Margaret Price is one of my favourite sopranos, if not the favourite. She sounds different from anyone else, having an astonishingly pure line, and an inimitable ability for phrasing which seems to pick out every note and yet bind them together with a great sense of purpose. Perhaps this is something to do with the fact that she was actually coached by a pianist rather than a voice teacher - there is something quite pianistic about her singing. She is renowned particularly for Mozart and Lieder - her diction is impeccable, as is her German, and she is especially admired in Germany.

Price started her career, surprisingly, as a mezzo, and debuted as Cherubino. This might seem an unlikely role for her considering her later career, but by all accounts she was sensational. There is a recording of her singing 'Voi che sapete', and although the tone is unmistakably soprano, her tone is so pure that she is one of the most convincingly boy-like Cherubinos on disc. Her Fiordiligi, recorded under Klemperer, is also incredible - she is one of the few sopranos really qualified to sing it, having the full range for the role.

Whilst she made her name as a Mozartian, Margaret Price did go on to sing heavier roles, including Verdi (Desdemona, Amelia, A�da) and her Desdemona is, if not entirely idiomatic, the most beautifully sung on disc. She also made a celebrated studio recording of Isolde, a role she never took on the stage, and again it is incredibly beautiful, even though it is obviously not a role it would have been wise for her to sing in performance.

Unfortunately Price's Strauss is rather under-represented on disc. She is on the most recently recorded Ariadne, though rather late in her career, and there doesn't seem to be much else. I know she has never sung the Marschallin, which seems a pity, and I have no idea whether she ever sang Chrysothemis or the Countess from Capriccio, but if she didn't she ought to have done. Similarly, there is little Wagner - I would very much like to have heard her as Elsa or Sieglinde.