To honour the women by giving voice to their experience: pianist Deirdre Brenner introduces The Magdalene Songs which she brings to the Oxford International Song Festival

Deirdre Brenner (Photo: Andrej Grilc)

From 1922 to 1996 more than 10,000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. Operated by four religious orders, these for-profit punitive institutions detained individuals against their will, committing serious systematic violations against human rights. 

The Magdalene Songs is an ongoing project initiated by pianist Deirdre Brenner that seeks to honour the women by giving voice to their experience bringing together prominent female Irish composers and the words of individual survivors into a collection of songs. The Magdalene Songs will be given by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner on 23 October at the Holywell Music Room as part of the Oxford International Song Festival.

I recently caught up with Deirdre by Zoom (her in Vienna, me in London) to find out more about the project. Born in Massachusetts, Deirdre earned a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College with a double major in Engineering Sciences and Music, and Master's degrees from both the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Konservatorium Wien.

Song is a medium that she has worked in most. With its combination of text and music, there is a lot of opportunity and power in song performances yet the texts do not always resonate with modern audiences, though there is great potential for amplifying stories through song.

Former Magdalene Laundry in Galway, Ireland

Maiden, Mother and Crone: mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier talks about her interdisciplinary project integrating music & movement exploring the fascinating figure of Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga workshop -Ana Dordevic, Rowan Hellier, Carola Schwab - (Photo: Pascal Buenning/Deutsche Oper)

Rowan Hellier is a mezzo-soprano who, along with her operatic career, is known for creating projects which blur the boundaries of genre, discipline and aesthetic, often centring on women’s stories and her concepts have featured at major venues such as Wigmore Hall. At the Oxford International Song Festival in October, Rowan is presenting her latest project, Baba Yaga: Songs & Dances of Death. This production combines music, dance, spoken word, and a specially commissioned song cycle by Elena Langer. 

Baba Yaga workshop (Photo: Tina Dubrovsky)

For the evening, Rowan will be joined by pianist Sholto Kynoch, dancers Ana Dordevic and Carola Schwab and will be collaborating with choreographer Andreas Heise, whose version of Winterreise with Juliane Banse was a highlight of the 2023 Oxford International Song Festival. Baba Yaga is a co-production between Beethovenfest Bonn and Oxford International Song Festival, and the new cycle by Elena Langer is an Oxford International Song Festival production.

The idea for the show originated when Rowan was reading the writings of Mexican-American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés, best known for her book Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992). Rowan was interested in Estés' ideas about the wildness and wisdom inherent in women and how these relate to archetypes like Baba Yaga. She was fascinated by the ambiguities which Baba Yaga embodies; a figure from Slavic folklore, you don't know whether she is good or bad. In some tales, she helps people and in others she hinders. She can be seen as an ogress, a snake, a death figure, the shadow self or a matriarchal ancestress. All of which link to the idea of witches. 

Rowan is interested in reclaiming the idea of the witch as an alternative to society's script for older women. In a culture obsessed with youth, this feels like a radical act, she says. The figures of real witches were originally medicine women and healers in the community, yet they were then turned upon and persecuted.

For music, Rowan has turned to folk music, Slavic, Scottish, Lithuanian, so that alongside Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death there will be music by Tcherepnin, Dvorak, Janacek, Jake Heggie and Tori Amos, plus Elena Langer's new commission. 

New song cycles inspired by 10th-century Persian poetry, the Magdalene Laundries & Baba Yaga as storytelling in song takes centre stage at this year's Oxford International Song Festival

Konstantin Krimmel (Photo: Guido Werner)

This year's Oxford International Song Festival takes as its theme Stories in Song and from 10 to 25 October 2025, artistic director Sholto Kynoch and his team are presenting 67 events where audiences can explore stories in many different forms, from fairytales and ballads to the human and artistic relationships behind the songs, to the developing stories of national song traditions. Lunchtime, rush-hour and late-night concerts and study events, complemented by choral music, dance, chamber works, and talks.

The festival opens and closes with a pair of great Schubert baritones. Benjamin Appl and pianist Sholto Kynoch open things with an all-Schubert, then Kontantin Krimmel and pianist Ammiel Bushaketiz bring things to a conclusion with Totentanz and evening of Loewe, Wolf and Schubert. But that isn't quite the end, soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou and pianist Keval Shah present one last last-night concert, Danse Macabre with music from Schubert, Sibelius, Schumann, Clarke, Zemnlinsky, Riadis, Kalomiris and of course, Saint-Saens.

As part of an evening exploring the perfumed notion the Romantic poets and composers had of Persian culture, soprano Soraya Mafi and pianist Ian Tindale present music by Schubert, Schumann and Wolf alongside the world premiere of Emily Hazrati's Book of Queens inspired by the 10th-century epic poem by Persian poet Ferdowsi. But Mafi's heritage mixes Iranian and Irish, so the evening also includes songs from Stanford and Britten to Bax and Ina Boyle. Earlier the same day, mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and pianist Deirdre Brenner explore a different vein of Irish heritage with The Magdalene Songs, a new cycle inspired by the Magdalene Laundries with music by prominent female Irish composers including Elaine Agnew, Rhona Clarke, Eleaine Loebenstein and Deirdre McKay. And what promises to be an amazing day, begins with tenor Hugo Brady and pianist Mark Rogers in the poetry of Thomas Moore set by a range of 19th and 20th century composers.

The previous day at the festival is also a day to note. It closes with Baba Yaga: Songs and Dances of Death, an evening devised by soprano Rowan Hellier who with Sholto Kynoch is joined by dancers Ana Dordevic and Carola Schwab with choreography by Andreas Heise in Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, Music by Tcherepnin, Dvorak, Janacek, Kapralova, Jake Heggie, Tori Amos and the premiere of Elena Langer's Nice Weather for Wtiches. The day begins with tenor Oliver Johnston and pianist Natalie Burch in two substantial cycles by Shostakovich and Britten along with Mahler and more Elena Langer. At lunchtime, speaker Philip Ross Bullock, soprano Katy Thomson and pianist Rustam Khanmurzin explore Shostakovich's life in song, and there is story telling about Baba Yaga herself at the Crick Crack Club.

Schubert is, of course, central to the festival. After Benjamin Appl opens things, there is bass-baritone Stephane Loges and pianist Libby Burgess in 12 songs from Winterreise alongside music from across the globe, whilst the Erlkings (guitar/baritone, cello, tuba, percussion/vibraphone) present an extraordinary new version of Winterreise. The Schubert weekend includes an exploration of Schubert in 1825, a Schubertiade with eight young singers, soprano Nikola Hillebrand and pianist Julius Drake, baritone Thomas Oliemans and pianist Paolo Giacometti in Schwanengesang, and Roderick Williams and the Carducci String Quartet in Williams' a new version Die schöne Müllerin.

There is more music for string quartet as mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston is joined by the Consone Quartet for Bill Thorp's arrangement of Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben along with songs by both Mendelssohns.

Other major moments include soprano Juliane Banse and pianist Daniel Heide in fin de siecle Vienna with Mahler, Berg and Strauss, baritone Christian Immler and pianist Anne Le Bozec in Wolf's Mörike Lieder, and baritone Stephane Degout and pianist Cedric Tiberghien in Schumann's Liederkreis Op. 39. Sir John Tomlinson appears at the Festival for the first time, giving a performance of John Casken’s award-winning The Shackled King.

There is a day of Spanish and Latin American songs including the Uruguayan-Spanish tenor Santiago Sanchéz, two study events, a recital of Catalan song, ‘Cubaroque’ with tenor Nicholas Mulroy and lutenists Elizabeth Kenny and Toby Carr, and a late-night Tango performance with Bandoneon virtuoso Victor Villena. 

The Erlkings (Photo; Peak Motion Films)

Full details from the festival website. 

From Don Juan to Persia and beyond: Emily Hazrati appointed Associate Composer at Oxford International Song Festival

Emily Hazrati (Photo: May Chi)

Oxford International Song Festival has announced that Emily Hazrati will be the Associate Composer for 2024/26, following on from previous Associate Composers, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Alex Ho. 

At this year's festival soprano Ella Taylor and pianist Jocelyn Freeman gave the premiere of two of Hazrati's songs inspired by Byron's Don Juan with texts by Joseph Spence [see my review of Taylor and Freeman's performance of two more of Hazrati and Spence's Don Juan songs at Song Easel].

Established in 2019, the Associate Composer scheme is a multi-year role involving three commissions, increasing in scope each year, and showcasing the composer's other work at the Festival

In 2025, Hazrati will create a new song-cycle in collaboration with writer Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh inspired by stories and characters from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the national epic of ancient Persia. And a large-scale work will follow in 2026.

Oxford International Song Festival 2025 will take place 10 – 25 October 2025, full details from the festival website.

Eternity In An Hour: Keval Shah and Jess Dandy on their unique reimagining of the Bhagavad Gita

ETERNITY IN AN HOUR - Jess Dandy and Keval Shah by Clare Park

On Tuesday 15 October at Oxford International Song Festival, contralto Jess Dandy and pianist Keval Shah will give the world premiere of Eternity In An Hour, a concert-meditation-ritual combining Western art song and Godsongs, a new set of Sanskrit songs by Indian-American composer, Reena Esmail [one of whose pieces was included in the most recent BBC Ten Pieces earlier this year, see our article].

Esmail’s songs set portions of the Bhagavad Gita, a central scripture of Hinduism and Vedantic thought. Godsongs will be interspersed with works from the western song canon, all linked with connecting improvisations, creating an unbroken dialogue between European and Indian classical cultures and soundworlds, and exploring ways in which the philosophical traditions of East and West converge and diverge.

In advance of their performance, Keval Shah and Jess Dandy reflect on the process of bringing to life this unique concert experience.

Cities of Song: People, Places, Music: the Oxford International Song Festival is back with 70 events in 16 days exploring the cities that have inspired and influenced composers

The Oxford International Song Festival (formerly the Oxford Lieder Festival) is back for its 23rd year with 70 events in 16 days, from 11 to 26 October 2024. Under the title of Cities of Song: People, Places, Music the festival explores the broad theme of cities that have inspired and influenced composers. With over 200 singers, instrumentalists and speakers in hundreds of works including the great song cycles of Schubert and Schumann alongside Baroque lute songs, contemporary works hot off the press, some exceptional chamber music, and choral performances. 

World premieres include Silent Songs of Josefine, a Kafka-inspired work by Can Bilir, performed by soprano Mimi Doulton with pianist Dylan Perez, and a reimagining of the Bhagavad Gita by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, performed by contralto Jess Dandy and pianist Keval Shah. New songs by the emerging star composer Emily Hazrati will be sung by soprano Ella Taylor with pianist Jocelyn Freeman [see my recent review of their performances of Hazrati's songs at SongEasel in SE London]

Irish composer and vocalist Jennifer Walshe performs selections from her album A Late Anthology of Early Music Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance, before leading a discussion on the potential uses of AI in the music of the present and future.

New generation performers at the festival include mezzo-soprano Angharad Rowlands, soprano Katy Thomson, bass-baritone James Newby (BBC New Generation Artist 2018 to 2020), and tenor Ted Black.. Eight of the evening recitals begin with a short Emerging Artist slot, giving a vital showcase to outstanding young professionals.

Anne Le Bozec makes a return to the Festival to lead the annual Mastercourse, an opportunity for the eight outstanding duos from the festival’s Young Artist Programme to immerse themselves in song and learn from the very best international tutors and performers. It also gives an insight into the creative process for members of the public. Le Bozec will be joined by four guest tutors.

The middle weekend of the Festival is dedicated to Franz Schubert, part of a build-up to the Schubert bicentenary in 2028. The centrepiece will be a lecture-recital led by Graham Johnson, giving his ongoing survey of Schubert’s life 200 years on. So this year he explores Schubert in 1824, and he will be joined by singers including the English soprano Harriet Burns and German bass-baritone Stephan Loges. Other recitals are given by Christian Immler and Sophie Karthäuser, and the weekend concludes with Christopher Maltman and Audrey Saint-Gil performing Winterreise. 

Late night events include soprano Claire Booth and violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen performing György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments in the atmospheric setting of the candlelit 15th-century chapel of New College , and the Castalian String Quartet performing Schubert’s Rosamunde in the same magical setting. 

Full details from the festival's website.

Stories in music in Oxford: visual inspirations from the Mendelssohn siblings, William Blake in song & image, vivid story-telling from Wolf & Mörike

Mendelssohn, Looking at Blake, Hugo Wolf: Mörike Lieder; Harriet Burns, Alessandro Fisher, Eugene Asti, Robin Tritschler, Christopher Glynn, Thomas Oliemans, Hans Eijsackers; Oxford Lieder Festival

Music, visual arts and story-telling in a day at the Oxford International Song Festival, ranging widely over the Mendelssohn siblings' relationship, 20th century settings of Blake, and Hugo Wolf in devilishly good form

Tuesday 24 October 2023 was a day of stories at the Oxford International Song Festival. Things began with soprano Harriet Burns, tenor Alessandro Fisher and pianist Eugene Asti in songs by both Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, then at rush hour, tenor Robin Tritschler and pianist Christopher Glynn combined 20th-century settings of William Blake with the artist's own images, and in the evening we had the vivid story-telling of baritone Thomas Oliemans and pianist Hans Eijsackers in a selection of Wolf's Mörike-Lieder.

The day had begun with a Show and Tell at The Weston Library, looking at Mendelssohn-related manuscripts in the collection including the stunning Schilflied, a song manuscript intricately illustrated in watercolour by Mendelssohn himself. Confession time, I didn't manage to attend this. But the lunchtime concert followed on from this with The Mendelssohns at the Holywell Music Room with soprano Harriet Burns, tenor Alessandro Fisher and pianist Eugene Asti in a programme of songs by Felix and Fanny, from their very first surviving songs to their last, with seven of the songs having manuscripts housed in the Bodleian. The centre-piece of the programme was Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel's Five Songs, Op. 10 which included her last composition and Felix Mendelssohn's Six Songs, Op. 71, published after his death and including two songs written after Fanny's death.

First Person: Sholto Kynoch, artistic director of Oxford International Song Festival

Sholto Kynoch

As the Oxford International Song Festival (formerly the Oxford Lieder Festival) opens tomorrow, artistic director and founder Sholto Kynoch reflects on 22 years of festival making.

It might be the first time it’s been the Oxford International Song Festival, as we change from Oxford Lieder, but for the 22nd time in my life, I am sat at home waiting for the Festival to begin tomorrow. I reflect that, as of this year, I’ve now been doing this for more than half my life! Some things have changed significantly since the early days, when a group of student friends started a little festival. Some things remain very much the same.

Tonight is what I might call uncomfortably calm. I know that the brilliant Festival team have everything under control, I’m more or less on top of my own preparations, and there’s really nothing more to be done. And yet it’s hard to relax, even with takeaway fish and chips and a glass of wine. There’s always that feeling that I’ve surely missed something, coupled with a childlike excitement that will probably keep me awake all night. My requisite three annual anxiety dreams are long done and dusted: it’s all real now.

That sense of anticipation has been a consistent eve-of-Festival feature over the years. Though there are plenty of demanding and stressful elements to running an event like this, this is my favourite time of the year. When else do I get to perform what I want, with who I want, where I want? When else do I get to immerse myself in other people’s wonderful music-making multiple times every day for sixteen days? And when else do so many friends, both musicians and attendees, fly in from all over the world – or just pop round the corner – for this celebratory fortnight of song?

There are some things I don’t have to worry about anymore. Twenty years ago, I’d have been up half the night formatting, printing and folding programmes. I’d have been fielding questions from artists who’d not been given any advance information on their rehearsals, and probably making up last-minute posters and the like. Friends would help out, but we were learning on the job. Today, we have an exceptional team, led by our brilliant Director of Administration Taya Smith, who make everything run like clockwork. So at least I won’t be worrying about those things.

The Festival programme is very personal, something I’ve spent at least a year thinking about in detail, and longer than that planning in concept. Unveiling it – earlier in the year – is always a tense moment (will people like it?) but now I’ll be worrying all night how people will actually experience it. Feedback this year has been great, but I don’t believe it until I see it. There’s no point doing this if people aren’t enjoying it, and something I’ve learnt over the years is also what a profound experience the Festival, at its best, can be for people. It’s not the happy-go-lucky approach of those early years: it’s much more important, and the pressure has grown proportionally.

We may have ‘professionalised’, but the essence of the Festival is the same. Whenever I’m not playing, I like to be standing at the door greeting everyone personally. The atmosphere is welcoming, fun and informal. We’ve seen many friendships made (and the Festival has even been an unwitting matchmaker on more than one occasion!) and it’s always wonderful seeing the mix of new and familiar faces arriving for concerts.

So, I think I won’t sleep well tonight, but I will wake up tomorrow bursting with energy and eager for the day ahead. With any luck, enough energy to see me through sixteen days and then I can collapse. It’s a fortnight like no other, and I can’t wait.

The Oxford International Song Festival ART:SONG Images / Words / Music’ runs from 13 to 28 October in venues across Oxford. More information from the Festival website. 

Art:Song – Images, Words, Music: Oxford Song Festival 2023

The Oxford International Song Festival (formerly the Oxford Lieder Festival) opens on 13 October 2023  with over two weeks on song under the title, Art:Song – Images, Words, Music. With over 75 events in and around Oxford, the festival features the world premiere of The Glass Eye, a new song cycle by the festival's associate composer Alex Ho setting words by writer Elayce Ismail, to be premiered by countertenor Hugh Cutting and pianist Dylan Perez. 

A new song cycle, The Phoenix, by Iranian composer Mahdis Golzar Kashani brings together European and Iranian classical styles, setting poems by Rumi, Hafez and Saadi. It will be premiered by soprano Soraya Mafi, baritone James Atkinson, pianist Sholto Kyoch plus two performers on traditional instruments, Vahid Taremi, and Farshad Saremi.

Héloïse Werner’s new work, Knight’s Dream will be sung by mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston with Sholto Kynoch. Werner's piece has been commissioned by the BBC. Werner's new work is intended as a companion piece for Schumann's Dichterliebe, with texts inspired by Heine. Baritone Jacques Imbrailo and pianist Alisdair Hogarth will premiere Geoffrey Gordon’s At the round earth’s imagin’d corners and Roxanna Panufnik’s Gallery of Memories, with text by Jessica Duchen, will be performed by soprano Mary Bevan with pianist Anna Tilbrook.

The middle weekend of the Festival is dedicated to Franz Schubert. The Schubert weekend is an annual feature of the festival, tracing the composer’s life year by year until the Schubert bicentenary in 2028. The weekend’s centrepiece will be a lecture-recital led by Graham Johnson, giving his seminal survey of Schubert’s life, 200 years on. He will be joined by singers including the German baritone Stephan Loges and American soprano Martha Guth.

Other events include a celebration of the life and work of artist, musician and writer Tom Phillips RA; a focus on the Pre-Raphaelite artists, poets and composers in conjunction with the Ashmolean Museum’s Colour Revolution exhibition; a day of fashion and song including a homage to Yves Saint Laurent and a recital created around the scents of master Perfumer Christian Provenzano, an introduction to Max Klinger’s Brahmsphantasie by Natasha Loges; and talks on Picasso and Käthe Kollwitz.

Full details from the festival's website.

'The Swedish Nightingale' and 'Letters from Home', my final visit to the Oxford Lieder Festival

Alex Ho: Letters from Home; The Swedish Nightingale - Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann; Jia Huang, Satoshi Kubo, Camilla Tilling, Paul Rivinius; Oxford Lieder Festival
Reviewed 25 October 2022 (★★★★)

Alex Ho's touching cycle about a Chinese father's relationship to his distant son, alongside Camilla Tilling's engaging evocation of the concert life of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind

My second day at the Oxford Lieder Festival (25 October 2022) ended with the evening recital from soprano Camilla Tilling and pianist Paul Rivinius at the church of St John the Evangelist, Iffley Road. They presented their programme The Swedish Nightingale about the soprano Jenny Lind and featuring songs and piano pieces by Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schumann. At the beginning of the evening, two of the festival's emerging artists, baritone Jia Huang and pianist Satoshi Kubo performed Letters from Home by Alex Ho, the festival's new associate composer.

Alex Ho's first commission from the festival is premiered today (26 October 2022), but as a sort of preview, Jia Huang and Satoshi Kubo performed Ho's 2020 cycle Letters from Home setting poems by Theophilius Kwek. The four poems (largely in English but with some Chinese phrases) depict the complex relationship between father and son as the son leaves China to live in Britain, the first three being letters from father to son, getting progressively more intense and anxious, the final one being the son's repeated attempts to write to his father. Ho's language was largely tonal, combining complex piano writing with more straightforwardly lyric vocal writing, mixing in some Chinese and elements of spoken text.

Julian Phillips new piece alongside Britten and Schubert in a wonderfully imaginative programme for tenor, horn and piano at Oxford Lieder Festival

Julian Phillips: The Country of Larks, Britten: Canticle III: Still falls the rain, Schubert: Auf dem Strom, Brahms, Beach; Stuart Jackson, George Strivens, Jocelyn Freeman; Oxford Lieder Festival
Reviewed 25 October 2022 (★★★★½)

A wonderfully imaginative programme combining three different approaches to tenor, horn and piano, including Julian Phillip's striking new Robert Louis Stevenson setting

Stuart Jackson was supposed to premiere Julian Phillips' The Country of Larks at the Oxford Lieder Festival in 2021, alas illness prevented this and the premiere actually took place in Ludlow this Spring, but the work returned to Oxford on 25 October 2022, when tenor Stuart Jackson, horn player George Strivens and pianist Jocelyn Freeman gave a revised version of that planned 2021 recital at the Holywell Music Rooms for the early evening concert at Oxford Lieder Festival. Written for tenor, horn and piano, Julian Phillips' The Country of Larks was paired with Britten's Canticle III: Still falls the rain and Schubert's Auf dem Strom, plus songs by Brahms and Amy Beach.

Richly serious: mezzo-soprano Yajie Zhang and pianist Hartmut Höll in Brahms and Mahler in Oxford

Brahms: Songs Op. 59, Mahler: Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen, 'Der Abschied' (Das Lied von der Erde); Yajie Zhang, Hartmut Höll; Oxford Lieder Festival
Reviewed 25 October 2022 (★★★★)

The Chinese mezzo-soprano's wonderfully warm, rich voice brings a strong sculptural quality and an inner seriousness to songs by Brahms and Mahler

Yajie Zhang is a young Chinese mezzo-soprano who has been a member of the Young Singers Programme at Bavarian State Opera and has just joined the ensemble at Oper Leipzig. With pianist Hartmut Höll, she gave the lunchtime recital at the Oxford Lieder Festival on Tuesday 25 October 2022 at the Holywell Music Room. Their programme consisted of a selection from Brahms' Songs Op. 59 (from 1873), Mahler's Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen (from 1884-85) and Der Abschied from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.

With their subjects of love and nature, the five Brahms songs almost prefigured the Mahler. Yajie Zhang has a dark, focused voice with a lovely lower register and an easy top. Both in manner and style, she seems fitted for the serious and the intense. 'Dämmrung senkte sich von oben' was sober and intent, developing impulsive drama before sinking into the deep dark. 'Auf dem See' was full of joyful anticipation yet with a serious undertow. Despite the urgency of her performance, 'Eine gute, gute Nacht' was full of sober drama. This became stormy indeed in 'Mein wundes Herz verlangt'. At first urgent, then gentler, the Brahms group ended with 'Dein blaues Auge', again serious and intent.

Music, merriment and mayhem: a day at the Oxford Lieder Festival

Christopher Bucknall, Jonathan Byers, Caroline Taylor, Christopher Purves, choir of the Queen's College, Oxford - Oxford Lieder Festival at Freud (Photo Oxford Lieder Festival)

The Catch Club, Sonnets in Song; Chris Price, Mark Padmore, Elizabeth Kenny, Christopher Purves, Caroline Taylor, Chrisopher Bucknall, Jonathan Byers, the Friendly Harmonists, choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, Owen Rees; Oxford Lieder Festival at Freud
Reviewed 17 October 2022 (★★★★)

Evoking the eclectic tastes and musical mayhem of 18th-century Catch Clubs at an Oxford cocktail bar, and an intriguing project to put Shakespeare's sonnets to music by his contemporaries

Having begun my day at the Oxford Lieder Festival (17 October 2022) with Coleridge-Taylor & Friends [see my review] we continued with an afternoon lecture, Music, Merriment and Mischief by Chris Price introducing the catch club. The early evening concert featured tenor Mark Padmore and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny in a programme which combined the songs of John Danyel, setting sonnets by his brother Samuel, alongside new versions of songs by John Dowland where Ross W. Duffin has newly retrofitted Shakespeare's sonnets. The evening event, building on the afternoon lecture, was The Catch Club, featuring baritone Christopher Purves, soprano Caroline Taylor, the Friendly Harmonists, the choir of the Queen's College, Oxford, director Owen Rees, in an evocation of the 18th and 19th century phenomenon of musical clubs that involved not just music, but drinking, food, merriment and much else besides.

Catch Clubs were a remarkable phenomenon of the 18th and 19th centuries. A catch (effectively a round sung by all the assembled company), once described as 'three parts obscenity and one-part music' was a type of music that never expected and audience. Catch Clubs were about joining in, everyone sang, everyone ate, everyone drank.

Coleridge-Taylor & Friends: Elizabeth Llewellyn and Simon Lepper at the Oxford Lieder Festival

Coleridge-Taylor & Friends: Coleridge-Taylor, Puccini, Stanford, Brahms; Elizabeth Llewellyn, Simon Lepper; Oxford Lieder Festival at the Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 17 October 2022 (★★★★)

Making her festival debut, soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn places Coleridge-Taylor's songs alongside those of his contemporaries in an engaging and illuminating lunchtime recital 

The 2022 Oxford Lieder Festival is in full swing with the overarching theme of Friendship in Song: an intimate art. I went along on Monday 17 October 2022 for a day that began for me with soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper's lunchtime recital at the Holywell Music Room, placing the songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor alongside those of his teacher, Charles Villiers Stanford, contemporaries whom he admired, Brahms and Puccini.

Elizabeth Llewellyn and Simon Lepper began and ended with songs by Coleridge-Taylor, whilst in the middle we hear songs by Puccini, whom Coleridge-Taylor admired for his sense of colour, Stanford who was Coleridge-Taylor's teacher, and Brahms whom Coleridge-Taylor regarded as a revolutionary and who was a significant influence on older English composers like Stanford and Parry.

21st Birthday: Oxford Lieder Festival comes of age with a celebration of Friendship in Song

This Autumn, Oxford Lieder Festival celebrates its 21st birthday with a fortnight of song (from 14 to 29 October 2022) under the banner Friendship in Song: An Intimate Art. The focus of the festival is of song-making as a social art, from gatherings round the piano to salons to composers writing for friends. Mark Padmore will be artist in residence, giving an all-Schubert recital, performing lute songs, giving a lecture on Britten's poets, being in conversation with Kate Kennedy as well as leading the festival's Mastercourse with young singers.

Holywell Music Room

Baritone Thomas Oliemans will be giving a performance of Winterreise, accompanying himself on the piano, and there will be appearances from Dame Sarah Connolly, Christoph Prégardien, Kate Royal, Carolyn Sampson, Camilla Tilling, Dorothea Röschmann, Roderick Williams, Birgid Steinberger, Thomas Oliemans, Claire Booth, Benjamin Appl, Christopher Purves, James Gilchrist, Iestyn Davies, Christine Rice, Werner Güra, Sarah Wegener and  Julian Prégardien. 

But it is with the themed events that the festival really creates something that is distinctly Oxford Lieder Festival. RVW's 150th birthday is celebrated with a series of lunchtime recitals of music by RVW and his contemporaries by performers including Kathryn Rudge, William Thomas, and Ailish Tynan, plus Alessandro Fisher, William Vann and the Navarra Quartet in On Wenlock Edge, and there will also be a new song cycle by Ian Venables commissioned by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. There is a lecture recitals on RVW's friend, George Butterworth, and on RVW and women.

There will be a recreation of a typical Schubertiade, a quintessential example of music amongst friends, and the middle weekend of the festival is devoted to Schubert, with a lecture by Graham Johnson on Schubert and his friends in 1822, Natasha Loges on Schubert's social music and recitals from Mark Padmore and Till Fellner, Birgid Steinberger and Julius Drake, and Werner Güra and Christoph Berner in Schubert's Ballads. And the weekend ends with the return of Birgid Steinberger, accompanying herself on guitar in a programme of folksongs.

A focus in intimate music making brings a series of recitals devoted to lute songs, both ancient and modern, with performances from Helen Charlston and Toby Carr, Benjamin Appl and Thomas Dunford, Iestyn Davies and Thomas Dunford, and Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Kenny. Christopher Purves, Rowan Pierce and the choir of Queen's College will recreated an 18th century Catch Club, preceded by a study event and followed by the jazz-infused close harmonies of the Oxford Gargolyes.

dream.risk.sing: Samantha Crawford and Lana Bode explore women's lives in song at Oxford Lieder Festival

dream.risk.sing - Lana Bode, Samantha Crawford - Oxford Lieder Festival

dream.risk.sing - Dvorak, Judith Weir, Charlotte, Bray, Carson Cooman, Ricky Ian Gordon, Helen Grime, Florence Price, Michele Brourman; Samantha Crawford, Lana Bode; Oxford Lieder Festival (on-line)
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 26 October 2021
Two young performers in a personal project to explore women's lives in the concert hall, using song to look at topics as various as motherhood, discrimination and loss, complex and striking subjects with some powerful contemporary responses

Soprano Samantha Crawford and pianist Lana Bode's dream.risk.sing is very much a personal project, aimed at creating a song recital which explored women's experiences. Predominantly, though not necessarily women composers, but music which takes women's lives as its subject matter rather than the purely masculine gaze of much of the classic repertoire. Crawford and Bode developed the programme during 2020 and will be recording it for Delphian Records in 2022.

On Wednesday 20 September 2021, Samantha Crawford and Lana Bode debuted dream.risk.sing at a late-night concert at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building as part of the Oxford Lieder Festival. The programme included music by Dvorak, Carson Cooman, Ricky Ian Gordon, Helen Grime, Florence Price and Michele Brourman, plus songs from a new version of Judith Weir's woman.life.song and the premiere of a newly commission cycle by Charlotte Bray. We caught the recital on catch-up, via the Oxford Lieder Festival website.

The repertoire was very much in the contemporary, with only Dvorak providing a nod to classic repertoire, and a Florence Price song providing a welcome continuation of the exploration of her neglected output. This emphasis is not surprising, in the 19th century female composers were often concerned to match their male counterparts, and songs often evoke elements of the male gaze. What wouldn't we give to have a response to Schumann and Chamisso's Frauen-liebe und Leben from Clara Schumann and a contemporary woman poet!

Birdsong on the River: Ailish Tynan, Ian Wilson and James Gilchrist at the Oxford Lieder Festival

Hark! Hark! the Lark and On the River; Ailish Tynan, Ian Wilson, Libby Burgess, James Gilchrist, Ben Goldscheider, Jocelyn Freeman; Oxford Lieder Festival
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 19 October 2021
Birdsong in music in an imaginative programme for soprano, recorder and piano, and a last-minute change fails to disrupt the beautiful profundity of Schubert's Auf dem Strom for tenor, horn and piano

For my second visit to the 2021 Oxford Lieder Festival on Tuesday 19 October 2021, I caught a pair of concerts which imaginatively explored aspects of the festival's theme this year, Nature's Songbook. In Hark, Hark the Lark, devised by pianist Libby Burgess, soprano Ailish Tynan, recorder player Ian Wilson, and Burgess interleaved songs on themes of birds and birdsong with music for recorder inspired by the very songs themselves. In the evening, the festival's programme was somewhat overtaken by illness, and for the rush-hour concert, On the River, pianist Jocelyn Freeman, and horn player Ben Goldscheider were joined by tenor James Gilchrist (standing in at short notice for an ailing Stuart Jackson) for a programme themed around Schubert's Auf dem Strom.

Ailish Tynan, Ian Wilson and Libby Burgess' Hark, Hark the Lark at the Church of St John the Evangelist was preceded by a fascinating talk by Lucy Lapwing on Birdsong, where she took us through the wide variety of songs we might hear in an ordinary garden, and how to identify the different birds (I particularly loved the way to differentiate between a wood pigeon and a dove). The talk is free on the festival's website. 

American song weekend at the Oxford Lieder Festival with Katie Bray, Nadine Benjamin, Kitty Whately, and Neil Balfour

Sondheim: Buddy's Blues - Anna Tilbrook, Kitty Whately, Neil Balfour - Oxford Lieder Festival (Photo Oxford Lieder Festival, from live stream)

American Song Weekend; Katie Bray, William Vann, Nadine Benjamin, Nicole Panizza, Kitty Whately, Neil Balfour, Anna Tilbrook; Oxford Lieder Festival
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 16-17 October 2021
From Copland to contemporary song, from Weill to Sondheim, a wonderful weekend of American song at Oxford Lieder Festival

The Oxford Lieder Festival's middle weekend this year (16 & 17 October 2021) was devoted to American song, and we took the opportunity to catch three concerts, with mezzo-soprano Katie Bray and pianist William Vann in Kurt Weill, soprano Nadine Benjamin and pianist Nicole Panizza in Aaron Copland, Julian Philips, André Previn and Juliana Hall, mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, bass-baritone Neil Balfour and pianist Anna Tilbrook in Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rogers, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, William Bolcom and Margaret Bonds.

Our weekend began late on Saturday 16 October at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building which is at St Hilda's College (looking striking with its new main building) for Katie Bray and William Vann's In Search of Youkali, a programme exploring the songs of Kurt Weill, beginning in Germany with Weill's highly political theatre work with Bertolt Brecht, pausing in France and ending in the USA where Weill became a US citizen and wrote for Broadway. The evening was themed around Weill's song Youkali setting the French of Roger Fernay about a magical land of 'happiness and pleasure' which doesn't exist. We began with Bray humming the song's theme and its melody was a thread through the programme to the full version of the song a the end. An apt metaphor for Weill's wandering life.

Matthew Jocelyn introduces the texts by Mary, Queen of Scots that he has arranged for Brett Dean's new song cycle to be premiered at the Oxford Lieder Festival

Robert Herdman: the Execution of Mary Queen Of Scots (1867) - Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum (Photo Glasgow Museums)

On 13 October 2021 as part of the Oxford Lieder Festival, mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean (a former Oxford Lieder Young Artist) and the Armida String Quartet (former BBC New Generation Artists) will be giving the premiere of Brett Dean's new song-cycle, Madame ma bonne soeur (a festival co-commission) at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building at St Hilda's College in Oxford. The text draws on writings by Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots), adapted by Matthew Jocelyn who was also the librettist for Dean's opera Hamlet. Here Matthew Jocelyn introduces the work and the words:

Madame ma bonne sœur by Brett Dean,  texts arranged by Matthew Jocelyn

Marie Stuart - Mary, Queen of Scots - spent much of her life writing letters.  She was brought up in the French court, far from her mother, Marie de Guise, widow of James V of Scotland, who acted as Regent of the Scottish throne, so relied on epistolary communication from a very young age to express her thoughts or feelings.

Over the course of her 44-year life (1542 -1587) Marie Stuart wrote thousands of letters.  Her correspondents included most of the kings and queens of Europe (many of whom were related to her at various degrees of separation), a succession of popes, as well as numerous suitors, counsellors, members of the Catholic aristocracy and more.  Her final letter, to her brother-in-law, King Henri III of France, was written 6 hours before her head was chopped off, clumsily, in three blows.

In the 1830’s the Russian prince Alexander Ivanovich Labanoff-Rostovsky became obsessed with Marie Stuart, and alongside some 600 portraits of Marie and her entourage which he collected, he was able to locate and copy over 700 letters she wrote, many of which date from her 19 years spent in various English castle prisons at the behest of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I (or rather of Elizabeth’s chief councilor, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh), many of these having been written in various codes or at times invisible ink.

From this extraordinary collection (history owes a great debt to Prince Labanoff’s obsession), we have cherry-picked and structured into song form extracts of letters from Marie to cousin Elizabeth.  The core of this 5-song cycle are 3 letters dating from Marie’s return to Scotland, age 19, to take up her role as queen in 1561, (In This our Realm written 7.10.1561); her plea to Elizabeth, 5 years later, to disregard the fallacious claims of the Scottish rebel forces trying to disempower her, (The Power of Evil, 15.3.1566); and, in 1582, her cry of despair after  more than14 years of imprisonment in England, (Nul autre royaume, 8.11.1582).

To these have been added, at the beginning of this song cycle, a succession of introductory salutations from Marie’s letters to Elizabeth over a 27-year period (Madame ma bonne sœur, 1559-1586) and, at the end, elements from her final will and testament, written in the wee hours preceding her above-mentioned execution (7.2.1587).

Not a life portrait, nor a full depiction of Marie’s complex and oft-changing relationship with Elizabeth I, but a small window onto the words she crafted, at various moments, to give shape to her quests.   Words now begging to be sung.

Matthew Jocelyn       

Full details from the Oxford Lieder Festival website.

Faced with the lack of representation of their own experiences in the traditional song repertoire, soprano Samantha Crawford and pianist Lana Bode set about creating their own programme

Lana Bode and Samantha Crawford performing dream.risk.sing (Photo Frances Marshall)

Faced with the challenge of finding song repertoire which reflected the diversity of their experiences and frustrated by the lack of representation in traditional song repertoire, British soprano Samantha Crawford and American pianist Lana Bode have set about doing it for themselves. The two have created a programme that tells women's stories from a woman's perspective. The result, dream.risk.sing was developed during 2020 and Crawford and Bode will be presenting a pared down version of the recital at the Oxford Lieder Festival on 22 October 2021 at a late-evening concert which will also be live-streamed and available on the festival's website until 30 November 2021.

The centrepiece of the recital is the premiere of a song cycle by composer Charlotte Bray and poet Nicki Jackowska. Crossing Faultlines explores the topic of women in the workplace, perhaps the first song-cycle so to do. Also in the programme are two new piano arrangements of songs from Judith Weir's orchestral song cycle, woman.life.song which was originally written for Jessye Norman in 2000 and the cycle formed the inspiration for dream.risk.sing.

There are songs by Carson Cooman, about women oppressed through religious fundamentalism, by Ricky Ian Gordon, his tribute to his mother, by Helen Grime, songs from her cycle about motherhood, and by Michele Brourman, about passing the torch to future generations of women. There are also older songs, Dvorak's Songs my mother taught me and Florence Price's The Heart of a Woman.

Crawford and Bode are also recording a fuller version of the programme for Delphian records, and the disc will also include songs by Libby Larsen, Rebecca Clarke, Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler.

Further details of the concert from the Oxford Lieder Festival website.