Welcome to Margaret Marshall Songbird

Recordings and stories from the life and career of Soprano Margaret Marshall OBE

Margaret Marshall, singing the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, at Teatro Liceu in Barcelona.

Photo by A. Bofill

Hello and welcome to my website.

I did not set out to launch a website. It is the culmination of a journey that started some four or five years ago with a chance Facebook encounter with a knowledgeable Ukrainian music aficionado, Jacob Mokin. As it happens, this was one of those random social media encounters which triggered a series of events that naturally led to this culmination thanks to the friendship, support and encouragement of some wonderful friends, old and new.

Jacob admired my singing. Moreover, he seemed to have access to performances I had given decades ago which I had never heard since. Indeed, becoming friends with Jacob was like opening a door to a treasure chest of concerts I had performed for radio broadcast which I had either never heard or not heard since their initial broadcast. It had never occurred to me that these might still be available, but with Jacob’s contacts and encouragement I set off on a mission to track down as many of these recordings as possible. I focussed on the first decade of my career, a time that was so new to me, exciting and full of promise.

One of these recordings featured my old school friend John Fraser – who had since become a very successful record producer – as my accompanist. John and I were in the same year at the High School of Stirling, where in our amateur days we would enter local music competitions and even perform at daffodil teas! I sent John a copy of the recording – from a concert at the Wigmore Hall in 1976 – as a memento of our early music making.

John and I had not seen each other for a while – something we quickly rectified – and he soon planned a trip to visit me in France, where I now live. In between enjoying the French countryside, food and wine, I played him some of the recordings that I had tracked down. John, being a man of action, concluded that these should be heard and suggested we find a way to make them publicly available.

There is no better person to make things happen, and we soon found ourselves in Maidenhead where we joined up with a friend of John’s, Philip Hobbs of Linn Records. We spent a very enjoyable day listening to the recordings and by the end of the afternoon had designed an “album” – which I am calling Songbird.

It features performances from between 1974 and 1979, the period which when I look back I feel my voice was at its brightest and freshest. It starts with Purcell’s The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation from the 1974 ARD Munich Competition, at which I won first prize. And encompasses works by J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart and Gerald Finzi – all of which fitted my voice very naturally and which I loved to sing. The majority are from the old radio recordings for which I have obtained the rights to make them available but I have also included some Vivaldi from commercial recordings made during that period.

This repertoire was very much the speciality of my wonderful singing teacher Ena Mitchell to whom I want to dedicate this Songbird programme. Both she and Hans Hotter, with whom I studied in Munich and at whose encouragement I entered the ARD competition, were key people in my life whose knowledge, experience and encouragement were invaluable to me.

The recordings will also be available on Spotify in due course but with the encouragement of John, and my husband Graeme and daughters Nicola and Julia, I decided to also launch this website to share reflections and insights into my career as well as making the programme available. After winning the Munich competition a British newspaper – I think it was the Daily Mail – had a little article with the title “Top Songbird wins in Munich.” I always loved that and my elder granddaughter, Madisyn, who is seven, very carefully coloured in this beautiful picture of a songbird to illustrate it. I hope you enjoy it.