Leontyne Price "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" 1/2

1968

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Opera
• Song
• Barber
• Leontyne
• Price

[enkiduudikne]

Listen to the music. Read the text. Performing a song, particularly one as theatrical and as tied to a specific time an place as this one, is about far more than beautiful vibrato or gorgeous tone. What Price achieves here is a total synthesis of character, text projection, tone, and emotional content. If you're unable to understand that and just want her singing to be more "pretty", you may know singing, but ya don't know Art.

[Trinite33]

Price achieves ravishingly beautiful singing and heartbreaking expression in this exquisite prose poem. Her "Now is the night one blue dew" is worth a whole raft of songs by any other singer. Miraculous. Thank you Price, Barber and Agee.

[dubonetducon]

"Now is the night one blue dew.. " What words. What music. What singing!!

[MuseDuCafe]

Masterpiece, masterfully performed by all involved. The whole is one, and flexible, clear, and does not fail to communicate for one tick the entire time. Just one of those marvels that keep all of us going to performances, where once in a while, something like this recorded performance, happens. Thanks so much, making it available, and the sound quality, too.

[ZDrums24]

@sutherland9 I would argue that there are times were vibrato is distracting or hinders the performer's interpretation. Whether she was trying to sound like a child or not, the vibrato would be extremely heavy for the first part and the lack of vibrato in this rendition really smooths out the whole overall sound.

[theprophet20]

Simply the most beautiful song of them all...

[goldchenberger]

woooww THIS IS

[Trinite33]

metropolitan1966 Thank you for your gracious comment. We definitely agree on the superb quality of this sterling performance by Miss Price. Her reading here of this beautiful work is simply the best. Happy New Year!

[metropolitan1966]

@Trinite33 Very well stated and perfectly phrased! What you write is the Gospel Truth. I could not have summed this performance up better myself!!

[Varese13]

I think this performance may have special poignancy because, according to Price, she had just lost her father shortly before this recording was made. She says that her thoughts were full of her own childhood in Laurel, Mississippi, and that she had to fight back tears during the recording sessions.