This comes as a welcome pendant to the Ferrier commemorations, marking the 50th anniversary of her death. As I just about recall from hearing her a number of times from around 1945 until her untimely death, she always delighted us at recitals in the encores with such pieces as My bonny lad, The Keel Row and Kitty my love. Now it is interesting that the last-named, from a live broadcast in 1952, catches more than the studio-made others that sense of fun and communication that Ferrier so often achieved in performance. You hear it, too, in Purcell’s Hark! The echoing air from another broadcast, this time in Norway in 1949, a piece incidentally she never recorded in the studio. Even more reminiscent of Ferrier in person are the two precious Schubert songs recorded at the Edinburgh Festival of 1949, although I wish Du liebst mich nicht had been chosen in preference to either as it is a Desert Island choice of mine for its interpretative intensity.

For the rest the choice is predictable – plenty of Ferrier’s admirable if by today’s style weighty Bach and Handel. Very welcome, also from the Norwegian recital, is ‘Like as the love-lorn [not ‘love-torn’, please, Decca!] turtle’ from Atalanta, putting to flight the view that Ferrier could not sing quietly and intimately if she wished to. There are welcome souvenirs of her Orfeo, and – course – of her Mahler in her 1952 Rückert-Lieder, originally included as a welcome bonus to the Walter Das Lied von der Erde. All three are sung with great innigkeit. ‘Ich bin der Welt’ has particular poignancy in view of the singer’s untimely death the following year. The transfers improve on what Decca have previously given us. Paul Campion provides the informative note.