Wednesday 16th February – Mary Bevan, James Newby and Joseph Middleton
- This event has passed.
Dichterliebe, Frauenliebe und – leben and duets
Brahms
Die Meere
Vor der Tür
Vergebliches Ständchen
Weg der LiebeSchumann
Ich bin dein BaumFamilien-GemäldeSo wahr die Sonne scheinet Schumann Frauenliebe und LebenIntervalSchumann
Wenn ich ein Vöglein wärHerbstliedSchön BlümeleinSchumann Dichterliebe
Baritone James Newby and soprano Mary Bevan each perform one of Schumann’s great Lieder cycles, before coming together for selected duets, with Leeds Lieder director Joseph Middleton on piano.
Gramophone enthused of James Newby’s recent release with Middleton: “he shows he’s able to create vividly dramatic worlds… internalised emotion occasionally bursting into frustration and tangible anguish, with the singer unafraid of unleashing almost operatic intensity”. Reunited with the pianist, he brings all these qualities to bear on Dichterliebe, Schumann’s settings from Heine filled with visionary evocations of nature heightened by intense romantic yearning.
On Mary Bevan’s latest recording with Joseph Middleton, The Observer hailed ‘a singer with real dramatic power… each song is a story, feelingly told’. She rejoins him here for Frauenliebe und -leben (‘A Woman’s Love and Life’), Schumann’s setting of eight poems by that resonated deeply with the composer’s troubled experience of courting of his wife-to-be, Clara.