R.I.P. Margaret Price & John Barry

[MakarovaFan]

We lost 2 great musicians this week. Margaret Price, whose majesterial Isolde on the Carlos Kleiber recording set a new standard for the role, passed away several days ago. I haven't heard heard her other recordings, but her Isolde is so exquisitely beautiful, feminine and vulnerable that I'm haunted by it every time I hear her sing.

We also lost John Barry. Most of his James Bond scores were fabulous, my favorites being "You Only Live Twice" and "Goldfinger". His score for "The Lion in Winter", "Robin & Marian", "Body Heat", "Somewhere in Time" and "Out of Africa" were also wonderful. Barry is up there with other all-time great film composers like Bernard Hermann, Alex North, Franz Waxmann and Jerry Goldsmith.

[richard53dog]

We lost 2 great musicians this week. Margaret Price, whose majesterial Isolde on the Carlos Kleiber recording set a new standard for the role, passed away several days ago. I haven't heard heard her other recordings, but her Isolde is so exquisitely beautiful, feminine and vulnerable that I'm haunted by it every time I hear her sing.

MK, The Kleiber/Price/Kollo Tristan is really exquisite but it always remains for me a bit of a hothouse kind of effort. I can't imagine the performance working in the theater, as fine as it is as a studio creation.

So while I do treasure it, I really will remember Maggie more for her Mozart, Strauss, and Verdi where she really was successfully with both studio and stage versions of many works.

I only saw her a few times in the opera house, she cancelled a LOT and cancelled on me almost as many times as I actually saw her. But I was fortunate enough to hear and see her as Mozart's Countess, Verdi's Desdemona, Amelia Boccanegra, and Giovanna D'Arco.

I also remember her on a number of recordings; Strauss' Four LAst Songs, Verdi's Ballo, Strauss' Ariadne (this in the first version) as well as her wonderful collections of Mozart arias for RCA under Lockhart.

She wasn't at a terribly advanced age, not quite 70, which isn't very old. But it seems like her last years were very happy, while her career was rewarding in some ways, I know she found it very difficult in other ways, but after retiring she settled in an old farmhouse in Wales and bred Golden Retrievers. And it seemed that this last was fullfilling for her; the dogs were much less stressfull for her than working conditions in the worlds opera houses were. So at least the last part of her life was very happy and I hope she made provisions for someone to take over her canine children.

[dirac]

Thanks for those recollections, richard53dog. She had such a wonderful creamy sound.

Yes, a sad week in music, MakorovaFan. I tend to like Moonraker and On Her Majesty's Secret Service best of Barry's Bond scores. Out of Africa, Robin and Marian...too many. Impossible to think of Body Heat without its score, I hate the overused term "evocative" but there you are. He's up there with the great movie composers, as you say. RIP.

[dirac]

Comments on Price by Anne Midgette in The Washington Post's blog.

This impression was born out years later when I heard her in an opera concert in Munich singing Verdi arias. Desdemona's Act IV scene is not an ideal concert aria: it's long and can verge, in the wrong voice, on the lugubrious (that's a lot of wounded innocence for one scene). Dame Margaret had acquitted herself fairly well until that point in the evening; but when she sang Desdemona, time simply stopped. It was the outstanding moment of the evening.

BBC News audio slideshow of John Barry's music.