The 2009 Oxford Lieder Festival, Holywell Music Room and elsewhere, 16-31 October 2009.

The Oxford Lieder Festival now in its eighth year has developed into a major international event, exploring all aspects of song, since its early years featuring mainly young, local singers and pianists concentrating on the German romantic repertoire. Founded by the pianist Sholto Kynoch who has presided as Artistic Director, performer and indefatigable master of ceremonies, it has gone from strength to strength. This year it attracted packed audiences to almost every event. I have been reporting the proceedings for Oxford Magazine since 2005 and it has been fascinating to refer back to what I wrote at the time not only about returning singers whose developing careers it has been possible to follow but also about different interpretations of the great song cycles and other parts of the repertoire. An invaluable aide-memoire is the web-site www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/events. Attendance at the festivals has been an accumulating experience of enrichment with its rituals of early arrival, often contending with the pre-concert speaker for the last parking-space outside Wadham, in order to secure a favoured seat for his talk (always enlightening), greeting and comparing notes with like-minded old and new friends and acquaintances and then listening together with complete concentration (not even disturbed by the sound of turning programme pages).

A feature of the Lieder Festivals has been to present artists of international stature at the pinnacle of their careers. Our earliest enduring memories are of Mark Padmore and Julius Drake in Winterreise in 2004 and Olaf Bär, again with Drake, in Brahms’ Deutsche Volkslieder in 2005. This year their company is joined by baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Andrew West, both known from previous festivals, the latter most recently ‘accompanying’ Florian Boesch in an eccentric performance of Winterreise last year. Their programme contained Wolf, Korngold (1879-1957 – a throwback to the 19th century), Mahler (some lighter songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn) and culminating in a supreme performance of Schumann’s Kerner Lieder. Williams stands almost completely still, commanding our attention through the sheer quality of voice and expression, at one with the pianist. On the contrary, Wolfgang Holzmair enhances his performance with gestures (not universally approved). In 2007, at extremely short notice, Holzmair gave a definitive performance of Dichterliebe with Julius Drake, where I noted the intensity of his feeling for the music and the words, the attention to detail and continuity between songs. The same superlatives apply to this year’s interpretation of Winterreise with Andreas Haefliger. Never before have I heard it performed with such a sense of progression through a winter landscape.

The baritone Stephan Loges first came to our attention at one of the early festivals. This year he replaced at short notice the indisposed tenor Werner Güra to perform the advertised programme of Dichterliebe and Wolf’s settings of Mörike with Roger Vignolles. Loges has a glorious rich full voice doing full justice to Schumann’s settings of Heine. However a lighter tone from both performers in some passages would have added more subtlety to the interpretation. Wolf was beautifully sung. I particularly enjoyed the familiar Verborgenheit and Fussreise and the brilliant yet subtle bravura with which the pianist ended. Another substitution the following evening was young tenor Robin Tritschler for Christopher Maltman to sing Die Schöne Müllerin with Graham Johnson. Despite the difference in age and experience they formed a perfectly balanced duo and this was yet another sensational performance with the pianist providing firm support to a voice of the highest quality. Tritschler (a notable Rodrigo in WNO’s Otello last year) sang with beautiful tone and clarity of diction, bringing us close to tears at times as the cycle unfolded. However he still needs to dig deeper in some of the more dramatic songs, for instance he did not convey the full suspicion, bewilderment and burgeoning jealousy of the key turning point Der Jäger. But he is headed for the top.

The final concert was given by Oxford Lieder audience’s favourite, James Gilchrist, with his fantastic pianist Anna Tilbrook. This year they gave Schubert’s Schwanengesang, the posthumously published set of fourteen settings of Rellstab and Heine, concluding with Die Taubenpost of Seidl. Our appreciation was enhanced by Gilchrist’s pre-concert summary analysis of each poem. This year he moved on from his narration of the Schubert cycles, becoming the poet, his singing voice supporting his crystal-clear enunciation of the words. Perfection.

To many people Des Knaben Wunderhorn signifies the group of songs set by Gustav Mahler to orchestral accompaniment rather than the eponymous volumes of folk verse published in Germany in the first decade of the nineteenth century from which the words are taken. The opening concert of the Festival, given the same title, contrasted settings by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Sinding and Brahms with thirteen of Mahler’s songs in the version for voice and piano – the original of most of them. The singers, known to us from previous festivals, were Rowan Hellier (mezzo) as a student in 2006 and as a member of The Prince Consort last year and baritone William Berger for his contribution to the unforgettable performance of Wolf’s Italienische Liederbuch in 2006 which introduced Oxford audiences to Lucy Crowe; Kynoch played the piano. After a nervous start, both singers settled down to give fine performances both solo and in duet. Berger was particularly impressive in the longer, set-piece narrative songs, especially the darker Mahler. Kynoch held the performance together with great sensitivity and authority although in contrast to the true lieder of the earlier composers, one could not escape feeling that orchestral colouring was a more natural accompaniment to the Mahler.

The first weekend of the Festival was dedicated to three recitals arranged by the pianist Julius Drake centred on the works of Benjamin Britten and composers he esteemed, Beethoven, Schubert, Purcell and Tippett, providing the opportunity to hear his five Canticles composed between 1947 and 1974. Like many I spoke to I was there in a spirit of curiosity, having ambivalent feelings about Britten, not being a sycophantic admirer – would I be beguiled by the craftsmanship or moved by the music? Each of the Canticles carried, in its own way, an enormous emotional impact due in no small part to the clarity of the texts (a feature of Britten’s writing for the voice). Sung in the order I (very personal in nature), III with horn obligato, to Edith Sitwell’s Still falls the Rain on war, V with harp and IV to T.S. Eliot and II a telling of  Abraham and Isaac. The singers were tenor Daniel Norman who was joined by counter tenor William Towers in IV and II and by baritone Nigel Cliffe in IV.  All three gave great and persuasive interpretations. Norman has a fine voice without emulating the distinctive tone of Peter Pears (and none the worse for that). We remember his remarkable performance with Anna Tilbrook of Die Schöne Müllerin when he stood in at the last moment for the indisposed James Gilchrist in 2007 and also as Mime in Das Rheingold in the Town Hall earlier this year. Richard Watkins of the Nash Ensemble was the horn player. With their characteristic robust tone he played also Beethoven’s sonata and, with Norman, Schubert’s Auf dem Strom. The harpist Lucy Wakeford gave a dexterous and delightful performance of Britten’s Harp Suite. In addition we were ‘beguiled by the craftsmanship’ of Purcell and folksong arrangements.

An evening devoted to Mendelssohn’s songs with words, devised by Richard Stokes and performed by four singers and two pianists from the Royal Academy of Music Song Circle was a revelation. Thirty songs, composed between 1819 when the composer was ten and 1847, the year of his death, were sung in order of composition without interruption. The first four came from the new edition by Eugene Asti of unpublished works found in libraries around Europe, including the Bodleian, which acquired them some fifty years ago. The earlier songs showed an astonishing emotional maturity and natural aptitude, demonstrating that in this genre at least the composer was the equal of the greatest, confounding the historical belittling of his stature alluded to in Stokes’ introduction. I detected a particular affinity

for the poems of Heine. To me this was the lieder discovery of the year comparable, if not greater than, those of Loewe and of Grieg in previous years.

And yet! Immediately after writing this I attended one of three Lunch with Schumann recitals (a feature of these Festivals). This was devoted to his Myrten. Did Mendelssohn ever write anything to match this? It was performed with persuasive and engaging charm by mezzo Katie Bray and bass-baritone John Herford accompanied sensitively by Elizabeth Burgess. Burgess is remembered for her long time association with Oxford Lieder in its organisation as well as performer and particularly for a lunch time concert in 2005 when she partnered soprano Sara Jonsson, now singer-manager of the Oxford Opera Company, in Sibelius. The third Lunch with Schumann, given by students of the Guildhall School, introduced us to a mezzo of great promise Lilly Papaioannou. With a well-developed lower register, presence and dramatic range to match, she impressed, in the Gedichte der Königen Maria Stuart and the contrasted Balsatzar and Die Kartenlegerin, as one with the potential to handle the major Verdi roles

A welcome innovation this year was a recital by 2008 Kathleen Ferrier individual award winners Ben Johnson (tenor) and James Southall (piano). Talented and serious musicians, they did not completely gel as a duo and Johnson did not quite match the immediate audience rapport of previous winners who have appeared at the Lieder Festival, Elizabeth Watts (2006) and Katharine Broderick (2007). An interesting programme contained some of Schubert’s deeper settings and, more successfully, Wolf’s Mörike Lieder.

 

The eighty-six year old American composer Ned Rorem is hardly known this side of the Atlantic. A prolific composer of songs (he claims four hundred by the age of forty) his name occurs rarely in recital programmes or on record labels over here. The Prince Consort ensemble has done a great service to the audience of Oxford Lieder for introducing us to this composer through a performance of his song cycle Evidence of Things Not Seen. The work is in three parts representing three stages of life: Beginnings, Middles and Ends with settings of thirty six poems by twenty four authors. It is an impressive work, not least owing to the standard of the texts, mainly pessimistic in nature, and their carefully crafted juxtaposition. Partly eclectic, with deliberate allusion to other composers and styles the music commanded the utmost concentration, though a lot of it, particularly in the first part, had a ‘trademark’ piano accompaniment of falling broken chords descending to deep isolated bass notes. The words were set to different combinations of the four singers with their founder and leader Alisdair Hogarth on the piano. As in their performance at last year’s festival, the outstanding singer was the mezzo Jennifer Johnston with Anna Leese (soprano), Nicholas Mulroy and Jacques Imbrailo (tenor and baritone). Would I go to hear it again? Yes – but not tomorrow.

There was much else to charm and to enlighten. I mention only the late-night piano recital by Martin Sturfält (who impressed us last year by his advocacy of Stenhammer) whose sensitive playing illuminated Songs without Words in New College Ante-Chapel.

An important element of the Festival is the educational programme under Martin Peters. This year it started with a schools project at Wallingford School, included a singing workshop with Fiona Dobie and concluded with a stimulating study day on music and poetry in fin-de-siècle Paris, focused on settings of Beaudelaire. The main event, however, was the Master Course directed as usual by Sarah Walker for nine voice and piano duos from around the world who received intensive coaching in forty-five minute sessions over three days from Walker with the three pianists Malcolm Martineau, Eugene Asti and Roger Vignolles and culminated in a Participants’ Concert. The performers were all good though varying in their mastery of language and projection of the words; they were all true duos though the piano was generally too loud. The performance which stayed in the mind overnight was the intelligent musicianship of soprano Rebekah Alexander and Molly Wood in Debussy, showing a maturity above the rest: a duo with great potential.

Over the past four years, Oxford Lieder’s Festival has come of age, able now to attract the best performers of all generations and a loyal, dedicated and enthusiastic audience.

17 November 2010