Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...
13 October 2025, 1:00pm - 2:00pm
The brilliant and versatile soprano Claire Booth, winner of the 2025 RPS Singer Award, makes a welcome return to the Festival for a programme of cabaret and cabaret-inspired songs, ranging from Gershwin to Thomas Adès. She is joined by acclaimed pianist Jâms Coleman, a former Oxford Song Young Artist who now works with many leading singers and instrumentalists. Their programme received a rapturous welcome at Wigmore Hall last year, and promises a glittering start to this week’s lunchtime series.
Programme
- Charles Ives (1874 - 1954)
- Very Pleasant from Memories
- Zoë Martlew (1968)
- Madame from Hôtel Babylon
- Baby from Hôtel Babylon
- Chef from Hôtel Babylon
- Beautician from Hôtel Babylon
- Hierophant from Hôtel Babylon
- Cashier from Hôtel Babylon
- Lover from Hôtel Babylon
- George Gershwin arr. Earl Wild (1898 - 1937)
- Somebody Loves Me (1924)
- Embraceable You (1930)
- John Woolrich (1954)
- Stendhal's Observation (2008)
- Thomas Adès (1971)
- Life Story (1993) Op. 8
- Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951)
- Der genügsame Liebhaber (1901) from Brettl-Lieder (Cabaret Songs)
- Galathea (1901) from Brettl-Lieder (Cabaret Songs)
- Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963)
- La dame de Monte Carlo (1961) FP 180
Notes on the Programme
Composer’s note (Hôtel Babylon):
Having performed and toured my one-woman cabaret show Revue Z over a couple of decades, you can imagine how thrilled I was when virtuoso soprano and new music entrepreneur Claire Booth, a friend and colleague of many years, asked me to write her a set of cabaret songs loosely based on Arnold Schoenberg’s 1901 set – Brettl Lieder – in this his 150th birthday year (2024).
The Berlin cabaret at the beginning of the 20th century the young Schoenberg knew was an encapsulation of this fantastical world: a nexus point of the Bohemian demi-monde where artists, low-lifes, pleasure-seeking aristocrats, political activists, philosophers, musicians and poets converged in the smoky, narcotic-laden atmosphere of experimental sexual and gender freedom, a stage literally giving voice to a delicious dark licentiousness not permitted in the daylight of the time.
Hôtel Babylon is my take on this colourful world, a Faustian mini-drama tangled up with Seven Deadlies. You the audience play the part of the tempted Soul (who doesn’t love a bit of filthy temptation?), inexorably drawn into Babylon’s hypnotic array of exotic mirrors. Each of the seven songs is played by a different character in different musical styles: a nod to Viennese waltz, Latin salsa, Kurt Weill/Brecht, tango, baroque opera, and a fair spicing of Expressionism (to keep Arnold fans happy).
My huge thanks to the generosity of Sara Naudi for supporting this commission, along with the Vaughan Williams Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation, the Association of English Singers and Speakers, and most of all to Claire Booth herself, whose extraordinary voice, musicianship and exceptional power as an actress have inspired me to let rip with words and music in a truly joyful theatrical playground.
—Zoë Martlew
