Complete Hugo Wolf Mörike songs

Has the complete Hugo Wolf Mörike collection been recorded in one take? There's one coming up now. The first half was recorded Friday 22/10 at the Holywell Music Room, part of the Oxford Lieder Festival.  Second part is 23/10 if you can get in.

The small hall was absolutely packed, wonderful atmosphere, everyone crammed together but intently listening. Some of that energy must have come across into the performances. An almost palpable sense of connection between performers and audience - personal, direct communication. This recording, hopefully, will feel "live".

This recording shows what can be done with enterprise, enthusiasm, dedication, and bold artistic vision. An inspiration for all! Last week, OLF needed 40 sponsors for the recording. Before tonight's concert, 22 had signed up. After the concert, there was a line of people eager to join in. The target will be reached and the money will be used well. CD sales will go towards Oxford Lieder's ongoing projects like the masterclasses, commissions and scholarship and also next year's 10th anniversary Festival. Plus, it's a good addition to the Hugo Wolf discography.

If tonight's performance is anything to go by, the CD will be worth getting. Singers were Oxford Lieder stalwarts, Stephan Loges, Sophie Daneman, Anna Grevelius and James Gilchrist with OLF 's creative leader Sholto Kynoch at the piano. All are well established and hardly need introductions. Anna is a regular at the ENO - she was Seibel and Vavara not long ago. Sholto's a charismatic player, very empathic, which makes him a good pianist for song. He also plays solo and chamber music but he's specially good at motivating singers to give their best.

With fifty-three songs, there are many good moments, everyone doing well. James Gilchrist was in very good form, animated, expressive, full of feeling. yet with the panache that works well in Wolf. Loved that final Auf eine altes Bild. (Read a commentary on the song here)

Check out the Oxford Lieder website for more - hard copy brochure can be downloaded online.

Stephen Hough's new hat - Herbstlieder

Stephen Hough's famous as a pianist, but at the Oxford Lieder Festival he wore a new hat as composer. Previously all I'd heard of Hough's own music was a piece written for the Sacred Made Real exhibition at the National Gallery. Against those phenomenally powerful visual images, it had no chance. So I came expecting to be polite. Instead, I'm most sincerely impressed,.

A coup for the Oxford Lieder Festival! Hough's Herbstlieder is a good addition to the repertoire.  Set to texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, it's a meditation on themes loosely connected with autumn, the passing of time, days drawing in, regret, the end of fruitfulness, and all that implies in life. Herbstlieder is impressionistic, creating an atmosphere as nebulous as autumnal mists.

It's quiet, too, like meditation. Herbstlieder starts with a simple cadence of separate chords fluttering downwards. "Like leaves falling" said Hough in the pre-concert talk. Diminuendi don't necessarily diminish. The chords that link the first two songs mark a subtle progression. Rilke writes of a star seit Jahrtausenden tot, whose light still reaches us from afar.A strange image : ein weisse Stadt an Ende des Strahls in den Himmeln steht. A white city seen in the heavens at the end of a ray of light. Hough sets these words so the crescendo rises right to the top, to the limits of the register. Whatever the image might mean, the connection is made between the lone individual on earth and distant galaxies beyond.

In Trănenkrūglein, images of jugs being filled and emptied. Circular, cascading piano part,  but at the conclusion, the vocal line pauses, like the last drops dripping from a jug. Machen ...mich....leer. (make me empty), Bestūrz mich, Musik is its companion piece. Big, bold phrasing, the piano part almost staccato. In the midst of the turmoil an unadorned line Mein Herz: Da!, emphasis on the da.The voice part swells passionately, evoking the Posaune des Engels, (the Final Judgement)  Filled to overflowing, the music subsides.

The final song, Herbst, reverts to hushed, autumnal contemplation. Indeed, much of it is parlando. A pianist composer writing his own instrument out of the picture? Yet in some ways, that's the spirit of Rilke's poem. Und in der Năchten făllt die schwere Erde.(and in the end Earth itself will fall) like the distant stars. Individual striving is no big deal in the eternal scheme of things. Und doch ist einer, welcher dieses Fallen, unendlich sanft in seinen Hănden fast. (And yet there is one who holds these fallen gently, eternally in his hands)  Eichendorff or Rūckert might have been specific about the "one", but with Rilke we can imagine a more abstract communion with the cosmos. 

Hough spoke about writing these songs three years ago while he was in a hotel in Seoul, Korea. Even in this maniacally busy world of 24/7 communication, we're often isolated. But it's not necessarily a bad thing if we can switch off the mental muzak around us and think beyond ourselves. Far from being noisy and dissonant a great deal of modern music is like this - pure, abstract, contemplative. There are no jolly jingles in Herbstlieder to worm their way into your mind and distract. Yet that's precisely why it's such a good piece. Wolfgang Rihm, darling of modern German music, said of his hero, Wilhelm Killmayer, "His scores are all white!"  Think of Webern's aphorisms, Kurtág's tiny fragments, antidotes to the frantic turmoil around us. Stephen Hough's nowhere near that league, but he's a lot closer to the real avant garde than he realizes.

Good performance by Alisdair Hogarth and Jacques Imbrailo, who seems to intuit the spirituality of these songs. We will get to hear them again, as there may be a recording in the offing. In the meantime, track down the publisher. See Stephen Hough's site for more.

This is the sort of adventurous music Oxford Lieder Festival is famous for. Also premiered in this recital was a new piece by Ned Rorem, a setting of Shakespeare Sonnet 147, (My love  is as a fever longing still) jointly commissioned by the Oxford Lieder Festival and Prince Consort. They're relatively impecunious but what they have, they invest in long-term benefits for art song. It's an excellent piece, wavy cadences, baritone and tenor artfully blended, the piano tolling like a bell at the culmination.

The Prince Consort also sang songs from Schumann Spanisches Liederspiel and Spanische Liebeslieder. Read about their concert of Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen at rthe Oxford Lieder Festival in 2009.

Please read my other posts on Oxford Lieder, Prince Consort and Jacques Imbrailo. (Use search facility or labels below)  Photo credit : Grant Hiroshima

Oxford Lieder Festival report

Oxford Lieder is much more than a series of recitals, it's the tip of an all-year programme. First, two logistically challenging enterprises. A mass schools exercise, where kids from many different schools in the area joined together in a choir. You can imagine the organizing that goes into this, it didn't happen overnight. They sang in the new atrium at the Ashmolean Museum. This is architecturally spectacular, glass and light - enjoy the photos on the link, they're gorgeous.

Friday afternoon rush hour open air concert on Broad Street - not usual busker fare but Brahms and Schumann part songs. Since this part of Broad Street is now pedestrian, it attracted a big crowd, over 100. Getting Schumann and Brahms to the people!

In the evening gala concert, Wolfgang Holzmair and Julius Drake in the Holywell Music Room. All Schumann, some more uncommon fare, like Abends am Strand and Belsatzar. The first tied together themes throughout the programme - old sailors remembering past adventures on the Ganges and in Lapland. Lotusblooms, throughout this recital, and partnerships, too, such as Die beiden Grenadier and the Kerner-Lieder drinking songs. Crammed into the Holywell Music Room were regulars who come every year plus several Famous Names perfectly happy to sit with us on the benches. Holzmair's programmes are always very well constructed, as his knowledge of repertoire is extensive. (Read about his blending of Schubert and Krenek's Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen by clicking on the blue link.

Belsatzar is a mini music drama: Holzmair acts with his voice, not overdone, but communicative. Schumann's ventures into opera aren't appreciated because he's experimenting with a new kind of music theatre, and we're more conditioned to conventional form. But one way into his operas is through extended ballads like this. Read about Schumann's Genoveva here.

Three different concerts and two talks on Day 2. Katarina Karnéus sang Grieg's Haugtassa, and Scandinavian songs. Haugtassa ranks for me among the best song cycles ever, it's so beautiful and so magical. I missed Richard Wigmore's pre-concert talk, which was a pity, because it would have been good. Butb there's always Daniel Grimley's book, Grieg:  music, landscape and Norwegian Identity which has a big segment on Haugtassa.

Karnéus is a specialist in Scandinavian song, and has made numerous recordings, including Haugtassa. Check out the BIS site for more - they have the complete Sibelius songs, for example. Anne Sofie von Otter's recording is the classic, but Karnéus's voice is attractively rounded and charming.. It says much about Oxford Lieder that they can attract artists of Karnéus's calibre. She'd fill a much bigger house than the Hoywell, but it was a privilege to hear her in this intimate setting. The songs are about a simple country girl, who encounters love and other mysteries. It definitely benefits from the Holywell atmosphere(apart from drunken students howling outside at the end).

The late-night concert was in the medieval New College Ante-Chapel. Schubert Songs for guitar played by Christoph Denoth, a specialist in baroque guitar, Schubert was a keen guitarist and made some transcriptions himself. There's an excellent recording of Die schöne Müllerin by Peter Schreier with Konrad Ragossing, which gives a whole new perspective on the cycle.

And earlier Angela Bic, winner of the 2009 Kathleen Ferrier Song Prize. She's actually appeared at OLF before, in 2008, proving OLF's reputation for spotting talent at an early stage. Next week, I'm going to hear Tilman Lichdi, completely new to me but he's appeared in the US.

Oxford Lieder runs on a shoestring budget, but the emphasis is on helping others. So, though funds are tight, there's a Scholarship. It's generous, big enough to seriously make a difference when you're at the start of your career. This year's award went to Stuart Jackson, still at RAM but a very distinctive voice with good range. I heard him in a Friends recital two weeks ago - definitely someone to listen out for.

Sholto Kynoch gave an excellent talk on Lieder resources on the web. I learned so much, including  a tip I ought to know but didn't "Control F" helps find things quick on a big database. Emily Ezust's Lieder and Song Texts (Lieder,net) collection features nearly 100,000 songs, cross references to poets, composers, first lines etc. It's such an important asset that when the site went down for a day last year, it was a news item in Lieder circles. Also, Bachtrack, excellent for checking what's on. Bookmark these or use the links on the right of this page. They're there because I use them all the time. Sholto also showed us how to navigate IMSLP. This is a collection of public domain scores uploaded by international library services. Full of rarities, useful references. Always so much to learn!

Much more to come on Oxford Lieder - here's the website, complete brochure embedded.
photo credit : Benjamin Harte

Oxford Lieder Festival starts Friday

The Oxford Lieder Festival starts Friday. It's a unique undertaking, which has changed the profile of song perfromance in this country. Emphasis on sharing, learning, and supporting performance practice. This is the place to spot rising talent!

At Oxford Lieder, you can can experience what Schubertiades may have been like. In Oxford, most concerts take place in the Holywell Music Room, built in 1740, the oldest dedicated public recital space in the world. The building seats only about 100 people. Seats are arranged on three sides, the platform extending into the room. Interaction between performers and listeners is intense, much more direct than in an ordinary concert hall.

Moreover, the atmosphere is as intimate as the Schubertiades would have been. Oxford Lieder feels like “family”, since it’s so nurturing and supportive. People come together here because they’re united in their love of the genre and want it to thrive. An intimate genre like Lieder can’t — and perhaps shouldn’t — generate mass sales. Funding is backed entirely by private and trust contributions.

The opening recital on 15th October features Wolfgang Holzmair with Julius Drake, performing Schumann. Indeed, all through the festival there will be Schumann recitals and events, including “Lunch with Schumann” — refreshment for the soul!

A measure of how far the festival has come is that it has been able to co-commission Ned Rorem to write a song “My Love is a Fever”. The Prince Consort, who specialize in Rorem, will give the premiere on 21st October, at which a second co-commission, a setting of Rilke by pianist Stephen Hough, will also be unveiled. Read about it HERE The Prince Consort, whose members include Jacques Imbrailo, have been associated with Oxford Lieder almost from the start.

Oxford Lieder programmes blend well-known with unusual repertoire. This year part-songs figure prominently and Schubert settings for guitar (Christoph Denoth and Nathalie Chalkley). Katarina Karnéus and Julius Drake perform Grieg, Sibelius and Ture Rangström, There’ll be an evening of Polish song with Maciek O’Shea and Festival Director Sholto Kynoch. Hugo Wolf’s complete Mörike setting will be heard over two days. Among the singers this year are: James Gilchrist, Anna Grevelius, Sophie Daneman, Stephan Loges, Felicity Palmer, Sophie and Mary Bevan, and Jonathan Lemalu. Oxford Lieder has a reputation for spotting new talent early on, and many of its “discoveries” return loyally.

Ian Partridge leads this year’s main Masterclass programme, but this year there are three, the others, led by Stephan Loges and Henry Herford, encourage non-professionals to enjoy the experience of singing. There are schools events and even an open-air Brahms and Schumann concert. Oxford Lieder is much more than an annual festival — it’s aims are long term and benefit the wider community.

For more information, please visit the Oxford Lieder site.

Oxford Lieder Festival 2010

The Oxford Lieder Festival is small, but is extremely important.  It's quite an achievement, extremely well organized and comprehensive, a model for intelligently-presented festivals of any kind.  Ten years ago, Lieder was relatively niche in the UK, now it's firmly part of the landscape. Thanks, in part, to Oxford Lieder,with its recitals, workshops, schools projects, masterclasses etc. Singers, pianists and dare I say it the media, are more aware how a solid foundation in art song makes a huge impact on vocal performance.(FOR DETAILS OF OXFORD LIEDER 2011 please see HERE.)  As usual I'll be at most concerts.

This year's Oxford Lieder Festival starts Oct 15th but make bookings now as many things sell out fast. Many concerts take place in the Holywell Music Room (pictured), the oldest dedicated recital room in Europe where Mozart, Handel and Haydn played live. Perfect acoustic, if marred by occasional street noise, but that's part of the atmosphere. It's intimate, which is perfect for Lieder and chamber music, where art matters more than glitz.

Wolfgang Holzmair sings the opening recital on Friday 15th, with Julius Drake. Schumann, but not the usual cycles we hear all the time, often not to best advantage. instead, Kerner-Lieder which Holzmair recorded beautifully and rarer Heine settings. Definitely a concert for those who really care about Schumann.  Indeed, all through the festival there will be Schumann recitals and events, including "Lunch with Schumann" - refreshment for the soul!

The Prince Consort will be singing Schumann Spanisches Liederspiel and Liebeslieder on 21st with a premiere by Ned Rorem (Prince Concert speciality) with Stephen Hough's Herbstlieder and part songs by Quilter and Barber. Review HERE. Not something you hear everyday.Also look out for "An introduction to Polish Song" (30/10) with Maciek O'Shea and Sholto Kynoch, which will include Chopin and Liszt songs but also lesser-known treasures. Maciek is I think a native speaker and very well informed.

Oxford Lieder does "different" extremely well.  On 16th Katarina Karnéus sings Sibelius and Ture Rangström which should be unmissable too, as she's one of his leading exponents.  Later that night at 10pm Schubert songs with guitar, an instrument Schubert loved and played, so they need to be known to appreciate how he thought. There are lots of Schubert guitar songs, includiung a transcription of Die schöne Müllerin. Christoph Denoth plays, possibly period guitar. Read about him HERE. Seriously interesting concert, and in New College Chapel, itself an experience at night.

I'm also booking for the pair of Hugo Wolf recitals, 21st and 22nd, when James Gilchrist, Stephan Loges, Anna Grevelius and Sophie Daneman sing the complete Wolf Mörike songbook. Since Wolf is one of the greatest Lieder composers of all, he's long been an Oxford Lieder trademark, so this will be good. 

Sir Willard White sings this year's Gala concert - Schumann, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Ives and Copland. Eugene Asti pianist. Imagine White singing Schumann's Husaren-Lieder! This will be fun. If you pay an extra £30 you get to sit in special reserved seats and enjoy a post-concert reception with White and Asti,. It's worth doing as this helps support Oxford Lieder which is entirely privately funded.

Closing concert is Jonathan Lemalu, in a well-chosen  programme which suits him, and includes Schumann's Andersen Lieder and Richard Rodney Bennett.  Many other recitals,  Sophie and Mary Bevan, Felicity Palmer and many up and coming young singers. Oxford Lieder has spotted many young singers long before they become really famous, so this is another reason for supporting it. Lots of classes and other activities and chamber recitals, too. Incidentally, the Oxford Chamber Music Festival now starts and ends just before the Oxford Lieder Festival, so they complement each other. 


photo credit : Ny Björn