Kathleen Ferrier – Mahler’s Das-lied-von-der-Erde
Mahler’s Das-lied-von-der-Erde is one of my favourites in the whole world, and particularly one piece that she sings on here ‘Ich bin der Weltabhanden Gekommen’. I first heard it when I went to [McGill] university to study classical music as a vocalist. This would have been 1961. The teacher that I was given was a profound teacher, but also a profound vocalist himself [Canadian composer, Bernard Diamant]. He became internationally known after I left him for specifically for the song repertoire of the 18th, 19th, and very early 20th century.

He introduced me to this piece because I learned to sing it. The words themselves are just stunning, what they said, basically is I have abandoned the world and it talks about having receded into a place of total quiet where whatever is going on in the world was no longer where this being was living within himself.

It's one of the songs that if I was ever going to sing [classical] music again, which I'm not thinking about, but if I were to think about that I have considered that I would love to record this particular piece. It just so happens that one of my very dearest friends is a superb pianist, and she and I have been scheming for years. Do we record a bunch of these things? They wouldn't sell but that's not the point. The point is I would just love to do it.

I have a very deep connection to this music. So deep it's unbelievable. I was really good at singing this particular type of repertoire. I think it was 1966 or 1967, I actually got to represent Canada [at a World Festival] singing this kind of music. I was good at what I did enough to be considered a professional, but one day I had this understanding that I was living a life I'd already lived. That I had been a singer of this kind of music, in some other lifetime, and that's why I was so good, because [laughs] I had already done it.