Link to Oxford Lieder
Lied, mélodie and song.
The eleventh Oxford-Lieder Festival: Holywell Music Room, 12 to 27 October 2012.
This year’s Lieder Festival offered such a rich and varied programme that the problem was to decide what not to go to. I decided, therefore, to forgo the annual journey through the winter landscape with the Miller’s beautiful daughter and other well-known cycles and many of the great established singers, regulars at these Festivals. Non-missable were the recording of Wolf’s Spanischers Liederbuch, Young Artist duo Sónia Grané and Edwige Herschenroder, Lucy Crowe with Anna Tilbrook and the final concert with Susanna Andersson and Stephan Loges but the intention was to attend as much of the rest as stamina would allow. I report the highlights. As usual, the opening event was the Schools’ Project Concert. This year it was given in the Ashmolean Museum by students from North and West Kidlington Primary Schools.
Two concerts were devoted to latest stage of Oxford Lieder complete recording, in the Holywell Music Room, of the songs of Hugo Wolf with Sholto Kynoch as unifying pianist. The first concert and the second half of the second were devoted to the Spanisches Liederbuch and the remainder to early settings of Nikolas Lenau. Indispensable pre-concert talks given respectively by Amanda Glauert and Richard Wigmore who gave us the background of the German fascination with their idea of Spanishness – a mixture of Torquemada and Carmen – and told us what to listen to – the importance of the words with their close integration with the melody and the complex commentary of the piano. The result was we all had our heads buried in the texts, a little discourteous to the body language of the singers! The singers were all equally inspired: German-born soprano Birgid Steinberger and the British Anna Huntley (mezzo, specially deserving of praise for standing in at the last moment), Benjamin Hulett (tenor) and Marcus Farnsworth (baritone). The words were all clear and the German good but (as with Stephan Loges in the Mörike Lieder recorded in 2010) the native German speaker had the edge, although the soprano was a little disappointing in the second concert.
How refreshing it was, after the intensity of Wolf, to attend the following evening a light hearted concert representing the different attitudes to love in the music of the German Lied in Mendelssohn and Mahler, of French mélodies in Debussy and Fauré and of English cabaret represented by Noel Coward and Michael Flanders, the last now sufficiently mature to find a legitimate place on the song-concert platform. The singers were ever youthful and ebullient Sophie Daneman much loved by Oxford-Lieder audiences (she revealed her true age in relation to the death of Flanders in 1975) and baritone Christopher Purves, with an enormous dynamic range and a divine pianissimo, who burst into our senses as Wozzeck for WNO in 2005. The pianist was one of the best accompanists around, Simon Lepper, whose rippling touch adapted perfectly to the different styles of the music. The entertaining programme of solos and duets culminated in the tragic story of the honeysuckle and the bindweed and Have some Madiera, m’dear which brought the house down.
A lunchtime concert marking the anniversary of the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was given by two outstanding young singers Sofia Larsson and Andri Björn Róbertsson, with two equally talented pianists, Manon Ablett and Finnegan Downie Dear. Their performance of fourteen spring-related songs from Fischer-Dieskau’s repertoire was more than worthy of the occasion. The same evening a shamefully small audience was entranced by two other young duos, winners of Oxford Lieder’s Young Artist Platform 2011. They are Portuguese soprano Sónia Grané with French pianist Edwige Herchenroder, who so impressed at the auditions and at a lunch-time concert last year, with Fauré sung with a delicacy never heard before, and French baritone Victor Sicatrd with Spanish pianist Anna Cardona who I had not heard previously. The first half of the programme was devoted to Debussy, Fauré and a duet by Duparc, an uncharacteristic work completely unknown to me, describing a lover attempting to persuade a reluctant mistress to elope. No disrespect is intended when I say that it is a pity the Fauré had to be divided between the two singers. Grané’ and partner’s Fauré is special and one could listen to it forever. Grané’s voice has grown in power since last year and has developed a pure upper register but at no cost to the intimacy of her delivery. The second half of the concert was devoted to Brahms in which both duos were equally at home, albeit with a Latin flavour. Sicard excelled in four Zigeunerlieder. The concert ended with four of the Lieberslieder-walzer with the two duos performing together in perfect harmony.
The three duo winners of the 2012 Young Artist Platform awards each gave a short daytime recital but one, mezzo Rozanna Madylus, also joined tenor Robert Murray and pianist Andrew West in Brahms and Janáček in a programme which included Schumann’s Dichterliebe. Madylus has an arrestingly mature voice and stage personality and more than held her own against the men. Apart from her, the first half was very disappointing. The opening duet Guten Abend mein tausiger Schatz was enacted as if it were a businessman propositioning his secretary and being rebuffed. This total absence of German romanticism permeated the interpretation of both singer and pianist in Dichterliebe. Murray has a good voice with clearly contrasted piano and forte with a brave fortissimo but unfortunately not much in between. All was forgiven in the second half of the concert, devoted to a rare live performance of Janáček’s mysterious song cycle – cantata The Diary of One Who Disappeared (which was, after all, the reason most of us were there). Madylus gave a convincingly seductive performance as the dark eyed gypsy girl bringing about the downfall of the young farmer with a vocal backing group of a trio of sirens at the back of the Room. Sung in English, the words were so clear that there was no need to refer to the provided text. The mastery of both tenor and pianist totally redeemed the failings of the first half.
On phoning to check my transport for Saturday evening I leaned not only that I had missed a fantastic recital by James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook the previous evening but that the concert with Tilbrook and Lucy Crowe had had to be cancelled. This was the first cancellation of many which blighted the second week of the Festival. For me, equally irreplaceable was Katerina Karnéus, even though the substitutes were Geraldine McGreevy and Lisa Milne. As a result, the next concert I attended was Sarah Connolly with Eugene Asti and viola player Philip Dukes in a short but deeply intense and unusual programme of Schumann and Brahms. Connolly divides her time between the concert platform and the operatic stage. In the opera house she is just one of many outstanding performers but in Lieder she stands out as someone special. Who, who was there, can forget her 2008 Festival performance of Frauenliebe und -leben? The only regret was that she did not sing the advertised Brahms’ Vier ernste Gesänge. Nevertheless it was a fascinating programme. She sang Schumann’s sombre settings of Gedichte der Köningin Maria Stuart and Brahms. The latter included familiar songs transcribed for viola and piano and two unfamiliar works with viola, voice and piano. The contralto of the viola did not blend naturally with the mezzo-soprano. The concert ended in response to the deserved ovation with three deeply felt encores concluding, fittingly, with the fourth of Mahler’s five Rückert Lieder
A regular feature of the Lieder Festival is the Master Course for young student duos, this year under the leadership of Wolfgang Holzmair. I managed to attend one session given by Roger Vignoles with four duos. Vignoles is brilliant in this role inspiring both performers and eavesdroppers with his insights into the songs in their cultural contexts. On this occasion three of the duos were still in the formative stage in their training and their choices of song over-ambitious – Wolf, Ravel and Duparc. The fourth, tenor William Morgan with John Paul Ekins, impressed and interacted well with the tutor.
The last lunchtime concert was given by the second prize winners of the 2012 Young Artist Platform, soprano Alison Rose with Matthew Fletcher. In an interesting programme of Venetian songs, Rose played the role to perfection with great charm and maturity. After songs in Italian by Rossini and Respighi, there followed Lieder by Marx and Schumann and seven from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch sung in German. The pianist entered the spirit of things but was slightly heavy-handed. We regretted that time did not permit the demanded encore!
Who better to give the final concert but the Artistic Director and pianist Sholto Kynoch with two singers whose careers since their student days and now thanks to Oxford Lieder are familiar to Oxford audiences? Swedish soprano Susanna Anderson was in fact spotted by us when, supported at the Guildhall School by the Anglo-Swedish Society, she gave a recital at the Ambassador’s Residence. She first appeared in Oxford at the 2005 Lieder Festival. Baritone Stephan Loges first appeared as a replacement in a rush hour concert in 2006. Now both stand comparison with the best of Lieder singers. The programme of Schubert songs was introduced in a pre-concert talk by Natasha Loges in her usual lucid and instructive style. The first half of the programme was devoted to settings of extended mythological texts by Goethe, Mayerhofer and Schiller. Outstanding memories, which best epitomised the full extent of the singers abilities were the Goethe settings An schwager Kronos and Ganymed, sung by baritone and soprano respectively. The second half, in contrast, consisted of settings of pastoral and love poems by the brothers Schlegel, charmingly enacted by Andersson and more reservedly by Loges. As encores Andersson sang a song by her compatriot Wilhelm Peterson- Berger followed by a further Schlegel setting from Loges. As usual Kynoch provided firm support to the singers at the same time allowing the piano to contribute its full part.
Once again our thanks are due to the Oxford Lieder Team led by Sholto Kynoch for producing and for the smooth running of a Festival now deserving of full international recognition.
29 October 2012
The eleventh Oxford-Lieder Festival: Holywell Music Room, 12 to 27 October 2012.
This year’s Lieder Festival offered such a rich and varied programme that the problem was to decide what not to go to. I decided, therefore, to forgo the annual journey through the winter landscape with the Miller’s beautiful daughter and other well-known cycles and many of the great established singers, regulars at these Festivals. Non-missable were the recording of Wolf’s Spanischers Liederbuch, Young Artist duo Sónia Grané and Edwige Herschenroder, Lucy Crowe with Anna Tilbrook and the final concert with Susanna Andersson and Stephan Loges but the intention was to attend as much of the rest as stamina would allow. I report the highlights. As usual, the opening event was the Schools’ Project Concert. This year it was given in the Ashmolean Museum by students from North and West Kidlington Primary Schools.
Two concerts were devoted to latest stage of Oxford Lieder complete recording, in the Holywell Music Room, of the songs of Hugo Wolf with Sholto Kynoch as unifying pianist. The first concert and the second half of the second were devoted to the Spanisches Liederbuch and the remainder to early settings of Nikolas Lenau. Indispensable pre-concert talks given respectively by Amanda Glauert and Richard Wigmore who gave us the background of the German fascination with their idea of Spanishness – a mixture of Torquemada and Carmen – and told us what to listen to – the importance of the words with their close integration with the melody and the complex commentary of the piano. The result was we all had our heads buried in the texts, a little discourteous to the body language of the singers! The singers were all equally inspired: German-born soprano Birgid Steinberger and the British Anna Huntley (mezzo, specially deserving of praise for standing in at the last moment), Benjamin Hulett (tenor) and Marcus Farnsworth (baritone). The words were all clear and the German good but (as with Stephan Loges in the Mörike Lieder recorded in 2010) the native German speaker had the edge, although the soprano was a little disappointing in the second concert.
How refreshing it was, after the intensity of Wolf, to attend the following evening a light hearted concert representing the different attitudes to love in the music of the German Lied in Mendelssohn and Mahler, of French mélodies in Debussy and Fauré and of English cabaret represented by Noel Coward and Michael Flanders, the last now sufficiently mature to find a legitimate place on the song-concert platform. The singers were ever youthful and ebullient Sophie Daneman much loved by Oxford-Lieder audiences (she revealed her true age in relation to the death of Flanders in 1975) and baritone Christopher Purves, with an enormous dynamic range and a divine pianissimo, who burst into our senses as Wozzeck for WNO in 2005. The pianist was one of the best accompanists around, Simon Lepper, whose rippling touch adapted perfectly to the different styles of the music. The entertaining programme of solos and duets culminated in the tragic story of the honeysuckle and the bindweed and Have some Madiera, m’dear which brought the house down.
A lunchtime concert marking the anniversary of the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was given by two outstanding young singers Sofia Larsson and Andri Björn Róbertsson, with two equally talented pianists, Manon Ablett and Finnegan Downie Dear. Their performance of fourteen spring-related songs from Fischer-Dieskau’s repertoire was more than worthy of the occasion. The same evening a shamefully small audience was entranced by two other young duos, winners of Oxford Lieder’s Young Artist Platform 2011. They are Portuguese soprano Sónia Grané with French pianist Edwige Herchenroder, who so impressed at the auditions and at a lunch-time concert last year, with Fauré sung with a delicacy never heard before, and French baritone Victor Sicatrd with Spanish pianist Anna Cardona who I had not heard previously. The first half of the programme was devoted to Debussy, Fauré and a duet by Duparc, an uncharacteristic work completely unknown to me, describing a lover attempting to persuade a reluctant mistress to elope. No disrespect is intended when I say that it is a pity the Fauré had to be divided between the two singers. Grané’ and partner’s Fauré is special and one could listen to it forever. Grané’s voice has grown in power since last year and has developed a pure upper register but at no cost to the intimacy of her delivery. The second half of the concert was devoted to Brahms in which both duos were equally at home, albeit with a Latin flavour. Sicard excelled in four Zigeunerlieder. The concert ended with four of the Lieberslieder-walzer with the two duos performing together in perfect harmony.
The three duo winners of the 2012 Young Artist Platform awards each gave a short daytime recital but one, mezzo Rozanna Madylus, also joined tenor Robert Murray and pianist Andrew West in Brahms and Janáček in a programme which included Schumann’s Dichterliebe. Madylus has an arrestingly mature voice and stage personality and more than held her own against the men. Apart from her, the first half was very disappointing. The opening duet Guten Abend mein tausiger Schatz was enacted as if it were a businessman propositioning his secretary and being rebuffed. This total absence of German romanticism permeated the interpretation of both singer and pianist in Dichterliebe. Murray has a good voice with clearly contrasted piano and forte with a brave fortissimo but unfortunately not much in between. All was forgiven in the second half of the concert, devoted to a rare live performance of Janáček’s mysterious song cycle – cantata The Diary of One Who Disappeared (which was, after all, the reason most of us were there). Madylus gave a convincingly seductive performance as the dark eyed gypsy girl bringing about the downfall of the young farmer with a vocal backing group of a trio of sirens at the back of the Room. Sung in English, the words were so clear that there was no need to refer to the provided text. The mastery of both tenor and pianist totally redeemed the failings of the first half.
On phoning to check my transport for Saturday evening I leaned not only that I had missed a fantastic recital by James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook the previous evening but that the concert with Tilbrook and Lucy Crowe had had to be cancelled. This was the first cancellation of many which blighted the second week of the Festival. For me, equally irreplaceable was Katerina Karnéus, even though the substitutes were Geraldine McGreevy and Lisa Milne. As a result, the next concert I attended was Sarah Connolly with Eugene Asti and viola player Philip Dukes in a short but deeply intense and unusual programme of Schumann and Brahms. Connolly divides her time between the concert platform and the operatic stage. In the opera house she is just one of many outstanding performers but in Lieder she stands out as someone special. Who, who was there, can forget her 2008 Festival performance of Frauenliebe und -leben? The only regret was that she did not sing the advertised Brahms’ Vier ernste Gesänge. Nevertheless it was a fascinating programme. She sang Schumann’s sombre settings of Gedichte der Köningin Maria Stuart and Brahms. The latter included familiar songs transcribed for viola and piano and two unfamiliar works with viola, voice and piano. The contralto of the viola did not blend naturally with the mezzo-soprano. The concert ended in response to the deserved ovation with three deeply felt encores concluding, fittingly, with the fourth of Mahler’s five Rückert Lieder
A regular feature of the Lieder Festival is the Master Course for young student duos, this year under the leadership of Wolfgang Holzmair. I managed to attend one session given by Roger Vignoles with four duos. Vignoles is brilliant in this role inspiring both performers and eavesdroppers with his insights into the songs in their cultural contexts. On this occasion three of the duos were still in the formative stage in their training and their choices of song over-ambitious – Wolf, Ravel and Duparc. The fourth, tenor William Morgan with John Paul Ekins, impressed and interacted well with the tutor.
The last lunchtime concert was given by the second prize winners of the 2012 Young Artist Platform, soprano Alison Rose with Matthew Fletcher. In an interesting programme of Venetian songs, Rose played the role to perfection with great charm and maturity. After songs in Italian by Rossini and Respighi, there followed Lieder by Marx and Schumann and seven from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch sung in German. The pianist entered the spirit of things but was slightly heavy-handed. We regretted that time did not permit the demanded encore!
Who better to give the final concert but the Artistic Director and pianist Sholto Kynoch with two singers whose careers since their student days and now thanks to Oxford Lieder are familiar to Oxford audiences? Swedish soprano Susanna Anderson was in fact spotted by us when, supported at the Guildhall School by the Anglo-Swedish Society, she gave a recital at the Ambassador’s Residence. She first appeared in Oxford at the 2005 Lieder Festival. Baritone Stephan Loges first appeared as a replacement in a rush hour concert in 2006. Now both stand comparison with the best of Lieder singers. The programme of Schubert songs was introduced in a pre-concert talk by Natasha Loges in her usual lucid and instructive style. The first half of the programme was devoted to settings of extended mythological texts by Goethe, Mayerhofer and Schiller. Outstanding memories, which best epitomised the full extent of the singers abilities were the Goethe settings An schwager Kronos and Ganymed, sung by baritone and soprano respectively. The second half, in contrast, consisted of settings of pastoral and love poems by the brothers Schlegel, charmingly enacted by Andersson and more reservedly by Loges. As encores Andersson sang a song by her compatriot Wilhelm Peterson- Berger followed by a further Schlegel setting from Loges. As usual Kynoch provided firm support to the singers at the same time allowing the piano to contribute its full part.
Once again our thanks are due to the Oxford Lieder Team led by Sholto Kynoch for producing and for the smooth running of a Festival now deserving of full international recognition.
29 October 2012