If you’re a regular at the Oxford Lieder Festival and you can’t wait until October for your annual fix, don’t worry — you don’t have to. Tomorrow sees the launch of the Oxford Lieder Spring series, which runs until June and offers a tasty appetiser before the main feast in October.

The idea for the series is driven largely by the Britten centenary. Festival founder/director Sholto Kynoch has undertaken to put on recitals of all Britten’s songs as part of Britten in Oxford, and sets the ball rolling this weekend with the complete Canticles.

On Friday, Oxford-based tenor Daniel Norman is joined by pianist Christopher Gould and horn-player Richard Watkins for Britten’s Canticles One and Three, performed alongside Schubert’s Auf dem Strom and Schwanengesang. The first Canticle, based on poems by Edith Sitwell, will feature renowned actress Harriet Walter as narrator.

The following night, Daniel returns with counter tenor William Towers and baritone Roderick Williams for the Canticles Two, Four and Five, with a further selection of Schubert songs, once again accompanied by Christopher Gould.

“Dan and I have been talking about the Canticles project for several years,” Sholto says. “He’s done them all for us before, but this year he’s doing them again with a slightly different team and also recording them, so there’ll be a CD of the concerts in due course.”

The weekend concludes on Sunday with the auditions for this year’s Young Artist Platform, adjudicated by Roderick Williams, and will see three duos selected to give lieder recitals. It’s a project dear to Sholto’s heart as it nurtures young singers while helping to promote the Lieder Festival. “We use people who really communicate well with an audience who many not be familiar with the repertoire,” he explains. “And so we have that benefit of encouraging song recitals in other venues but also the people who are applying get performance experience at an early stage of their career.”

Tenor Mark Padmore gives Britten and Schubert another airing in April, when he performs Britten’s Winter Words and Schubert’s Sechs Holderlin Fragmente with accompanist Graham Johnson.

Then it’s on to Sholto’s other major project — the performance and recording of all the songs of Hugo Wolf. The project started in 2010 to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, and has already seen the release of four discs on the Oxford Lieder Live label.

The first Wolf concert, on May 11, sees soprano Katherine Broderick, tenor Nicky Spence and baritone David Stout joining Sholto to perform Wolf’s complete settings of the poems of Eichendorff.

Then on June 29, baritone Robert Holl and soprano Lydia Teuscher will take the Lieder Festival into St John the Evangelist for the first time with a further selection of Wolf songs.

“It’s very exciting to someone like Robert Joll involved in the Wolf series,” says Sholto. “And it’s a very good way to head towards the conclusion of Wolf in October.

“Our main focus of the year is still the Lieder Festival in October, but the Britten Centenary and the completion of the Wolf project have pushed us to be a bit more ambitious. I think it’s very good for our profile to have events going on during the year, and to be able to offer those opportunities to people.”

 

Various venues
Friday to Sunday, with further dates in April, May and June
Tickets: 01865 305305 or visit oxfordlieder.co.uk