Kathleen Ferrier Remembered

Kathleen's Ferrier's legacy of recordings has been well-known and widely-admired for over 60 years. So it seems amazing that, after so long, a treasury of previously unpublished and little-circulated BBC broadcasts is now being released. In typical fashion, SOMM leads the way in remembering great composers and artists of the past and Kathleen Ferrier is one of hte most divinely gifted among them. These recordings are from two sources. Several are from BBC's own archives and include Ferrier's first broadcast of Rubbra's Three Psalms, Op. 61, of which she was the dedicatee, five Schubert Lieder, four by Brahms and Parry's Love is a bable, recorded at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival, which makes a delightful conclusion to the album. The other source is the remarkable collection of Kenneth Leech, a composer and engineer who, from the 1930s to the 1950s, recorded numerous broadcasts, mainly using Bakelite and metal discs - the usual way for an enthusiast to preserve radio programmes at that time. This collection is stored at the National Sound Archive in the British Library.