Oxford’s RPS award-winning Lieder Festival is focussing this year on all the songs of Robert Schumann, with several of the fine songs of his wife Clara. The first Wednesday featured both her music and her piano. David Owen Norris, Ben Johnson and Bryony Williams were the musicians but “Clara’s Piano” (as the recital was titled) stood centre stage in a double sense. It was the only participant to whom we were introduced, by Owen Norris, who explained that the purchaser recorded that he bought it “from a woman called Clara Schumann”. The piano’s case also bore the legend “Weick, Dresden” – so since Clara’s uncle was the maker, the provenance seems secure. The important thing was the persuasive sound, warm, rounded, and individual.
The programme looked back-to-front, opening with one of the great glories of the song cycle repertoire, Schumann’s Liederkreis Op.39, thence via a group of Clara’s songs to her husband’s Four Duets Op.78, closing with seven songs of Sterndale Bennett, though not only on the grounds that he was a drinking buddy of Robert’s. Oddly enough this progress from the sublime to the homespun worked. Johnson’s tenor was well suited to the lyrical intensity of the Liederkreis, and Bryony Williams’s contributions were almost as fine. Owen Norris was a subtle and responsive accompanist, and drew some exquisite colours from the vintage instrument. He also offered a pertinent and amusing commentary, but not too much – the music was kept in focus. This was just the sort of occasion that looks a bit of a hybrid, but works in festivals with devoted audiences. Sterndale Bennett was a charming new acquaintance for many, and Clara’s setting of Heine’s ballad Die Lorelei seemed almost worthy to stand beside Liszt’s famous version. The duets hit just the right mood of 19th-century domestic entertainment.
The Festival has quite a range of singers, new and emerging artists, established international figures, and what we could call world-class veterans. With fifty years of professional singing at the highest level, Dame Felicity Lott can claim to be among the latter group. Her lunchtime recital with Eugene Asti was a sell-out, and it was clear from the warm reception as she walked on that she is still a much-loved artist. The summer bloom of the voice has now been replaced by autumnal colours, but that is often to be welcomed in Lieder, not least Schumann’s more melancholic examples of “the song deep in sorrow”, as Heine’s Wehmut (Sadness) has it. Above all her artistry is quite intact.
Felicity Lott’s sense of communion with her audience is remarkable - ‘Flott’ must be the only artist universally known by an affectionate contraction of her name. This intimacy served the first part of her recital especially well, making Schumann’s Six Songs Op.107 seem less elusive than usual, and again programming some charming examples of Clara’s songs. Of those Warum willst du Andre fragen? (Why Enquire of Others?) drew a collective sigh of appreciation. Oxford’s two-week long festival frequently offers a chance to hear one of the great song cycles twice, and so it was that the Liederkreis Op.39 closed this one, (and Ben Johnson who sang it earlier was among the appreciative audience). Lott might be forgiven for adjusting tempi to help marshal her resources, but no; the exquisite opening song Im der Fremde (In a Foreign Land) was given at a daringly broad speed, and the skilful control of line enhanced the rapt mood. That control later faltered briefly in the first stanza of the equally slow and demanding Mondnacht (Moonlight). The mood was soon restored for the rest of the song and indeed the cycle, the aforementioned Wehmut a particular success.