Search - Harry T. (Henry) Burleigh, Lawrence [Composer/Arranger], Spiritual Traditional :: The Essential Leontyne Price: Spirituals, Hymns & Sacred Songs

Leontyne Price's voice is the closest thing to God singing

cruisewhiz | Hawaii | 11/28/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This complilation is actually material from three complete albums, first Swing Low Sweet Chariot-14 Spirituals, then I Wish I Knew How It Would Fell to be Free and finally My Favorite Hymns. Added material from a Boston Pops Christmas album and her God Bless America digital CD.give you a lot of music for the money. Sprirituals and hymns are part of what Leontyne Price is all about and anyone interested in her life and music can't help but want to hear these recording. I recommended it."

Great Gospel Stuff

cruisewhiz | 04/12/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great CD. The only problem I have with it is that on some of the selections there is a boy's choir screaming in the background, and this takes away (a bit) from her performance. That said, her best selections are those that are either unaccompanied or those where her voice is not buried. Songs that strike me are - His Name So Sweet, He's Got The Whole World, Were You There, I Wonder as I Wander, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and my all time favourite Summertime. Enough said."

The Price Club

Kevin Killian | San Francisco, CA United States | 04/27/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

""I am here," said Leontyne Price when interviewed as she opened the new Metropolitan Opera with Samuel Barber's underrated ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, "and you will know that I am the best and will hear me. The color of my skin or the kink of my hair or the spread of my mouth has nothing to do with what you are listening to." Back in the 1960s Price was one of the greatest divas in all of opera, and it wasn't just her voice but her magnificent stage presence, combined with her social activism. All of the above come into play in this collection of secular songs and ditties, some of them traditional plantation chanties and others, art songs and a scattering of pop music. And some of them, like Gershwin's "Summertime," cross the ever-permeable boundaries between Broadway and classical. These recordings were made at different times in Price's career, and her voice, while always angelic, has different shadings and reaches a different range of timbre in each separate recording date, but there is no question that, as time goes by, she is able to impart a richness of life experience noticeably absent from some of her earlier work.



"Ave Maria" sounds heavenly no matter which way you slice it, and as for "I Wonder As I Wander," it brings tears to your eyes. If you have a heart that's beating you will be moved by this rendition. "Ein feste Burg" is pretty strong, but Price seems more comfortable with the traditional spirituals, though perhaps it is the slightly off-kilter sounds of the Ambrosian Singers (what a name) who back her up on many of these tracks, that detract slightly from the experience. Compare "Lead Kindly Light" for a clear sense of what constitutes authority vs. what is a wee bit overproduced. If you had this compilation, and perhaps one of Leontyne Price's Christmas albums, you could attain nirvana any time you wanted to, just flip a switch and close your eyes, let her lift you up on wings of song."