High Drama in Ballads and Songs

High Drama in Ballads and Songs by Loewe and Liszt was Programme VIII of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s 2015 Songs of Apollo season, part of the Festival of Young Voices in association with the Royal Academy of Music and its Song Circle. Devised by Professor Richard Stokes, who also provided the English translations and coached the young artists, it brought four singers and two pianists from the Academy to the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, on Sunday 22 November 2015 at 5.00 pm. It was given in aid of the Rudolf Kempe Society International Young Artists Platform.

The Society’s Patron, Dame Judi Dench, welcomed the audience to an evening of “chilling, romantic, comic” musical story-telling, “as close to theatrical and operatic drama as you can get” – in the studio’s intimate setting.

Performers

• Iúnó Connolly – soprano. Studying on the Royal Academy of Music’s MA Vocal and Operatic course with Lillian Watson and Jonathan Papp after a first-class degree from Birmingham Conservatoire; winner of the 2014 Dean & Chadlington Promising Singer Prize and the Pat Syme Award, a soloist in the Academy’s Bach Cantata Series and a member of its Song Circle.
• Lotte Betts-Dean – mezzo-soprano. An Australian who graduated with high distinction from the Melbourne Conservatorium and held a chamber music fellowship at the Australian National Academy of Music before taking a scholarship Master’s at the Royal Academy of Music; she sang with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and in Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître at Aldeburgh.
• Daniel Fong – baritone. From Singapore, studying for the Professional Diploma in Lieder at the Royal Academy of Music after his Bachelor’s and Master’s there; winner of the 2014 Marjorie Thomas Song Competition and part of the Oxford Lieder 2015 residential master class programme.
• Michael Mofidian – bass-baritone. From Glasgow, a first-class Cambridge music graduate studying at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was a RAM/Kohn Foundation Bach Scholar; a finalist for the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform and a soloist with the Britten Sinfonia.
• Jonathan Palmer Lakeland – piano. American, a graduate of Westminster Choir College, Princeton, studying piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music as Nora Naismith Scholar with Michael Dussek, Malcolm Martineau and Julius Drake, with debuts that season at Wigmore Hall and the Oxford and Leeds Lieder festivals.
• Alastair Chilvers – piano. A music graduate of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and a scholarship postgraduate in piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music, a member of its Song Circle and a répétiteur and conductor who took part in the Solti Peretti Répétiteurs Course in Venice.

Programme

Each song with its poet; singer and pianist as printed.

Part I

• Liszt – Es war ein König in Thule (Goethe, from Faust) – Lotte Betts-Dean, Jonathan Lakeland
• Loewe – Die wandelnde Glocke (Goethe) – Michael Mofidian, Jonathan Lakeland
• Liszt – Freudvoll und leidvoll (Goethe) – Iúnó Connolly, Alastair Chilvers
• Loewe – Tom der Reimer (Fontane, after an 18th-century Scottish ballad) – Daniel Fong, Alastair Chilvers
• Liszt – Oh! quand je dors (Victor Hugo) – Iúnó Connolly, Alastair Chilvers
• Liszt – Comment, disaient-ils (Victor Hugo) – Lotte Betts-Dean, Jonathan Lakeland
• Loewe – Spirito Santo (E. von der Goltz) – Michael Mofidian, Jonathan Lakeland
• Liszt – Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh (Goethe) – Daniel Fong, Alastair Chilvers
• Loewe – Süßes Begräbnis (Rückert) – Lotte Betts-Dean, Jonathan Lakeland
• Liszt – Die drei Zigeuner (Lenau) – Daniel Fong, Alastair Chilvers

Interval

Part II

• Loewe – Mädchenwünsche (Goethe) – Iúnó Connolly, Alastair Chilvers
• Loewe – Meine Ruh’ ist hin (Goethe, from Faust) – Lotte Betts-Dean, Jonathan Lakeland
• Loewe – Edward (Herder, after an 18th-century Scottish ballad) – Michael Mofidian, Jonathan Lakeland
• Liszt – Die Lorelei (Heine) – Iúnó Connolly, Alastair Chilvers
• Liszt – Vergiftet sind meine Lieder (Heine) – Lotte Betts-Dean, Jonathan Lakeland
• Loewe – Gutmann und Gutweib (Goethe) – Daniel Fong, Alastair Chilvers
• Liszt – Der du von dem Himmel bist (Goethe) – Iúnó Connolly, Alastair Chilvers
• Loewe – Hinkende Jamben (Rückert) – Daniel Fong, Alastair Chilvers
• Loewe – Erlkönig (Goethe) – Michael Mofidian, Jonathan Lakeland

About the programme

Cordula Kempe’s notes introduced the two composers. Carl Loewe (1796–1869), born a year before Schubert, sang as a choirboy at Köthen and Halle, spent 46 years as organist and music director in Stettin, and conducted the first performance of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture. Of his huge output only his songs and some 400 ballads remain in the repertoire, prized for their blend of the dramatic and the lyrical – his Erlkönig is said to rival Schubert’s. Wagner called him “a serious German Master, authentic and true”.

Franz Liszt (1811–1886), perhaps the greatest pianist of all time and founder of the symphonic poem, was a generous champion of Wagner, Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Borodin. His own Lieder, she wrote, are the part of his work least given its due, yet remain favourites with many of the finest singers. The evening was framed as “high drama in nature – and in human relationships”, from the Lorelei, the seductress, to Gretchen at her spinning wheel, the seduced.

Credits

• Devised by Professor Richard Stokes, who provided the English translations and coached the singers
• Presented with the Royal Academy of Music and its Song Circle
• Programme notes on Loewe and Liszt by Cordula Kempe
• Patron: Dame Judi Dench; Artistic Director: Cordula Kempe
• Publicity and printing: Max Ross