Sarah Leonard, soprano with an unrivalled ability to hit the high notes

She ranged from Bach cantatas to works by Harrison Birtwistle and John Harle, whose Silencium was the theme to the TV show Silent Witness

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Sarah Leonard, who has died of a brain tumour aged 71, was the go-to soprano for many avant-garde composers, especially those writing high-flying and athletic music; her voice sat a notch higher than most sopranos, which together with her dedication and professionalism made her one of the genre’s most indispensable singers.
Michael Nyman was one of many who wrote with her in mind, notably in Memorial, his searing vocal elegy composed in the aftermath of the Heysel Stadium disaster of May 1985 and later used in his theme tune for Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989). “Foolishly I mentioned to him that I had some high notes,” she said, adding that the result was a soprano part that starts on top C and “goes up and down, and up and down, and up and up”.
The real difficulty was not so much producing the sound, but that when singing so high she could not hear whether she was sharp or flat. “You just have to trust what’s going on next to you,” she added.
Another composer whose music stretched her was György Ligeti, whose Aventures et Nouvelle Aventures contain what she described as “extended vocal techniques”. She gave more than 30 performances of the work, mostly in Europe, “and each was a thrill”. Between engagements she sang Mozart to check her technical abilities.
Sarah Leonard went on to embrace works by Harrison Birtwistle, Jonathan Harvey and John Harle, whose Silencium (2011) she can be heard singing as part of the theme to the TV show Silent Witness. She also sang oratorio and cantatas, especially by Bach. “But when you do that, no one tends to review it,” she told The Independent, “and when you premiere a new work, they do.”
Sarah Jane Leonard was born in Winchester on April 10 1953, the daughter of Kingsley Leonard and Marjorie, née Lait. She started learning the violin aged eight and the piano at nine. 
Joining her father in the church choir, she was soon learning a couple of new pieces each week – good preparation for the future. The organist was a friend of the composer Roger Quilter, whose art songs she sang.
At the Guildhall School of Music and Drama she studied English song with Benjamin Luxon and contemporary song with Noelle Barker while gaining a solid all-round grounding. 
“We did everything. French song, Lieder, oratorio, Mozart, Italian song,” she said. She sang with church choirs in London and took part in Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms at the Royal Albert Hall conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
Her studies were followed by five years with the BBC Singers under Pierre Boulez. “We were expected to learn new music all the time,” she said. She also sang with the Endymion Ensemble and London Sinfonietta Voices, before going solo. Her debut at La Scala in Milan was in the 1989 premiere of Giacomo Manzoni’s Dr Faustus – “tough music, which the audience didn’t like much,” she recalled.
Sarah Leonard was committed to the next generation of singers. She taught a musical theatre course at the Central School of Speech and Drama, gave master classes at the Benslow Music education trust in Hertfordshire and Jackdaws in Somerset, and offered coaching from her studio in Bromley. She was also chairman of the Association of English Singers and Speakers.
She had no time for the canard that contemporary music ruins the voice. “Of course you have to be careful about what you do, and how much,” she said. “But it’s like any other kind of singing – you have to keep going back to the roots of that technique.”
Sarah Leonard was appointed MBE in June. Her marriage in 1975 to a BBC colleague called Michael Parkinson, was dissolved, and in 2011 she married Peter Kelly, who survives her with a son and daughter of her first marriage.
Sarah Leonard, born April 10 1953, died October 31 2024
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