CDs:

• Lorraine Hunter Lieberson, Peter Serkin, Michaela Fukacova, the Odense Symphony Orchestra: Lieberson: Rilke Songs, The Six Realms, Horn Concerto


• Lorraine Hunt Lieberson with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra: Lieberson: Neruda Songs

I'm getting a little tired of reading the obituary pages these days. Columnists Art Buchwald and Molly Ivins, composer Gian Carlo Menotti and singer Frankie Laine (Now there's an interesting pair of nonagenarians!) -- all gone within a few weeks or days of each other, and we're poorer for it.

And on Sunday I was saddened to learn we'd also lost actor Ian Richardson, perhaps best known as the Machiavellian British politician Francis Urquhart (Note those initials!) in the House of Cards series.

As it happens, my introduction to Ian Richardson came decades ago, though I didn't grasp it at the time. When I was in parochial school or thereabouts, Peter Hall's film of A Midsummer Night's Dream captured my imagination (All those fairies and runaway lovers will do that to a kid). It wasn't until the 1990s that I found a copy of it on video and learned to my astonishment that my first exposure to Shakespeare had come courtesy of the combined efforts of Ian Richardson, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, and a heartbreakingly young Helen Mirren.

Still, it's a weird production. For starters, Richardson and Dench, playing, respectively, fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania, appear to be clad in nothing but unevenly applied green body paint, a few judiciously arranged leaves, and the collective prayers of the wardrobe department. Gulp.

But even then Richardson had that voice, and he wasn't afraid to use it. There's nothing quite like hearing him hiss, "Wake when some vile thing is near" into the ear of his bewitched and sleeping queen, Dench, who is about to experience the hook-up from hell.

Then there's Richardson's television reign as Francis Urquhart, the Tory politician whose ambitions are unencumbered by such niceties as, oh, a moral code. Dare we hope that no one in Washington is taking notes on Urquhart's rise to power, especially his approach to the press? "You might well think that; I couldn't possibly comment."

So as Ian Richardson leaves us, his reputation and performances live on, as does that voice.

And thank God for voices that live on and for the means to share them with the world, particularly in the case of mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whose name reappeared in the news when she was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award for her latest recording, Rilke Songs, performances of her husband's settings of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus."

And then there is her recent recording of Lieberson's Neruda Songs, a performance of passion and tenderness, of unguarded emotion. Here there's no mistaking the theme of the poems, the desperation and bliss of lovers.

That Lorraine Hunt Lieberson should conclude her too brief career with such highly personal projects is perhaps fitting, because her career fits no conventional trajectory. A violist whose career gradually turned to vocal performances (a fate sealed when, believe it or not, her viola was stolen), Hunt Lieberson appeared in unconventional stagings of Handel and Mozart works, and made her Metropolitan Opera debut in, of all things, Harbison's The Great Gatsby.

But surely it is her baroque recordings, particularly Handel's oratorios and Bach's cantatas, that brought her the highest acclaim from critics and classical music listeners, and won her a broader audience. Check out the array of projects; it's a formidable list.

But regardless of the repertoire, there was emotional power within Hunt Lieberson's voice, and both the Neruda and the Rilke projects hint at the intensity and fragility of life and relationships. This is not candy box-pretty music; Peter Lieberson does not compose in that vein. But it showcases his wife's musical intelligence and vocal beauty. At times it is an unsettling experience, demanding, yet also beguiling and intensely moving.

And we will hear her voice again and again, down through the years.