Wednesday 14 October 2020

Leeds Lieder's Autumn weekend, on-line and in person

Leeds Lieder - Autumn weekend - 29-31 October

What are you doing for Halloween this year? Leeds Lieder hopes that you will be settling down with counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, pianist Joseph Middleton for a recital of Schubert song. The recital is the conclusion of Leeds Lieder's Autumn Weekend, amongst the first socially distanced song recitals outside of London since the outbreak of the pandemic. From 29 to 31 October 2020, artistic director Joseph Middleton, Ian Bostridge, Louise Alder, Iestyn Davies, Nardus Williams, Benson Wilson and Harriet Burns will fill Leeds Town Hall with song, with a socially-distanced live audience and every concert live-streamed.

The weekend opens with tenor Ian Bostridge and Joseph Middleton in Schubert's Winterreise. This will be preceded by the first of three rising star recitals over the weekend, for the first one Harriet Burns performs Schubert's Ellens Gesang I, II & III, the recital taking place under the auspices of Barbara Hannigan’s Momentum Equilibrium initiative.

On Friday, soprano Louise Alder joins Middleton for a programme including Grieg's Six Songs, Op.  48 and Rachmaninov's Six songs, Op. 38. Grieg's songs, dating from the 1880s, represent his first German settings since the early 1860s and the subjects might reflect the new harmony in his marriage following problems. Rachmaninov's songs, written in 1916 a year before he left Russia for ever, and they seem to be virtually the last songs that he wrote. The recital ends with Strauss' Four last songs. This recital is preceded by baritone Benson Wilson (winner of the 2019 Kathleen Ferrier Award) in English and Samoan song.

Saturday sees the festival returning to Schubert as counter-tenor Iestyn Davies and Joseph Middleton perform Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, preceded by soprano Nardus Williams in Liszt, Brahms and Wolf.

There will be pre-concert talks, shared via social media, whilst texts, translations and programme notes will be available to download from the festival website and emailed out to ticket holders. The festival's education programme is also continuing on-line, reaching 1000s of school children, and this year's young artists will be receiving on-line coaching from Roderick Williams, Louise Alder, Iain Burnside and Malcolm Martineau.

 Full details from the Leeds Lieder website 

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