Heather Harper
Heather Harper, one of the most recorded singers of her time, made an extraordinary transition from a lyric soprano in the English pastoral tradition to a spinto-weight artist of great power and authority. While her earliest appearances and recordings brought to mind such other singers as Isobel Baillie and Jennifer Vyvyan, her prime years showed a voice that had grown in size and roundness while retaining its initial flexibility. Many critics have opined that her 1966 recording of Handel's Messiah remains unequaled. While she chose to avoid most of the Italian spinto repertory, her work in the mid-weight German operas of Wagner and Strauss was exemplary, as were her concert and oratorio performances. Harper premiered several works by both Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett and was outstanding in the works of both composers.
Harper studied at the Trinity School of Music in London and made her operatic debut as Verdi's Lady Macbeth at Oxford University in 1954 -- an undertaking that was both out of step with her initial repertory and a precursor of things to come. Her first appearance at the Glyndebourne Festival took place in 1957 when she sang the First Lady in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. She returned to the Sussex countryside in 1960 in the same role and, in 1963, added the role of Anne in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. In 1966, she sang 12 Glyndebourne performances of Handel's Jephtha with such colleagues as Richard Lewis and Margaret Price. In 1960, she sang the role of Helena in Britten's Midsummer's Night Dream at Covent Garden with a cast handpicked by the composer and subsequently recorded. The Bayreuth Festival heard her Elsa in Lohengrin in 1967, not long after she had begun a series of collaborations with Sir George Solti, who was music director at Covent Garden from 1961 to 1971. Her long delayed Metropolitan Opera debut in 1977 offered her Countess in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. She also sang her sympathetic and warm-voiced Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes there.
Harper was a distinguished singer of the concert repertory. It was to her that Britten turned in 1963 when authorities in the Soviet Union refused to grant travel permission to Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, for whom the composer had written the soaring soprano part in his War Requiem. Harper stepped in and was acclaimed for her performance. Throughout the 1960s, Harper also recorded numerous works of Handel (Theodora, Judas Maccabaeus) as well as Classical period works by Haydn (The Seasons and several masses) and Beethoven (Missa Solemnis and the Symphony No. 9). Her recorded performances of Vaughan Williams (Symphonies 1 and 3) and Delius (Mass of Life and Requiem) achieved a fine balance between magisterial distance and passionate involvement. Her participation in Solti's recording of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony alerted many to a burgeoning instrument which was ideal for the lighter German dramatic repertory. She later sang with that conductor on his recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8.
In the 1960s, Harper was brought to Chicago, where Solti was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's music director, for many celebrated performances. She repeated the Mahler Symphony No. 2, sang in Haydn's Creation, performed Bach's Saint Matthew Passion on two separate occasions and participated with Carlo Maria Giulini in Rossini's Stabat Mater. In the latter, her two electrifying, perfectly-placed high Cs attested to the size and thrust of the mature voice.
Harper sang the premieres of both Britten's television opera, Owen Wingrave and Tippett's The Ice Break.
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Discography
18 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Mahler: Symphony No.2 - "Resurrection"
Heather Harper, Helen Watts, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1966
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler 8 "Symphony of a Thousand"
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1972
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Walton: Belshazzar's Feast; Coronation Te Deum; Choral Works; Songs
Sir Georg Solti, Simon Preston, Heather Harper
Classical - Released by Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd. on 1 Jan 1972
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626
Victoria de los Angeles, Peter Glossop, Heather Harper, English Chamber Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on 1 Jan 1966
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Britten: Serenade for Tenor, Nocturne, Les Illuminations
Sir Neville Marriner, Jeffrey Tate, Robert Tear, Heather Harper
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on 6 Feb 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Britten: Peter Grimes
Jon Vickers, Heather Harper, Jonathan Summers, Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Royal Opera House Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1978
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Handel: Judas Maccabeus (Complete Oratorio)
Heather Harper, Helen Watts, Alexander Young, John Shirley-Quirk, ECO/Somary
Classical - Released by Musical Concepts on 1 Jan 1974
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler Symphony No. 2
Helen Watts, Heather Harper, Sir Georg Solti, John Alldis, London Sympohny Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus
Classical - Released by Mangora Classical on 1 Jan 1966
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Heather Harper, Teresa Berganza, English Chamber Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on 1 Jan 1977
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Harty: Complete Orchestral Works
Bryden Thomson, Ulster Orchestra, Heather Harper, Ralph Holmes, Malcolm Binns
Symphonies - Released by Chandos on 1 Apr 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Britten: The Turn Of The Screw
Helen Donath, Heather Harper, Robert Tear, Ava June, Royal Opera House Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1982
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn: The Seasons
Heather Harper, John Shirley-Quirk, BBC Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1968
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Le songe d'une nuit d'été (Mono Version)
Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, Heather Harper
Classical - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1962
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Harty: The Children Of Lir & Ode to a Nightingale
Bryden Thomson, Ulster Orchestra, Heather Harper
Symphonies - Released by Chandos on 1 Jul 1985
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
George Frederick Handel - Messiah (Highlights) (Album of 1963)
Heather Harper, Norma Procter, Richard Lewis, The London Philharmonic Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir John Pritchard
Classical - Released by Ginkgo Classical on 24 Dec 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Busoni: Doktor Faust
London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir
Opera - Released by Cantus Classics on 15 Mar 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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