Salle: Holywell Music Room, Oxford

Oxford Lieder's theme may be 'Winter into Spring', but in Schubert’s Winterreise, snow lies deep throughout with nary a glimpse of warmer prospects.

A deep-dive into the world of 14th-century Persian poet, Hafez, and his influence on song across the centuries. 

Julius Drake’s torrential postlude capped an evening in which he had been superb throughout.

Impeccable musicianship from the string soloists of the Oxford Philhamonic in stirring accounts of Brahms' String Sextet in G major and Strauss' Metamorphosen.

An old instrument, a veteran star singer, and a late rose all bloom at Oxford's annual songfest.

The Carducci Quartet’s appearance in the Holywell Music Room marked the halfway point in the Oxford Coffee Concert’s Autumn series. This late-morning concert saw the ensemble pair two D major quartets, from 1781 and 1949. It was the latter which received the more convincing performance, with the quartet clearly more engaged with Shostakovich’s troubled utterance than Haydn’s lean textures.

It was by coincidence that Tuesday’s Oxford Lieder Festival concert fell on Johann Mayrhofer’s 226th birthday. The Austrian poet was second only to Goethe in the number of texts chosen by Schubert, and the programme was a selection of the composer’s settings from 1817-1824. The lieder chosen for the recital fell under two themes: songs based upon classical myth, and those inspired by nature.

The penultimate concert in a three-year project to record the complete songs of Hugo Wolf, this Oxford Lieder Festival concert’s programme was based around settings of Goethe.