Margaret Balfour

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This article is about the English singer. Another Margaret Balfour was the mother of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Margaret Balfour (died January 1961) was an English classical singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is best remembered as the angel in Elgar's own recording of The Dream of Gerontius (1927) and one of the 16 soloists in the original performance of Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music (1938).

A mezzo-soprano, she sang Bach's Mass in B Minor with Elisabeth Schumann and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates on May 29, 1929 at Kingsway Hall, London; HMV recorded this performance. She sang Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the BBC Chorus and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini at the Queen's Hall, London, on November 3, 1937. She was a soloist at the Handel Festival conducted by Henry Wood at Alexandra Palace in 1939.

[edit] Sources

• UK Civil Registration Index
• Olson, Ruth. '[STUDLEY] Re: Roll call ', Rootsweb.com STUDLEY-L Archives, (December 15, 2000) Retrieved April 12, 2005
• Barwell, Ivan. "The Finest Concert Organ in Europe" : A Brief History of The Willis Concert Organ at the Alexandra Palace (London, 1993)
• Date of death