Oxford Lieder Festival
October can mean only one thing for Lieder fans: time for the Oxford Lieder Festival! As ever it was an absolute joy to be back, this year performing two (very different!) recitals; a late-night Die Schöne Müllerin with Marcus Farnsworth in the atmospheric New College Chapel (part of the opening weekend dedicated entirely to Schubert), and then a lunchtime Wesendonck Lieder (plus some cheeky Wolf and extrovert Strauss!) in the Jacqueline du Pré Building with Julia Sporsén, as part of a two-day Wagner study. Then there was a repeat of last year’s successful student composition workshop, exploring the university music students’ song contributions, and Ciara Hendrick and I again represented the performers’ perspective in this, learning, performing and workshopping each composition, along with faculty professor Robert Saxton and the festival’s Composer in Residence, Charlotte Bray. The festival seems to be on outstanding form in its 10th year – many congratulations to Sholto Kynoch and the amazing team!