Roderick Williams baritone

Victoria Newlyn as Clara Schumann

Mary Bevan soprano

Iain Burnside piano

Tickets: £25.00; £23.00 Unwaged/Disabled; £5.00 Under 26s/Full-time Students

Shining Armour, by Iain Burnside, a re-working of Brahms’s Die schöne Magelone

Brahms’s Die schöne Magelone, his only song cycle, is a tale of chivalric love, of knights in shining armour based on Ludwig Tieck’s novella The wondrous love story of the beautiful Magelone and Count Peter of Provence. The songs that make up Brahms’s cycle do not carry the drama along, but rather comment upon the story. For the cycle to work in a recital setting, the songs benefit from a connecting narrative that can serve to flesh out the story. Iain Burnside has brilliantly penned spoken interludes, as though told by Clara Schumann, that illuminate the song cycle as well as her relationship with Brahms. New light is cast on this rarely performed masterpiece, and there can be few finer champions of the work than Roderick Williams, Iain Burnside and Victoria Newlyn.

‘Britain’s best baritone’ Opera Magazine on Roderick Williams

‘But the star of the show is undoubtedly Burnside, playing throughout with unfailing intensity and sensitivity: voice and piano are truly equal partners here, and the results are electrifying.’ The Daily Telegraph on Burnside