Leeds Lieder Festival
Leeds College of Music
Friday 2 October 2009
8.15pm –10.00
Christianne Stotijn (mezzo soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)
A Woman’s Life and Love
Edvard Grieg:
Gruβ
Dereinst, Gedanke mein
Lauf der Welt
Die verschwiegene Nachtigall
Zur Rosenzeit
Ein Traum
Robert Schumann: Fünf Lieder op 40
Märveilchen
Muttertraum
Der Soldat
Der Spielmann
Verratene Liebe
Gustav Mahler: Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt
Wo die schöne Trompeten blasen
Das irdische Leben
Nicht Wiedersehen
Urlicht
Robert Schumann: Frauenliebe und Leben
Seit ich ihn gesehen
Er, der Herrlichste von allen
Ich kann’s nich fassen, nicht glauben
Du Ring an meinem Finger
Helft mir, ihr Schwestern
Süβer Freund, du blickest
An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust
Nun hast du mire den ersten Schmerz getan
Pre-concert talk by Hilary Finch, followed by John Woolrich in conversation with Graham Hearn 7.15pm Room 416, LCM
http://www.leedslieder.org.uk/
What the critics say
Hilary Finch, The Times October 6, 2009
Every two years in Leeds one long weekend is devoted to “filling the city with song!” Both the exclamation mark in the slogan, and the little plus sign in the festival’s name are significant. For this, despite its short duration, is one of the most exuberant and far-reaching festivals of art-song in the UK.
The idea is to propel song and its audiences far beyond the cosy confines of what is normally perceived as the world of lieder. Too many such festivals are really little more than Wigmore Hall for the regions. In Leeds, the festival’s founder and director, Jane Anthony, works year-round to create new songs and new audiences for song: from primary school initiatives, to flamenco, to wacky pairings of young composers with poets, to new commissions.
This year, John Woolrich’s flinty little eight-minute cycle to poems by Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson received its world premiere in a performance by the mezzo Anna Stephany, accompanied by Jonathan Fisher. Both of them, at relatively short notice, made real music of a score that sounded as though they had known it for months. In the six tiny songs of And Winter Comes, Woolrich’s spare, atonal language artfully crystallises Rossetti’s nostalgia, and caresses Dickinson’s mordant perceptions.
Woolrich was absent. But Gavin Bryars was there to acknowledge the warm applause for his specially commissioned Four Songs from Northern Seas. They’re salty settings of the Scottish poet George Bruce. Bryars enfolds these gently talking, walking cameos of fisherman, helmsman and seaman in rhapsodic harmonic and vocal language, honed by lively piano writing.
He couldn’t have had more zealous advocates at this world premiere than Julius Drake (this year’s artistic director) and the tenor James Gilchrist. The latter’s ardour in communicating the English language in all its variety of metre and inflection was showcased in his generous recital of English song. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard such fiercely impassioned performances of Ivor Gurney’s Ludlow and Teme and Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge. The Endellion Quartet were there to recreate with Drake the gale of life and the mist over the coloured counties.
There was, of course, lieder too. Drake accompanied the mezzo Christianne Stotijn in an outstanding opening performance of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, and songs by Grieg and Mahler. And the baritone Philip Smith joined Anna Stephany, finding just the right tone for songs by Barber and Strauss.
And the newest of the new? The young mezzo Laura Jayne Bowler, accompanied by Rachel Meerloo on double bass, sang her own eloquent setting of Frederic Greenall’s FaceHooked, a witty reflection on techno-relationships — just one of eight new art-songs workshopped here to challenge the future