Favourites, Shelf Discovery: Dame Janet Baker

One of the privileges of discussing the recently released box-set of Sir John Barbirolli with Rob Cowan as part of the inaugural Presto Classical podcast was to have the chance to revisit the conductor’s legendary partnership with the mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker. At the end of her interview with Dame Janet seven years ago, my colleague Katherine Cooper touched on how she ‘took up the baton' from Kathleen Ferrier and passed it on to the next generation, and a closer examination of Baker's recorded legacy and the rise of the subsequent crop of English mezzo-sopranos completely vindicates this assessment.

It is often remarked that the death of Kathleen Ferrier at the early age of 41 in 1953 cast a shadow over a country still basking in the glow of the Queen's coronation. Three years after her death, the inaugural Kathleen Ferrier Competition saw a young mezzo from the other side of the Pennines take second place – hailing from a Yorkshire mining community, Janet Baker would soon be viewed as Ferrier's heir (although Baker has always maintained that she felt that no-one could ever have stepped into her shoes). Through hard work and consistency Baker would quickly eclipse her Lancastrian predecessor, and set the template for a 'thoroughly modern mezzo' for generations to come.

If we skip to the end of Janet Baker's career, her final three appearances on stage exemplify her legacy. She introduced previously unknown works to the public (Gluck's Alceste), helped raised the profile of opera & song in English (singing Donizetti and Handel in English at ENO) yet still managed to maintain the great tradition that she inherited from Ferrier (singing Orfeo at Glyndebourne). On record we find the similar qualities in abundance right from the very beginning of her recording career.

Undoubtedly a major figure in the Handel revival, as early as the late 1950s she was singing Eduige in Rodelinda opposite Joan Sutherland, and her recording of Ariodante from 1978 with Raymond Leppard is still highly regarded - primarily for her stunningly intense and assured performance of 'Scherza infida' and 'Dopo notte', in which Baker relishes the dramatic potential of two of baroque opera’s greatest (and most challenging) arias. Venturing further into the baroque, even as early as the mid-1960s she was key in the rediscovery of previously lost baroque operas such as Cavalli's La Calisto and Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, and while these recordings may now sound somewhat anachronistic they are still well worth rediscovering themselves for the great artistry contained within.

It's perhaps fitting that her stirring performance of Elgar's Sea Pictures (famously coupled with Jacqueline du Pré's legendary recording of the Cello Concerto) with Barbirolli would become one of her best known recordings, as her commitment to singing in English was also constant throughout her career. Operatically one her first major recordings was Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and later she helped rescue Troilus and Cressida from obscurity after a troubled premiere for Walton's first opera. I'm sure that today's generation of English operatic composers like George Benjamin and Thomas Adès would have relished the chance to write for a singer with such a keen sense of drama.

Throughout her career she was also dedicated to what she called the 'proper music' which inspired her to become a singer as a child. Highlights from this side of Baker's discography include an outstanding selection of Schubert lieder with Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons and a devoutly passionate recording of Bach's Cantata 170 'Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust'. Personally, while for many people it was Ferrier's performance that was their introduction to Mahler's elegiac masterpiece Das Lied von der Erde, it was Baker's legendary account with Bernard Haitink that's been my template for all subsequent performances and the poignancy of those final 'Ewigs...' in ‘Der Abscheid’ has for me never been matched on record.

After her final stage performance she remarked to camera 'In my end is my beginning' - this seems to be a perfect summation of her artistic credo, and I can't think of another singer who managed to maintain such consistency throughout a career spanning nearly thirty-five years. By doing so she forged a path followed not only immediately by the likes of Alice Coote and Sarah Connolly but now being trod by the latest generation of English mezzos such as Kathryn Rudge, Jennifer Johnston and Kitty Whately, all of whom share Baker's Northern English roots and are indebted to Baker's vision.

Recordings referenced in this article