and Europe, playing all the classics and premiering new works by many of the great contemporary composers, all of whom were his friends. Once, Benny Goodman even called him up onstage to jam with the band.

His American debut came in 1935 with the National Symphony Orchestra, playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto, which he recorded decades later.

The U.S. debut was such a sensation that he was invited to the White House to play for President Roosevelt. Just weeks before, my father had played for the king of Italy at a concert so formal, he had to back off the stage so as to keep facing the monarch. At the White House, the artists were invited to the president's private residence after the performance, where Mrs. Roosevelt served each of them dinner. Reflecting on the difference, my father thought to himself, "This is the country for me."

Shortly after that, he began a tour across the country, traveling by train. In one story, he recalled how he was anxious to practice his English.

Roman Totenberg's Remarkable Life And Death

"I went to the dining room and was seated next to a rather charming young lady who was obviously a Texan with a nice drawl," he said. "And after a while, she would ask me to repeat some things and so on. And finally she said, 'I have such hard time understanding you Yankees.' "

In the past three days, I found myself listening to some of Dad's recordings — there were hundreds of them over the years, and about a dozen issued on CD. They are, quite simply, astonishing in their breadth and emotion — from the technical wizardry of Paganini to the heart-wrenching and powerful Bach "Chaconne."

Once, after a big concert when he was in his 90s, we came home with armloads of flowers, basking in the glow of stomping, standing ovations. "You know, Ninotchka," my dad said with a twinkle in his eye, "when you are very young and can do it, they scream and yell, and when you are very old and can do it, they scream and yell. I have been lucky enough to do it at both ends."

News from around the world this week:

• Our own Eyder Peralta calls this a "very classy" flash mob: the Copenhagen Philharmonic playing Grieg's Peer Gynt on a moving train. I agree that it's cool, but surely the sound was an overdub? (Even though those Copenhagen subways are indeed wonderfully quiet.) Verdict: still awesome anyway — and even Perez Hilton called it "lovely."
• We're very sad to mark the passing of two great forces this week: the remarkable 101-year-old violinist Roman Totenbergthe father of our colleague Nina Totenberg, and Maurice Sendak, who loved classical music deeply and became a celebrated set and costume designer for a number of operas.
• A tale of an audience behaving badly: Guardian theater critic Mark Shenton got into itwith celebrity Bianca Jagger at a performance of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beachin London a week ago, after she starting taking flash photography mid-performance. Their encounter spilled over onto Twitter and into print. Jagger tweeted, "Do u approve of the abusive behaviour of the man who pushed me around & insulted me at the theatre last night? Without proof.'" Shenton's reply: "For the record, I did not touch her. At all. I will, however, freely admit to deliberately insulting her. I'm glad she so obviously heard it."
• Entertainingly, Glass just gave an interview to the BBC a few days ago in which he said that since the premiere of Einstein in 1976, "We've taught our audiences bad viewing habits. Short attention spans and stories that are very recognizable. However, I think that's going to change now. I think that the younger generation — people in their 20s — are getting fed up with it again."
• In the aftermath of l'affaire Jagger, the Guardian's critics have created their own code of conduct for audiences "in the spirit of public service." Sampling: "Hecklers are allowed to say two unfunny things." Also: "Don't be so bloody precious."
• Speaking of tiffs in Britain: Composer Michael Nyman has lashed out publicly against the Royal Opera House (and the rest of the U.K. opera establishment), because they don't want to stage his work. The relevant post on Facebook, which starts out in the third person before switching to a personal pronoun: "Michael Nyman has just been informed that the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, will never commission an opera and will therefore spend whatever remains of his creative life without a single note of any of his operas, written or unwritten, represented on the stage of any opera house in the U.K., ever. Maybe I should withdraw my tax." I would like to see how he would explain that to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs representatives.
• In a sign of improving health, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has just hired a new concertmaster, Yoonshin Song.
• Riccardo Muti is performing for the Pope this weekend, and Daniel Barenboim will lead the La Scala orchestra in a Beethoven Ninth Symphony for the piano-playing pontiff on June 1.
• Yo-Yo Ma and Paul Simon are the winners of Sweden's prestigious Polar Music Prize, worth one million kronor (about $165,000) each. The two artists will receive their awards from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in late August.
• Two different former executives at Britain's Royal Academy of Music have been charged with stealing money from the school: former finance director Janet Whitehouse and the former head of IT, Steve Newell. Amazingly, they seem to be unrelated deceptions. Perhaps it's time to find a new bookkeeper?
• In order to make up part of a current $2.9M deficit — the biggest in its history — the Minnesota Orchestra has eliminated nine full-time positions, or 13 percent of its administrative staff.
• There have been a number of co-productions between the English National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in recent seasons, but ENO artistic director John Berry apparently doesn't think much of Met chief Peter Gelb's biggest success so far: bringing operas to movie theaters. "It is of no interest to me," he said in an interview with The Stage. "It is not a priority. It doesn't create new audiences, either... This company [ENO] spends most of its time making sure its performances are bulletproof. It takes all my time. Get what you know right; choose carefully anything else. But this obsession about putting work out into the cinema can distract from making amazing quality work."
• Whoopsie: A Stradivarius cello owned by the Spanish royals that may be worth up to $29M got knocked over while being examined and photographed by experts, and its neck was broken. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the Spanish national heritage officials at the royal palace had tried to keep the accident a secret, but word leaked out nonetheless. The neck was not original to the instrument, and can be repaired.

Enlarge Pablo Helguera

Pablo Helguera

After 11 days and more than 500 submissions, we proudly unveil a winner (and several honorable mentions) in our very first classical cartoon caption contest. Congratulations to Gregory Curnow from central Massachusetts, who remembered that hippos not only excel at the violin, but also have a habit of snorting.

"I just tried to put myself in the shoes of a judge in one of those blind symphony orchestra auditions," Curnow said when asked how he came up with his winning caption. We'll send him a new NPR Music tote bag and coffee mug for his efforts.

The captions for Pablo Helguera's cartoon tended to fall into a few general categories. There were the Stradivarius jokes, like Gene Geist's "Hmmmm... It's hard to tell, but I think that the warm, subtle tones suggest that the first one was the Stradivarius." Then there were many odiferous submissions, such as Joe Rod's "While I can't name that tune, I think I might be able to place that smell." Quite a few were weight-oriented, like Bonner Armbruster's "Nice tone, but a little heavy on the bottom end." And folks couldn't resist throwing in a few viola jokes.

Below is our "Honorable Mentions" list. Thanks to all who played along in our contest. Don't forget, we have a classical cartoon each Friday at noon on this blog. You never know when we'll ask for your captioning help again.

"I've changed my mind, I'll take the firing squad." (Tollak Ollestad)

"I just can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's the room." (William Mankin)

"Can I hear the Elephant again?" (Tom Lawery)

"Well, it sounds like 'The Orange Blossom Special,' but the foot-tapping was so loud I can't be absolutely sure." (Billy Waldo)

On May 17th, the famous auction house Christie's will sell more than 150 items for pianist Van Cliburn. Now 77 years old, the Cold War-era classical music megastar and competition founder has long been a collector of fine English furniture, Russian art, silver and jewelry — and Christie's expects this New York sale to bring in more than $3 million.

Cliburn is parting with objects that range from a pair of George II-era giltwood mirrors (estimated to fetch up to $250,000) to two jewelry boxes made for Tsar Nicholas I that Cliburn bought for his mother, Rildia Bee. There's also a dazzling array of jewelry from houses like Cartier, Van Cleef and Buccellati that the pianist amassed for himself and for his mother.

For music lovers, though, the item of most interest will probably be the Steinway concert grand that was played by Cliburn's mother, the same one Cliburn himself used for much of his life. Profits from the piano's sale will benefit Juilliard and the Moscow Conservatory, where Cliburn studied.

But above all, this auction provides a chance to peek behind the curtain of a life writ large and to check out the curiosities owned by one of the few remaining classical stars of the hi-fi age — like a lavishly ornate silver tureen from 1840, once owned by the Russian Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. Cliburn's beloved mother used it to serve her "fabulous" chicken soup.

Talk Like An Opera Geek attempts to decode the intriguing and intimidating lexicon of the opera house.

Enlarge Ken Howard/Metropoltan Opera

John Adams' Nixon in China, produced at the Metropolitan Opera in January 2011. Left to right: Janis Kelly as Pat Nixon, Teresa S. Herold as the Second Secretary to Mao, James Maddalena as Richard Nixon, Ginger Costa Jackson as the First Secretary to Mao, Russell Braun as Chou En-lai.

Ken Howard/Metropoltan Opera

John Adams' Nixon in China, produced at the Metropolitan Opera in January 2011. Left to right: Janis Kelly as Pat Nixon, Teresa S. Herold as the Second Secretary to Mao, James Maddalena as Richard Nixon, Ginger Costa Jackson as the First Secretary to Mao, Russell Braun as Chou En-lai.

Lately in this Opera Geek series, we've been following opera's path chronologically, citing a few significant milestones along the way — from the art form's earliest days through the Baroque, the age of Mozart, bel canto, big hitters like Verdi and Wagner, and trends in postwar Europe. Today, a brief look at opera here at home.

As the post-WWII economy flourished, opera in America blossomed. From composers and singers to audiences, philanthropy and new venues, everything operatic seemed to be on the rise. New opera houses sprouted up in the 1950s and '60s in Dallas, Houston, Santa Fe, Tulsa, Minneapolis, Seattle and Louisville. Opera also grew at the academic level, as opera workshops became more prominent in universities.

The People's Opera

Even before that opera boom, there was the New York City Opera, founded during the war years in 1943 and dubbed "the people's opera" by mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Enlarge Dacapo Records

Horneman's music has a flair for the theatrical.

Dacapo Records

Horneman's music has a flair for the theatrical.

Born into a well-to-do Danish family in 1840, Christian Frederik Emil Horneman showed musical talent at an early age, then went on to study in Leipzig and later spent most of his life as a teacher. But he would also compose a limited amount of music, which one wishes had been greater in quantity judging from the fine orchestral works on this new release.

Horneman's daughter and son-in-law were both involved with the theater, which may explain what little music he wrote was mostly stage-related. Accordingly, three of the four selections on this album are suites from incidental music for plays, beginning with the 1899 romantic drama Gurre, which also inspired Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder.

The overture has arresting hunting horn calls and one particularly attractive amorous melody. The following preludes to the second, fourth and fifth acts reflect the melancholy, foreboding and playfully coquettish nature of the drama.

Hear The Music

Gurre Suite: Overture

• Artist: Danish National Symphony Orchestra
• Album: Christian Frederik Emil Horneman: Orchestral Works
• Song: Gurre Suite, for orchestra (from the incidental music) [1. Ouverture. Allegro non troppo]

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• Album: Christian Frederik Emil Horneman: Orchestral Works
• Artist: Danish National Symphony Orchestra
• Label: Dacapo
• Released: 2012

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The next suite features four numbers from Kampen med Muserne (Battle with the Muses). Highlights include an atmospheric "Sunrise" and an orgiastic "Bacchantic Dance."

Then we get one of the composer's rare nontheatrical pieces, Ouverture Héroique from 1867. An engaging amalgam of Weber and Tchaikovsky in a cleverly modified version of sonata form, it makes one regret Horneman never composed any extended symphonic works.

The album concludes with a suite from music for the 1854 tragedy Kalanus, about an encounter between an Indian ascetic of that name and Alexander the Great. The "Introduction and Prayer" has a motif that recalls the Dies Irae. And the closing "Death of Kalanus" ends on a major chord, probably signifying the guru's belief that his death would be the gateway to eternal enlightenment.

The Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Vocal Ensemble — whose female singers provide choral support in the second suite — are under Sweden's Johannes Gustavsson, one of today's leading young conductors. They give exceptionally spirited performances, making a strong case for these symphonic curiosities. Horneman couldn't have better advocates.

Bob McQuiston revels in under-the-radar repertoire at his website Classical Lost and Found.

When it comes to reliable lightning rods in classical music, it's hard to top Richard Wagner. The latest controversies center on the Metropolitan Opera's current staging of the composer's gargantuan Ring cycle, the set of four epic and mythical operas first mounted at Bayreuth in 1876, and now seen live at the Met together in a series.

The problem isn't Wagner's glorious music; it's the production — at least according to a wide variety of critics who have weighed in negatively since the operas began to roll out individually in September 2010. But you can decide for yourself, even if you're not near Manhattan. The Ring will be screened as encore HD transmissions in movie theaters across the country starting Wednesday.

As an overture of sorts, you can glimpse a few of the Met's nightmares and triumphs of this Ring in a new documentary screening today only, also in many movie theaters around the U.S. and Canada. Wagner's Dream (watch an excerpt above) is a meticulously unpacked if ultimately unmemorable diary of the company's high-stakes production; it's directed by Susan Froemke, whose other Met-oriented doc, The Audition, is far more compelling.

The brunt of this Ring's criticism falls on Canadian stage director Robert Lepage's set. For all four operas, his concept literally hinges on a single 90,000-pound, dizzyingly high-tech contraption dubbed the "machine." It looks like a giant 24-plank see-saw on which images are projected and characters walk, ride and even dangle.

What's all the fuss? Other than repeated mechanical, technical and safety glitches — including an opening-night gaffe which stranded Wagner's gods on the wrong side of the rainbow bridge — some critics seem to be scrambling for new ways to express their disapproval of the $16 million production.

The most oft-quoted line of late comes from last month's New Yorker, where Alex Ross wrote that "Pound for pound, ton for ton, it is the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history."

Enlarge Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Brünnhilde (center) is surrounded by fire at the end of Wagner's Die Walküre — part of the Met's current Ring cycle, produced by Robert Lepage.

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Brünnhilde (center) is surrounded by fire at the end of Wagner's Die Walküre — part of the Met's current Ring cycle, produced by Robert Lepage.

Anthony Tommasini, writing in the New York Times, has been more measured, but complained that "No imagery is worth having to endure the sounds of creaking gears and looks of nervousness on the faces of singers." And in the Washington Post, Anne Midgette, high-tech gadgetry aside, was concerned about the depth of the drama, writing that "The real question is what came across dramatically: and in the house, at least, the answer was stale white bread. Lepage's Ring is utterly traditional: All the characters are taken at face value, with little effort to delve beneath the surface."

The latest dust-up over the Met Ring concerns yet another negative assessment, this time from NPR member station WQXR's Operavore blog. A post by Olivia Giovetti, which outlined strong personal reactions to the Wagner production and to a recent New York Times interview between Met general manager Peter Gelb and Times critic Anthony Tommasini, was removed last month from the station's site after Gelb complained to a top station executive.

We're interested in your critical reactions. Have you seen any of the Lepage Ring? If so, what do you think of it? Are you planning to attend the HD cinema broadcasts?