‘Beyond the Music—Marian Anderson’ Review: A Wide-Ranging Artist

[peekaboo]

A 15-CD boxed set from Sony Classical includes spirituals, art songs, carols, choral works and opera arias by the renowned contralto and civil-rights activist.

Marian Anderson c. 1936

Photo: Sony Music Entertainment

Marian Anderson occupies a unique place in American music history: A renowned contralto here and abroad, she became an icon of the civil-rights movement in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington because she was Black. In protest, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt famously resigned from the organization and helped spearhead a short outdoor recital by the singer, then age 42, at the Lincoln Memorial. It drew an integrated audience of about 75,000 and was broadcast on NBC Radio.

By then, Anderson had won acclaim in the U.S. and Europe, where her recital in Paris captured the attention of Sol Hurok, one of the most influential talent agents, and a concert in Salzburg, Austria, prompted maestro Arturo Toscanini to say that a voice like hers “is heard once in a hundred years.” The contralto voice, which typically lies between that of a tenor and mezzo-soprano, is the rarest of female vocal types, and Anderson’s range was wider than most. Her low notes were full-bodied; her high notes, which ventured into soprano territory, had ringing clarity. 

Her evolution as a recording artist is revealed in “Beyond the Music—Marian Anderson,” a 15-CD boxed set from Sony Classical. Out Aug. 27, it unites all the singer’s releases of art songs, spirituals, carols, choral works and occasional opera arias for RCA Victor—her primary label—made between 1923 and 1966. The music has been impressively transferred and mastered from the original analog recordings by a team led by Grammy-winning engineer Andreas K. Meyer. Many tracks are appearing on CD for the first time. 

American opera singer Marian Anderson performs on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Photo: Getty Images

The discs are ensconced in a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book that includes period photos, liner notes, news clippings and more, along with a vibrant essay by American historian Raymond Arsenault. Anderson (1897-1993), born in south Philadelphia, joined the Union Baptist Church’s junior choir at age 6. Her father died when she was 12, leaving her mother and young Marian—who deferred high school for several years—to support the family. Thanks to their church and community, funds were raised for Anderson to study with local voice teachers and, ultimately, in Europe at the suggestion of Black tenor Roland Hayes, a mentor. 

An elegant but resolutely private person, Anderson had to contend with segregation laws and discrimination as she concertized in America. (In 1937, after a hotel in Princeton, N.J., refused her a room, Albert Einstein invited her to his home.) During the ensuing decades, Anderson became increasingly supportive of civil-rights causes and performed at the inauguration ceremonies of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

Musicians often revisit repertoire because of advances in recording technology, which changed a lot during Anderson’s career. So the Sony set contains several versions of certain works, including signature pieces like Brahms’s “Alto Rhapsody,” Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and the spiritual “Deep River.” She made three eloquent recordings of the Brahms with leading conductors of the time: Pierre Monteux, Eugene Ormandy and Fritz Reiner. Of these, the Reiner, with the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra and Robert Shaw Chorale of Men’s Voices, is best both musically and in terms of sound quality.

Four discs in the set are devoted to spirituals, which Anderson rightly championed as part of America’s musical heritage. She gives involving, commanding performances of such standards as “Crucifixion,” “Go Down, Moses (Let My People Go),” and “City Called Heaven.” Overall, her approach is straightforward compared to, say, the bluesy, elongated tempos of contralto Mahalia Jackson or the virtuosity of soprano Kathleen Battle.

In five discs of art songs, particularly those of Haydn, Schubert and Schumann, Anderson displays more expressive freedom. She conveys their poetic narratives, thinning her sound or using the contrasts between vocal registers to differentiate multiple characters. There are no text translations for works sung in foreign languages, a curious omission given the set’s relatively steep price.

Performance practice of Baroque arias in recent decades has favored a purer, sometimes anemic, vocal sound. But Anderson’s warmly hued, affecting rendering of “Have Mercy, Lord, on Me” from Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” is one to treasure, as are two excerpts from Handel’s “Messiah.” 

By 1955, when Anderson became the first Black artist to sing a solo role at the Metropolitan Opera, she was past her prime vocally. She was typecast as the fortune-teller Ulrica in Verdi’s “A Masked Ball,” a role traditionally done in blackface. Two Verdi arias she performed for a studio recording that year prove disappointing, as does an album of spirituals made in 1964, when she began her farewell tour. 

Yet those discs, and the soundtrack to “The Lady From Philadelphia,” a television documentary about her “goodwill” concert tour of Asia in 1957, round out the picture of this remarkable artist. In Malaysia, she discusses the content of “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” from the musical “South Pacific.” It begins with a message that Anderson wished to share with audiences everywhere: “You have to be taught to hate and fear”—apt words that still resonate today.