Not two minutes after Sybille Werner forwarded news of the magnificent Maureen Forrester’s passing as reported in the Globe and Mail, Tony Tommasini’s NY Times obit went live.

Forrester had an enormous repertoire, but was a great Mahler singer and a major champion of the composer’s music at the start of his postwar resurgence; the famous bootleg of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with tenor Richard Lewis and Bruno Walter conducting the “Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra” is one of the great live Mahler recordings of all time (despite one premature entrance by Lewis), and the “official” studio recording with Lewis and Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an unexpectedly vehement, emotionally intense experience. Her stunning recording of Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder with Ferenc Fricsay conducting the RSO Berlin on Deutsche Grammophon has been elusive (it was released about a decade ago in a nine-disc Fricsay set) but is worth seeking out.