Muriel Brunskill
Muriel Brunskill, (born in Kendal 18 December 1899, died February 1980) was a British contralto of the mid-twentieth century.
Her teachers included Blanche Marchesi. Her professional début was in 1922.
To celebrate Elgar’s 70th birthday in 1927 the BBC broadcast a birthday concert from No 1 Studio, Savoy Hill. Elgar conducted, and Muriel Brunskill sang in The Music Makers and Sea Pictures.
In Sir Thomas Beecham’s first recording of Messiah, in 1927, Muriel Brunskill was one of the soloists, along with Dora Labbette, Harold Williams, Hubert Eisdell, and Nellie Walker.
In recordings of the same period, Brunskill was the contralto soloist in Felix Weingartner’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and Marthe in Beecham’s Faust. Also in the Faust cast were Heddle Nash, Robert Easton and Harold Williams who, on 5 October 1938 joined Brunskill among the original 16 singers in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music (as did another Marchesi pupil, Astra Desmond.)
In 1936, she appeared as Kundry alongside Herbert Heyner, Norman Walker and Victor Harding, in a presentation of Parsifal for the BBC under Sir Henry J. Wood, and in 1938 he cast her among the soloists for his performance (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic Choir) of Mahler's 8th Symphony, the Symphony of a Thousand.[1]
Early in Henry Wood's autumn 1940 season at Queen's Hall, Muriel Brunskill sang the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, ('jolly well' according to Sir Henry).[2] She sang the angel in The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Malcolm Sargent on 10 May 1941, the very last concert given in the Queen's Hall, which was destroyed by a German incendiary bomb that night in an air raid.[3]
In 1942 to mark Arthur Sullivan's centenary week, the BBC broadcast The Golden Legend from the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Sir Henry Wood with soloists including Muriel Brunskill.
In 1950, she appeared in and recorded songs from the musical Golden City by John Tore, and in 1953 appeared in the film The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan.
In a 2001 history of the Wigmore Hall (details below), the critic Alan Blyth remembers Muriel Brunskill's 'formidable presence with her handbag plonked on the piano lid.
Recordings
Recordings include:
- Elgar's Interpreters on Record Volume 2 - Historic Recordings Dutton CDAX8020
- The King and I / Golden City Sepia
- Gounod: Faust Harold Williams (baritone), Robert Carr (baritone), Robert Easton (bass), Clarence Raybould (conductor) Dutton Laboratories
- Handel: Messiah Sir Thomas Beecham (conductor), BBC Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dora Labbette, Nellie Walker, Muriel Brunskill, Hubert Eisdell Pearl
- Vaughan Williams: Vocal Works Pearl
- Sir Henry Wood conducts Vaughan Williams Sir Henry Wood (conductor), Lilian Stiles-Allen, Dame Isobel Baillie, Elsie Suddaby, Dame Eva Turner, Margaret Balfour, Muriel Brunskill, Astra Desmond, Mary Jarred, Parry Jones, Heddle Nash, Frank Titterton, Walter Widdop, Roy Henderson, Norman Allin, Robert Easton, Harold Williams, Queen's Hall Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra Dutton
References
Ed. Julia MacRae: Wigmore Hall: 1901-2001 - A Celebration ; London, Wigmore Hall Trust ISBN 0-9539581-0-8
External links
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