Oxford Lieder at Fairlight Hall: James Atkinson & Sholto Kynoch

07 November 2021, 11:00am 27 July 2024 - 1:40am

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… that he proclaimed himself a natural lieder singer and linguist, savouring the words almost as idiomatically as a native German speaker, his lovely lyric baritone responding to the words with invigorating warmth. As a recitalist he’s clearly a name to watch.’

He and Artistic Director Sholto Kynoch begin their programme with one of Schumann's most popular song cycles (Liederkreis). In many ways, it's the epitome of the Romantic song cycle, full of love, longing and nature. They follow that with three settings of Shakespeare by the composer - and actor - Madeleine Dring. These wonderful songs are by turns exciting and poignant, with a film-score feel as one might expect for a composer who also wrote for stage and screen. Their programme concludes with Maurice Ravel's Histoires Naturelles ('Natural Histories'), five and colourful and joyously irreverent songs that deliver a brilliant commentary on familiar personalities, via the strutting peacock, the vain swan and the belligerent guinea fowl.