Mark Padmore: English Songs

The great tenor Mark Padmore makes a welcome return to Oxford with outstanding pianist Libby Burgess, for a captivating programme of English song. They begin with a set of ballads by Stanford, Clarke, Butterworth, Holst and others, before turning to Benjamin Britten’s Winter Words, one of the pinnacles of the English song repertoire.

Written in 1953 and first performed by Britten and Peter Pears in Leeds that year, Winter Words is an extraordinary collection of eight songs, setting poems of Thomas Hardy. Reflections on the passing of time permeate the collection, longing for a better state of the world, while the tales of ‘The Choirmaster’s Burial’ and ‘The Convict and the Boy with the Violin’ stem from Hardy’s own experiences and give Britten an outlet for his vivid musical storytelling.