Insights into song, singers and singing for the musically curious!
Love your Lieder is a series of informal talks and mini-concerts designed to crack open the music, language, poetry and drama of song.
Love Your Lieder+ 2014-15 Season
Informal evenings for the musically curious exploring aspects of song
All events 7pm at Leeds College of Music. Tickets: £5; £4 (Friends of Leeds Lieder+); Free (Students)
Wednesday 24 September 2014 Room 218
Shakespeare in Song: Nico de Villiers
A taster of the Bard’s texts in settings by composers including Honegger, Saint-Saëns, Tippett and Gurney. The Melicus Duo (soprano Marie Vassiliou and pianist Nico de Villiers) return to Love Your Lieder presenting a selection of songs from lesser-known Shakespeare settings.
Wednesday 22 October 2014 Room 218
Martin Pickard explores Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte and other songs about the familiar theme of distance and separation, (including some more light hearted) with tenor Paul Massey.
Mountains, messages and the power of songs: Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte
Composed in the spring of 1816, An die ferne Geliebte is generally reckoned to be the first great song-cycle. In Lieder programmes it tends to be overshadowed by the later, longer cycles of Schubert and Schumann. However as Martin Pickard (Head of Music at Opera North) will demonstrate, it is a remarkable, beautiful and pioneering work. As a song-cycle whose very subject is songs, it displays Beethoven’s often-overlooked gift as a writer of melodies. It prefigures some aspects of Beethoven’s own late style and provides a template which was followed, to a greater or lesser extent, by all later composers of song-cycles. This talk will include live music examples performed by Martin with the tenor Paul Massey (MMus student at theUniversity of Leeds) and will end with a complete performance of Beethoven’s cycle.
Martin Pickard is Head of Music at Opera North. He studied modern languages at Cambridge and music at the RCM, and began his career at opera houses in Germany. He joined Opera North in 1989 and has conducted more than 20 different productions for the company. He has worked for ENO, Buxton Festival, Perth International Arts Festival and Bregenz Festival. In 2003 he assisted Jiří Bĕlohlávek on Tristan und Isolde, the first ever Wagner production at Glyndebourne. Since then he has returned to the festival regularly, most recently in 2012 as assistant to Vladimir Jurowski on The Cunning Little Vixen. He made his Glyndebourne conducting debut in 2005 with The Bartered Bride. Conducting engagements abroad includeDie Frau ohne Schatten (Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck), two operas for the Festival Les Azuriales (Cap Ferrat) and concerts with the Bochumer Symphoniker and the Matav Hungarian Symphony Orchestra (Budapest). Forthcoming performances for Opera North include La Vida Breve and Gianni Schicchi in the 2014-2015 season.
Martin is also active as a pianist and recital accompanist and in 2012 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Leeds for his research into early nineteenth-century German opera.
Thursday 27 November 2014 Room 219
A Tribute to Jane Anthony and Overview of Leeds Lieder+ 2004-2014
David Hoult will lead a tribute to Jane Anthony’s work with Leeds Lieder+ and will revisit highlights and achievements of the first ten years of the Festival.