Episode 205. Eileen Farrell: Bach/Pop
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Eileen Farrell (13 February 1920 – 23 March 2002) was one of the finest and most versatile singers that the United States has ever produced. She began her career as a radio singer, the star of her own program, Eileen Farrell Sings, which ran from 1941 to 1945, which offered a wide range of music from the pop songs of the era to opera. In the 1950s and early 1960s Farrell was involved with the legendary Bach Aria Group, originally founded in 1946 by scholar and philanthropist William H. Scheide, which consisted of a quartet of singers (which in Farrell’s time included tenor Jan Peerce, alto Carol Smith, and bass Norman Farrow) and a group of the most gifted instrumental soloists of the era (including oboist Robert Bloom, flautist Julius Baker, and violinist Maurice Wilk). Alongside their pathbreaking performances, they made a series of celebrated recordings for RCA and American Decca, excerpts of which are heard on this episode. Though Farrell had a huge voice, it was well-suited to the music of Bach, which she performed with suppleness, flexibility, poise, and power. Farrell may have been but a reluctant opera star, but her most long-lasting musical love was probably the Great American Songbook. Years beyond her official retirement, indeed well into her 70s, she continued to record both standards and less-familiar material, and her recordings of pop songs from the 1960s through the 1990s – buoyant, playful, perceptive, often heartbreaking and always deeply musical – form a substantial component of her recorded legacy. In this episode I contrast her performances of these two disparate styles of music, recorded over the course of forty years, to shed light on her continuing supremacy among American sopranos.
RECORDINGS HEARD IN THIS EPISODE
Jule Styne, Bob Merrill: The Music that Makes Me Dance (Funny Girl). Eileen Farrell, orchestra arranged and conducted by Robert Farnon [1991]
Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart: Spring Is Here (I Married an Angel). Eileen Farrell, André Previn and His Orchestra [1962]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten (Wedding Cantata, BWV 202). Eileen Farrell, Robert Bloom, Frank Brieff leading the Bach Aria Group Orchestra, Paul Ulanowsky, Bernard Greenhouse [1960]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Ich bin vergnügt in meinem Leiden (Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, BWV 58). Eileen Farrell, Maurice Wilk, Paul Ulanowsky, Bernard Greenhouse [1960]
Bart Howard [né Howard Joseph Gustafson]: Fly Me to the Moon [In Other Words]. Eileen Farrell, Luther Henderson and His Orchestra [1959]
Morgan Lewis, Nancy Hamilton: How High the Moon. Eileen Farrell, Orchestra arranged and conducted by Robert Farnon [1993]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Laß uns, o höchster Gott, das Jahr vollbringen (Jesu, nun sei gepreiset, BWV 41). Eileen Farrell, Robert Bloom, Harry Shulman, Earl Schuster, Erich Itor Kahn, Bernard Greenhouse [1954]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Recit. Kann es die Welt nicht lassen; Aria with Chorale. Ich hab’ vor mir ein’ schwere Reis’ (Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, BWV 58). Eileen Farrell, Norman Farrow, Frank Brieff, Bach Aria Group Orchestra, Paul Ulanowsky, Bernard Greenhouse [1960]
Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart: My Romance (Jumbo). Eileen Farrell, Percy Faith and His Orchestra [1961]
Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg: Little Drops of Rain (Gay Purr-ee); Over the Rainbow (The Wizard of Oz). Eileen Farrell, Loonis McGlohon [1989]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Mein gläubiges Herze (Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, BWV 68). Eileen Farrell, Robert Bloom, Maurice Wilk, Paul Ulanowsky, Bernard Greenhouse [1959]
Sonny Burke, Paul Francis Webster: Black Coffee. Eileen Farrell, Loonis McGlohon, Joe Wilder, Phil Thompson, Greg Hyslop, BIll Stowe, Terry Peoples [1990]
Alec Wilder, Loonis McGlohon: Blackberry Winter. Eileen Farrell, Loonis McGlohon, Joe Wilder, Pete Stowe, Terry Peoples [1990]
Johann Sebastian Bach: Die Seele ruht in Jesu Hände (Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott, BWV 127). Eileen Farrell, Robert Bloom, Julius Baker, Samuel Baron, Maurice Wilk, Erich Itor Kahn, Bernard Greenhouse [1954]
