Events

11:00 AM

01. A Cumbrian Idyll

• Gavin Plumley
• Jess Dandy
• Martin Roscoe
• James Rebanks

Study Event Song Connections

08 Oct 2021 11:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

To start the Festival, we put a best-selling author-shepherd, a brilliant young singer and a world-renowned pianist in a room to talk about if and where landscape, music, lambing and poetry overlap. Each with roots in Cumbria, these three artists ask what we mean by ‘pastoral’ and explore how a landscape has shaped their own creativity, with music and poetry by Vaughan Williams, Wor...

1:00 PM

02. Die schöne Müllerin

• Simon Lepper
• Simon Bode

Lunchtime

08 Oct 2021 13:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

1820s Vienna might have been a metropolis of the time but it was a small city by today’s standards and Franz Schubert could walk easily into the hills with their woods and babbling brooks. Nature is everywhere in Schubert’s songs, and in his masterful song cycle  Die schöne Müllerin, water and the colour green are as much lead characters as the love-struck young...

3:30 PM

03. Gurney's Gloucestershire

• Anna Cavaliero
• Kate Kennedy
• Natalie Burch

Study Event Song Connections

08 Oct 2021 15:30 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Ahead of the 5.45pm performance of To His Love, Kate Kennedy, author of the newly-published Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney, delves into the profound influence of the Gloucestershire landscape on the poetry and music of Ivor Gurney, with live performances illustrating her talk given by soprano Anna Cavaliero and pianist Natalie Burch. TRY BEFORE YOU BUY [youtube url=...

5:45 PM

05. To His Love

• Robert Murray
• Robin Tritschler
• Simon Over

Rush Hour

08 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This dramatised recital brings the fascinating but troubled personality of poet and composer Ivor Gurney to life. Created by writer, broadcaster and Gurney biographer Kate Kennedy (see Event 3), To His Love poignantly illustrates the terrible effects of war and Gurney’s subsequent incarceration in an asylum and enforced separation from his beloved Gloucestershire. PRACTICAL INFORMATI...

11:00 AM

13. Ten Years of the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform

• Alessandro Fisher
• Keval Shah
• Lotte Betts-Dean
• Siân Dicker

10 Oct 2021 11:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

The Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform has identified and supported exceptional young singer-pianist duos since 2011. Four previous winners of the scheme join forces today to present a programme of Scandinavian song, curated by pianist Keval Shah who is now Lecturer of Lieder at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Evoking the dramatic natural world of the Nordic countries, this concert starts a ...

1:30 PM

14. Celebrating Stenhammar

• Leah Broad
• Daniel Grimley
• Martin Sturfält
• Agnes Auer

Study Event Song Connections

10 Oct 2021 13:30 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

1.30pm-2.30pm - Swedish Song: Broadening Horizons 3pm-4pm - Stenhammar: A Swedish Voice The Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar, born 150 years ago, was one of the finest song composers of his generation and would surely be mentioned in the same breath as his more famous contemporaries if Swedish-language song was better known. To introduce this two-part event, Leah Broad, Daniel Grimley ...

5:45 PM

16. A Swedish Sensation

• Stenhammar Quartet

Rush Hour

10 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

The Stenhammar Quartet is one of Sweden’s leading ensembles, with a particularly strong reputation for performing Scandinavian chamber music. There are no better exponents of the string quartets of Wilhelm Stenhammar, which are counted among the composer’s finest works. Today they perform his magnificent fourth quartet. It was completed in 1907 and dedicated to Jean Sibelius, and it...

10:00 PM

18. Stenhammar's Contemporaries

• Maria Forsström
• Matti Hirvonen

Late Night

10 Oct 2021 22:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Concluding our day focussed on Wilhelm Stenhammar, we welcome back these two exceptional Swedish artists, who gave one of the most memorably dramatic recitals the Festival has ever seen in 2019. They perform Stenhammar alongside another great Swedish song composer, Ture Rangström, and their compatriot Wilhelm Peterson-Berger with whom Stenhammar often found himself at loggerheads! PRA...

11:00 AM

25a. Wandering Winter Poets: Heine & Müller

• Malachy Frame
• Joanna Neilly
• Satoshi Kubo

Study Event Song Connections

12 Oct 2021 11:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This event is in two parts. One ticket give you access to both parts. 25a: 11am - 12pm, Wandering Winter Poets: Heine & Müller 25b: 3.15pm - 4.15pm, The Wanderer Click here for details about part 2 (event 25b).  “I am vain enough to think that one day, when we are both gone, my name will be mentioned alongside yours.” Thus wrote Heinrich Hei...

1:00 PM

26. Heine, Schumann & Brahms

• Marcelo Amaral
• Konstantin Krimmel

Lunchtime

12 Oct 2021 13:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

Konstantin Krimmel is one of today’s most exciting young baritones and was recently appointed a BBC New Generation Artist. With pianist Marcelo Amaral, he performs Schumann’s Liederkreis Op.24, an exquisite collection of settings of Heinrich Heine that follows on from this morning’s Song Connections event. A wonderful group of Brahms songs include further Heine ...

3:15 PM

25b. The Wanderer

• Malachy Frame
• Joanna Neilly
• Satoshi Kubo

Study Event Song Connections

12 Oct 2021 15:15 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This event is in two parts. One ticket gives you access to both parts. 25a: 11am - 12pm, Wandering Winter Poets: Heine & Müller 25b: 3.15pm - 4.15pm, The Wanderer Please see 25a: Wandering Winter Poets: Heine & Müller for ticket information   Joanna Neilly continues to explore some of the key features of German romanticism: in t...

5:45 PM

28. Schubert Fantasie

• Samson Tsoy
• Pavel Koleniskov

Rush Hour

12 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

  Both renowned in their own rights as soloists, Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy are also an exceptional duo whose early lockdown recital at Wigmore Hall was described in The Guardian as having a ‘quietly electrifying intimacy’ in a 5-star review. Today, they play an all-Schubert programme, including the most famous of all his piano duets, the Fantasie in F minor. ...

10:00 PM

30. Isolation Songbook

• Helen Charlston
• Alexander Soares
• Michael Craddock

Late Night Song Futures

12 Oct 2021 22:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Song Futures is Oxford Lieder’s programme to perform and commission new music. This year we have a dedicated series of eight late-night Song Futures concerts, Tuesdays to Fridays in both weeks of the Festival. They are by no means the only performances of music by living composers in the Festival, nor are they exclusively contemporary music in all cases, but new music is their strong focu...

11:00 AM

37a. Kerner, Keats and the Physician Poet

• Natasha Loges
• Dafydd Jones
• Avishka Edirisinghe

Study Event Song Connections

14 Oct 2021 11:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This event is in two parts; one ticket covers both parts. 37a: 11am - 12pm, Kerner, Keats and the Physician Poet 37b: 3.15pm - 4.15pm, The Original (anti-) Vaxxers Click here for details about part 2 (event 37b). Today’s two-part Song Connections event is led by Natasha Loges and presented in association with the Royal College of Music. Natasha explores where m...

1:00 PM

38. The Physician Poet - Schumann's Kerner Lieder

• Sholto Kynoch
• Martin Hässler

Lunchtime

14 Oct 2021 13:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

Schumann’s Kerner Lieder sets a remarkable cycle of nature-infused poems that are among Schumann’s most personal and affecting songs, written towards the end of his 1840 outpouring of song. The doctor-poet Kerner (see Event 40) writes of his pleasure in the rain and wind of a stormy night, his ‘Wanderlust’, his longing for forests and woods, and he surely ...

3:15 PM

37b. The Original (Anti-) Vaxxers

• Natasha Loges
• Avishka Edirisinghe
• Esme Bronwen-Smith
• Andrew Pollard

Study Event Song Connections

14 Oct 2021 15:15 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This event is in two parts; one ticket covers both parts. 37a: 11am - 12pm, Kerner, Keats and the Physician Poet 37b: 3.15pm - 4.15pm, The Original (anti-) Vaxxers See 37a: Kerner, Keats and the Physician Poet for ticket information. The use of words and music to persuade people of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is not a solely modern phenomenon. Edward Jenner &...

5:45 PM

40. Dutch Connections

• Raoul Steffani
• Lucie Horsch

Rush Hour

14 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This concert is presented in association with the Internationaal Lied Festival Zeist in the Netherlands, one of our international partners with whom we exchange Young Artists. Their Festival will include a recital given by winners of our Young Artist Platform, and today we welcome a young baritone and pianist from them. Raoul Steffani already has a burgeoning reputation as an exc...

10:00 PM

42. Brief Encounter

• Fleur Barron
• Natalie Burch
• Dominic Sedgwick

Late Night Song Futures

14 Oct 2021 22:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Tonight’s Song Futures recital features the first of a number of works heard this year by our Associate Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad. Her One Life Stand, performed tonight by mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, was written in 2011 as a companion piece to Schumann’s Frauenliebe (see Event 39). It sets texts by Sophie Hannah that ‘portray a modern woman’s loves and life’ and...

11:00 AM

50. Songs of Love and Justice

• Deirdre Brenner
• Joshua Stewart

16 Oct 2021 11:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

A wonderful programme of songs by African-American composers begins our weekend celebrating the multi-faceted riches of American song. The distinguished American tenor Joshua Stewart, who recently toured the UK and Europe with the CBSO and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as tenor soloist in Tippett’s A Child of our Time, and compatriot pianist Deirdre Brenner – making a welcome return to the F...

1:30 PM

51. Harry T Burleigh

• Jean E. Snyder
• Louise Toppin
• Ann Sears

Study Event Song Connections

16 Oct 2021 13:30 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Harry T Burleigh was one of the most influential figures in the history of American song: an African American composer and singer whose works were performed far and wide and helped shape the sound of American music. Burleigh was hugely well-known as a singer (he travelled extensively in Europe and the UK, singing for King Edward VII and visiting Oxford) and he wrote songs that were widely ...

5:45 PM

53. Dover Beach

• Matthew Rose
• The Albion Quartet

Chamber Music Rush Hour

16 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Dover Beach is one of the great works for voice and string quartet. It is an early work of the American composer Samuel Barber, setting the English poet Matthew Arnold. Barber looked back on Dover Beach throughout his life with affection, considering it one of his few early works that displayed real maturity. It is played this evening by the dazzling Albion Quartet with eminent bass Matthew Ros...

10:00 PM

55. In search of Youkali

• William Vann
• Katie Bray

Late Night

16 Oct 2021 22:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

As a Jewish composer in Germany, Kurt Weill was forced to flee his home in the 1930s, relocate to Paris, and then move to America. With their programme ‘In Search of Youkali’, Katie Bray and William Vann chart his life through his enduringly popular songs, as he travelled the world in the hope of discovering a place of artistic and personal freedom. TRY BEFORE YOU BUY [youtu...

10:00 AM

62. Mastercourse: Day One, Session One - Jacqueline du Pré Music Building & Holywell Music Room

• Joan Rodgers
• Anna Tilbrook

Mastercourse

18 Oct 2021 10:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Sixteen exceptional musicians at the outset of their careers are in residence for the second week of the Festival, working intensively to hone their skills as song performers. They study each day with the renowned soprano Joan Rodgers and a different guest tutor, building up to their showcase concert on the closing day (see Event 102). Sessions are open to the public and run concurren...

12:00 PM

63. Composer Conversation

• Tom Coult

Pre-concert Talks Song Connections

18 Oct 2021 12:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

This event is a pre-concert talk which will be streamed online for free. For in-person audiences, this event is only available if you have purchased a ticket for Event 64.   Composer Tom Coult is an Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries. Oxford Lieder works in partnership with the Bodleian to commission a new work as the culmination of this Fellowship. Ahead of the...

1:00 PM

64. Clippings and Fragments

• Anna Dennis
• John Reid

Rush Hour

18 Oct 2021 13:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

Ahead of this event there is a free pre-concert talk for ticket holders. Click here for more details. Presented in partnership with the Bodleian Libraries, Anna Dennis and John Reid give the world premiere of a new work by Tom Coult. Written during Tom’s Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellowship, the work is inspired by the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera in the Bodliean. As a c...

2:30 PM

65. Mastercourse: Day One, Session Two - Jacqueline du Pré Music Building & Holywell Music Room

• Anna Tilbrook

Mastercourse

18 Oct 2021 14:30 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Sixteen exceptional musicians at the outset of their careers are in residence for the second week of the Festival, working intensively to hone their skills as song performers. They study each day with the renowned soprano Joan Rodgers and a different guest tutor, building up to their showcase concert on the closing day (see Event 102). Sessions are open to the public and run concurren...

5:45 PM

67. Inventions

• Adam Swayne

Rush Hour

18 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Adam Swayne is a pianist and composer, acclaimed in particular for his interpretations of contemporary works, both as a soloist and a member of Riot Ensemble. He gives today’s second world premiere of a work by composer Tom Coult, his Gymnopédies, written during the 2020 lockdown. Adam also plays Tom Coult’s dazzling Inventions. To complete the programme he per...

10:00 AM

77. Mastercourse: Day Three, Session One - Jacqueline du Pré Music Building & Holywell Music Room

• Jan Philip Schulze

Mastercourse

20 Oct 2021 10:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Sixteen exceptional musicians at the outset of their careers are in residence for the second week of the Festival, working intensively to hone their skills as song performers. They study each day with the renowned soprano Joan Rodgers and a different guest tutor, building up to their showcase concert on the closing day (see Event 102). Sessions are open to the public and run concurren...

12:00 PM

78. Composer Conversation

• Cheryl Frances-Hoad

Study Event Song Connections

20 Oct 2021 12:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

This event is a pre-concert talk which will be streamed online for free. For in-person audiences, this event is only available if you have purchased a ticket for Event 79: Everything Grows Extravagantly   Cheryl Frances-Hoad is Oxford Lieder’s Associate Composer and she is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College. In this third and final year of her residency...

1:00 PM

79. Everything Grows Extravagantly

• Marcus Farnsworth
• Libby Burgess

Lunchtime

20 Oct 2021 13:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

Ahead of this event there is a free pre-concert talk for ticket holders. Click here for more details. We are thrilled to present Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s new song cycle, Everything Grows Extravagantly. The cycle is a co-commission between Oxford Lieder and the Oxford Botanic Garden in celebration of our 20th anniversary and the Garden’s 400th, and sets specially-written texts by p...

2:30 PM

80. Mastercourse: Day Three, Session Two - Jacqueline du Pré Music Building & Holywell Music Room

• Joan Rodgers
• Jan Philip Schulze

Mastercourse

20 Oct 2021 14:30 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Sixteen exceptional musicians at the outset of their careers are in residence for the second week of the Festival, working intensively to hone their skills as song performers. They study each day with the renowned soprano Joan Rodgers and a different guest tutor, building up to their showcase concert on the closing day (see Event 102). Sessions are open to the public and run concurren...

5:45 PM

82. Barcarolle

• Charles Owen

Rush Hour

20 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Pianist Charles Owen has been described by Gramophone Magazine as ‘one of the finest pianists of his generation’, and this year he celebrates his 50th birthday with a series of concerts and recordings. His programme today includes Chopin’s Barcarolle, inspired by the songs of Venetian gondoliers, Schumann's Arabesque, and selections from Liszt’s&n...

10:00 PM

84. dream.risk.sing

• Lana Bode
• Samantha Crawford

Late Night

20 Oct 2021 22:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

dream.risk.sing is a brilliantly conceived programme that elevates the voices of modern women, telling stories that are not traditionally related in song. It includes the world premiere of a new song cycle by composer Charlotte Bray and poet Nicki Jackowska, Crossing Faultlines, exploring women’s professional experiences of mentorship, discrimination and ambition. The concert also fe...

10:00 AM

93. Mastercourse: Day Five, Session One - Jacqueline du Pré Music Building & Holywell Music Room

• Eugene Asti

Mastercourse

22 Oct 2021 10:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Sixteen exceptional musicians at the outset of their careers are in residence for the second week of the Festival, working intensively to hone their skills as song performers. They study each day with the renowned soprano Joan Rodgers and a different guest tutor, building up to their showcase concert on the closing day (see Event 102). Sessions are open to the public and run concurren...

12:00 PM

94. Talk: Baudelaire at 200

• Helen Abbott

Pre-concert Talks Study Event Song Connections

22 Oct 2021 12:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

This event is a pre-concert talk which will be streamed online for free. For in-person audiences, this event is only available if you have purchased a ticket for Event 95: Baudelaire in Song Ahead of today’s lunchtime concert, Professor Helen Abbott, a leading Baudelaire scholar and founder of the Baudelaire Song Project, introduces this beguiling poet in his 200th anniversary, ...

1:00 PM

95. Baudelaire in Song

• Mary Bevan
• Michael Dussek
• Ashley Riches

Lunchtime

22 Oct 2021 13:00 | Saint John the Evangelist

Charles Baudelaire, born 200 years ago this year, was one of the most influential French poets, though perhaps not as prevalent in the song repertoire as might be expected. Today, we add to the canon of Baudelaire songs with a new work by our Associate Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, performed by baritone Ashley Riches and pianist Michael Dussek. Mary Bevan also performs the best-known set o...

2:30 PM

96. Mastercourse: Day Five, Session Two - Jacqueline du Pré Music Building & Holywell Music Room

• Eugene Asti

Mastercourse

22 Oct 2021 14:30 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Sixteen exceptional musicians at the outset of their careers are in residence for the second week of the Festival, working intensively to hone their skills as song performers. They study each day with the renowned soprano Joan Rodgers and a different guest tutor, building up to their showcase concert on the closing day (see Event 102). Sessions are open to the public and run concurren...

5:30 PM

97. To the Distant Beloved (first performance)

• Roger Vignoles
• Robin Tritschler

Early Evening Evening

22 Oct 2021 17:30 | Saint John the Evangelist

All evening concerts this year are performed twice, at 5.30pm and 8.15pm. This 5.30pm performance will be in-person only. Please see Event 99 for information on the 8.15pm in-person and livestreamed performance.   Gramophone Magazine wrote last year of Robin Tritschler’s performance of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (‘To the distant belov...

5:45 PM

98. After the Voices

• James Gilchrist
• Eric McElroy

Rush Hour

22 Oct 2021 17:45 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

This is the last of a number of events this week presented in partnership with Merton College. Eric McElroy is a doctoral candidate at Merton, and is a prize-winning pianist and widely-performed composer. He is joined by the renowned tenor James Gilchrist to perform his own work: After the Voices: Six Poems of W.S. Merwin and the world premiere of a new commission, setting Alice Oswal...

10:00 PM

100. Singing Composers

• Sholto Kynoch
• Roderick Williams
• Tom Randle

Late Night Song Futures

22 Oct 2021 22:00 | Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

Is this a world first? Two exceptional singers who are also widely admired composers perform a programme entirely of their own and each other’s music. This concert includes several world premiere performances and a number of duets. A thrilling way to draw our Late-Night Song Futures series to a close.   PRACTICAL INFORMATION This event is an in-person and livestreamed even...

7:30 PM

Oxford Lieder at Rye Creative Centre: James Atkinson & Sholto Kynoch

• Sholto Kynoch
• James Atkinson

05 Nov 2021 19:30 | Rye Creative Centre

Our Song at Wolfson series, in collaboration with Fairlight Hall and Rye Creative Centre, resumes with the outstanding young baritone James Atkinson. At the Spring Weekend in February 2021, The Times wrote of James: ‘This young man is still in his final year at the Royal College of Music, but so confident was his stage manner and command of Schubert’s music&...

6:00 PM

Song at Wolfson: James Atkinson & Sholto Kynoch (first performance)

• Sholto Kynoch
• James Atkinson

Evening

11 Nov 2021 18:00 | Wolfson College

Our Song at Wolfson series, in collaboration with Fairlight Hall and Rye Creative Centre, resumes with the outstanding young baritone James Atkinson. At the Spring Weekend in February 2021, The Times wrote of James: ‘This young man is still in his final year at the Royal College of Music, but so confident was his stage manner and command of Schubert’s music&...

8:00 PM

Song at Wolfson: James Atkinson & Sholto Kynoch (second performance)

• Sholto Kynoch
• James Atkinson

Evening

11 Nov 2021 20:00 | Wolfson College

Our Song at Wolfson series, in collaboration with Fairlight Hall and Rye Creative Centre, resumes with the outstanding young baritone James Atkinson. At the Spring Weekend in February 2021, The Times wrote of James: ‘This young man is still in his final year at the Royal College of Music, but so confident was his stage manner and command of Schubert’s music… th...