“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,” writes Barbara Jepson in Saturday’s (8/14) Wall Street Journal (subscription required). “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 … made between 1923 and 1966…. The Sony set contains several versions of … signature pieces like Brahms’s ‘Alto Rhapsody,’ Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria,’ and the spiritual ‘Deep River.’ … [In] the soundtrack to … a television documentary about her ‘goodwill” concert tour of Asia in 1957, … 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.”
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