In “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” Anderson truly becomes the young woman in the Goethe text, both terrified and thrilled at the desire a handsome stranger has aroused in her. In Schubert’s “Ständchen” the long melodic arcs flow with wistful grace while never sacrificing tautness.
Those qualities run through a recording of Schubert lieder, paired here with a sternly beautiful account of Schumann’s cycle “Frauenliebe und -leben,” mostly recorded in 1950 and ’51 and accompanied sensitively by the German pianist Franz Rupp, Anderson’s recital partner from the ’40s on. (Naturally, Hurok seized Toscanini’s words and thereafter billed Anderson as the “voice of the century.”) Afterward the imposing maestro approached her and said, famously, that what he had just heard “one is privileged to hear once in a hundred years,” responding to the singular shadings and textures of her deep-set sound, and the extraordinarily nuances she could create through her wide range.
#When did marian anderson first demonstar full#
But the full breadth of her artistry is newly evident with the release, from Sony Classical, of a new commemorative book, offering her complete RCA Victor recordings from 1924 to 1966 on 15 discs - timed to the 125th anniversary, coming in February, of Anderson’s birth in Philadelphia.Īrturo Toscanini heard Anderson in 1935 in Salzburg, Austria - when, excluded from official Salzburg Festival performances because of her race, she performed in a hotel ballroom. The New York Times critic Howard Taubman wrote, “Let it be said at the outset: Marian Anderson has returned to her native land one of the great singers of our time.” She made recordings, and she became wealthy: In 1938 her income was $238,000 (roughly $4.5 million today), though she was still a second-class citizen in her own country who on tour often ate dinner alone in her hotel room to avoid segregated restaurants.Īnderson feared that her Lincoln Memorial concert would come to define her. Returning to the United States in 1935, she began performing extensively, doing circuits of colleges and concert halls where she was welcomed, starting with a crucial recital at Town Hall in New York.
0 kommentar(er)
