Ricci and the Wood Thrush

 

A treasured possession from my Grandmother Harvey is a 1936 Birds of America, and one day reading about the Wood Thrush I came to this page:

I did a radio show containing this same piece (which will be on the HPPR site soon), but time constraints allowed only a portion of the duet. So I put it here on the website for anyone interested in hearing the entire thing. It amazes me, so maybe it will also amaze others.       Sometimes I fiddle with the timing of bird recordings — to fit them into a narrative, or underscore a point. But in this case, I simply laid one track with the Ricci performance next to a second track with a 1951 Peter Paul Kellogg recording of a single Wood Thrush singing... and to my ears, at least, the result is pure magic. Hope you agree!

Click HERE to listen to violinist Ruggiero Ricci, playing Gounod’s “Garden Scene” from the opera Faust... with Wood Thrush accompaniment. (7 minutes, 30 seconds)