Final Concert

Jonathan Lemalu makes an eagerly-anticipated return to the Festival with an attractive and varied programme to round off 2010 in style.

Our celebration of the songs of Schumann concludes with his magical songs to poems by Hans Christian Andersen and some of his settings of the great poet Eichendorff, as well as a group of songs by Schumann's close friend, Brahms.

After this, we hear Mussorgsky's haunting and dramatic Songs and Dances of Death. The programme concludes with a cycle of nursery rhyme settings by Richard Rodney Bennett; Songs Before Sleep. Written for Jonathan Lemalu in 2002, they have been acclaimed as wonderfully inventive songs are an ideal celebratory end to the 2010 Oxford Lieder Festival.

Programme:

Robert Schumann

Andersen Lieder, Op 40:
       Märzveilchen
       Muttertraum
       Der Soldat
       Der Spielmann

Eichendorff-Lieder:
       Der frohe Wandersmann Op 77 No 1
       Der Schatzgräber Op 45 No 1
       Frühlingsfahrt Op 45 No 2
       Der Einsiedler Op 83 No 3    

Johannes Brahms
       Verrat Op105 No 5
       Verzagen Op 72 No 4
       Dein blaues Auge Op 59 No 8
       Der Frühling Op 6 No 2

INTERVAL

Modest Mussorgsky
Songs and Dances of Death
 

Richard Rodney Bennett
Songs Before Sleep (2002)
       The Mouse and the Bumblebee
       Wee Willie Winkie
       Twinkle, twinkle, little star
       Baby, baby, naughty baby
       As I walked by myself
       There was an old woman