Oxford Lieder Festival

Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, Oxford
Saturday 17 October 2009, 8.00pm
Julius Drake & friends

Daniel Norman (tenor)
Richard Watkins (horn)
Julius Drake (piano)

Britten – The Complete Canticles (continued tomorrow…)

Benjamin Britten
Canticle I: My Beloved is mine Op40 (Daniel Norman, Julius Drake)

Ludwig van Beethoven
Horn Sonata in F major Op.17 (Richard Watkins, Julius Drake)
i) Allegro
ii) Poco adagio, quasi andante
iii) Rondo

Benjamin Britten
Canticle III: Still falls the Rain Op.55 (Daniel Norman, Richard Watkins, Julius Drake)

Interval

Franz Schubert
Schwanengesang D957 (Rellstab settings) (Daniel Norman, Julius Drake)
i) Liebesbotschaft
ii) Kriegers Ahnung
iii) Frühlingssehnsucht
iv) Ständchen
v) Aufenthalt
vi) In der Ferne
vii) Abschied

Franz Schubert Auf dem Strom 0943 (Daniel Norman, Richard Watkins, Julius Drake)

A note from Julius Drake

The three concerts this weekend will feature one of the glories of Britten’s output, his five Canticles. Each of the five is a sacred work, though the texts Britten chose to set range widely: from a Chester Miracle Play (Canticle 2) and the ecstatic 17th century poetry of Francis Quarles (Canticle 1) to poems by his close contemporaries Edith Sitwell (Canticle 3) and TS Eliot (Canticles 4 and 5). They were written for Peter Pears over the full span of Britten’s creative life between 1947 and 1974, but the intrumentation and additional voices for each is different. TIlese differences have inspired the programming of the three concerts.

TIle opening programme will feature Canticle 1, My Beloved is mim, for tenor and piano and Canticle 3, Still falls the raill, for tenor, piano and horn. Franz Schubert, one of the composers whose music Britten most loved, also wrote a cantata-like song for tenor, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, to a poem of Rellstab. He dedicated it to the memory of his idol, Beethoven, who had just died in Vienna in 1827, tragically only a year before he himself died, aged only thirty one. It is these two composers whose music makes up the remainder of the programme.

On Sunday morning the harpist Lucy Wakeford joins us for Canticle 5, a setting of TS Eliots’ The Death of St Narcissus, for tenor and harp. To start the programme she will play the Harp Suite – both this and Canticle 5 were written for the harpist Ossian Ellis who took over as Pears’ recital partner in the early seventies when Britten was too ill to play regularly. The programme ends with a selection of Britten’s much loved, evergreen folk song arrangements.

The final concert of the trilogy is on Sunday afternoon and includes Canticle 2, Abraham and Isaac, for tenor, counter tenor and piano and Canticle 4, TIle Journey of the Magi, for the same forces but with the addition of baritone. We start the concert with the music of a composer who was hardly played in the first half of the 20th century but who influenced Britten as much as anyone – Henry Purcell. In an attempt to bring the marvellous songs of Purcell’s Orpheus Britannicus and Harmonia Sacra to the attention of the public both Britten and his friend and colleague Michael Tippett arranged various songs and cantatas for performance with a modern piano. Britten wrote in the preface to the edition: “it has been the constant endeavour of the arranger to apply to these realisations something of that mixture of clarity, brilliance, tenderness and strangeness which shines out in all Purcell’s music.”

TIle same memorable words could be used to describe Britten’s own music and nowhere more so than in these five magnificent Canticles.

Nicola Lisle, The Oxford Times, Thursday 15th October 2009

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/leisure/4683641.Oxford_Lieder_Festival/#show

It’s that time of year again, when Sholto Kynoch’s career as a pianist goes on the back burner and his life becomes totally consumed by the Oxford Lieder Festival.

Now in its eighth year, this glorious song fest looks bigger and better than ever, with no fewer than 22 concerts lined up, interspersed with various fringe events.

“There’s a real festival feel because there’s something going on all the time,” Sholto tells me. “So rather than just a series of concerts packed into two weeks, there’s a lot of daytime events as well, and people can dip in and out of it.”

We had met at the Corner Club in Turl Street, and Sholto had just rushed over from Wallingford School, where he has been working with a small group of sixth form pupils.

Education has been an important part of the festival for some years, and is it something that Sholto is keen to develop.

“The main projects we’ve done in the past have involved going into two primary schools, working with about 75 kids over the two weeks before the festival, and building up a 45-minute performance of songs that the children have written themselves,” he explains.

“This week we’re going to Wallingford School, and working with ten of their most gifted sixth form students. Those older children will then go into two primary schools, Fir Tree and Crowmarsh, and lead the workshops for the younger ones.

“So the younger ones get to meet some of the children from the school they’re almost certainly going to, and the older kids have this huge responsibility, which they really rise to.

“Last time we did it the concert at the end was so inspiring, I thought we really must do it again. It’s actually the first official event of this year’s festival, and it’s open to the public. It should be an amazing event.”

School workshops generally tie in with at least one of the Lieder Festival concerts.

This year the children have written a song cycle around a German folk tale, which links into the main opening concert, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a collection of folk poetry in settings by Mahler, Brahms and Schumann.

“The Mahler ones are the best known, and we’re doing them all,” says Sholto. “It’s great music, and they all paint very vivid pictures, so that should be a good way to start the festival.”

One of the highlights this year is a mini Benjamin Britten festival, which takes place over the first weekend.

In a programme arranged by pianist Julius Drake, Oxford tenor Daniel Norman will be singing all five of the Canticles spread across three concerts, alongside some of Britten’s folk song arrangements and harp suites, and music by Purcell, Beethoven and Schubert – composers that Britten loved and found particularly influential.

Another highlight — and a real scoop for the festival — is the European premiere of Evidence of Things Not Seen by American song composer Ned Rorem.

“He’s an amazing writer of songs,” says Sholto. “His work has got its own voice, but it’s also very accessible. It’s very melodic writing, and he always picks very interesting texts as well.

“This is a huge song cycle, with 36 songs in it, and a range of poets. It’s for four singers, always in different combinations, so there’s some solo songs, some unaccompanied songs, and some that are duos, trios and quartets.

“It’s been performed and recorded in America, but it’s never been performed outside the States.

“It’s a bit different to what we normally do, but it should be quite an amazing event, so I hope people will turn up in droves!”As is now traditional, the three Schubert song cycles will feature during the festival, starting with Winterreise on October 17, performed by Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, and closing over the final two nights with Die schöne Müllerin, performed by tenor Christopher Maltman, and Schwanengesang, sung by festival favourite James Gilchrist.

Elsewhere, there is a Mendelssohn evening, marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, as well as various lunchtime and late-night concerts, recitals by some of the most promising students from the Guildhall and the Royal Northern College of Music, a mastercourse and a study day.

It is, perhaps, one of the impressive festivals yet, with a particularly good mix of music and some high-profile guest performers.

Does it get increasingly difficult, I asked Sholto, to follow each festival with something better the following year?

“No, I don’t think so. We’ve always got loads of ideas, and we can’t do everything at once, so we’ve always got a backlog of ideas. Each year we try to improve — we get better at organising it, we get a better name and we can attract more of the world’s best-known people. I think also as our audience gets more trusting, we can push the barriers a bit more.”