The Glory of the Lyric Soprano

The Glory of Lyrical Voices – billed on its poster as The Glory of the Lyric Soprano – was Programme IV of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s 2019 Songs of Apollo Word and Music season in Stratford-upon-Avon, part of the Society’s Celebration of Young Voices. Two young singers trained in Berlin, the British-German soprano Suzanne Fischer and the German tenor Florian Müncheberg, sang Lieder, mélodies, Italian song and opera arias, with the conductor and pianist Anthony Negus at the piano. The recital took place on Sunday 22 September 2019 at 7.30 pm at the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, in aid of the Rudolf Kempe Society International Young Artists Platform.

Performers

• Suzanne Fischer – soprano. A British-German soprano who read music at the Universities of Edinburgh and Milan and took a Master’s in voice at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin. She had just understudied La Fée in Massenet’s Cendrillon at Glyndebourne Festival Opera 2019, after debuting in the role for Glyndebourne on Tour in 2018, and had sung roles such as Gilda, Ginevra and Susanna for companies including Deutsche Oper Tischlerei Berlin, Longborough Festival Opera and English Touring Opera. Her prizes include first prize at the Oxford Lieder Festival Young Artist Platform, the Förderpreis at Das Lied International Song Competition, the Pavarotti Prize at the Viotti Competition and 4th prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich.
• Florian Müncheberg – tenor. A young German tenor from a family of Berlin orchestral musicians, studying voice at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik Berlin with Stephan Rügamer after studying philosophy and economics at the Humboldt University. He had sung in Monteverdi’s Combattimento at the Neuköllner Oper, Oduardo in Handel’s Ariodante and Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro, and the tenor solos in Mozart’s Requiem and Haydn’s Creation, and appeared regularly with the contemporary ensemble PHØNIX16.
• Anthony Negus – piano. A conductor and pianist who studied at the Royal College of Music and Oxford University, worked as a music assistant in Wuppertal, Hamburg and Bayreuth and then at Welsh National Opera. Music Director of Longborough Festival Opera since 2000, he is known above all for his Wagner – an acclaimed Ring in 2013, Tristan und Isolde and, in 2019, a new Ring beginning with Das Rheingold – and won the Wagner Society’s Sir Reginald Goodall Memorial Award (2017) and Melbourne’s Green Room Award (2019).

Programme

Part I

• Franz Schubert – An Sylvia, D 891 (Shakespeare, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, translated by Eduard von Bauernfeld) – tenor and piano
• Franz Schubert – Das Fischermädchen, D 957 (Heinrich Heine, from Schwanengesang) – tenor and piano
• Franz Schubert – Suleika I, D 720 (Marianne von Willemer / Goethe) – soprano and piano
• Franz Schubert – Die Gebüsche, D 646 (Friedrich Schlegel) – soprano and piano
• Felix Mendelssohn – Venetianisches Gondellied, Op. 57 No. 5 (Thomas Moore) – tenor and piano
• Ernest Chausson – Sérénade italienne, Op. 2 No. 5 (Paul Bourget) – tenor and piano
• Claude Debussy – Quatre chansons de jeunesse – soprano and piano: Pantomime and Clair de lune (Paul Verlaine), Pierrot (Théodore de Banville), Apparition (Stéphane Mallarmé)
• Francesco Paolo Tosti – Sogno; Tristezza – tenor and piano
• Richard Strauss – from the Brentano Lieder, Op. 68 (Clemens Brentano): An die Nacht; Ich wollt’ ein Sträußlein binden; Säusle, liebe Myrte – soprano and piano

Interval

Part II

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – from La finta giardiniera: Che beltà, che leggiadria – tenor and piano
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – from La finta giardiniera: Tu mi lasci? – soprano, tenor and piano
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Laudate Dominum, from the Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339 – soprano and piano
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Adagio in B minor, K 540 – piano solo (Anthony Negus)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Ach, ich fühl’s, from Die Zauberflöte, Act II – soprano and piano
• Édouard Lalo – Vainement, ma bien-aimée, from Le roi d’Ys – tenor and piano
• Gustave Charpentier – Depuis le jour, from Louise – soprano and piano

About the programme

The two singers chose their own programme, which travelled from Schubert’s settings of Shakespeare, Heine, Goethe and Schlegel through French mélodie and Italian salon song to the opera house – Mozart’s La finta giardiniera and Die Zauberflöte, Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys and Charpentier’s Louise – with Mozart’s Adagio in B minor for piano at the centre of the second half. The poster also promised Donizetti, who does not appear in the printed running order.

In her welcome, the Society’s patron Dame Judi Dench promised the audience that the singers’ choice would be “really joyful – you will relish it!” Cordula Kempe’s introduction to the Celebration of Young Voices series argued that the human voice, uniting music and words, reaches everyone, and that song, given in an intimate room like the Kempe Studio, is “the most gentle, immediate, individual and powerful way of human communication” – which is why the Society focused on young singers.

Credits

• Series devised by Cordula Kempe, Artistic Director of the Rudolf Kempe Society; welcome by Dame Judi Dench, Patron
• Publicity, printing and archive recording: Max Ross