{"id":1111,"date":"2015-10-27T16:06:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T16:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1111"},"modified":"2015-10-27T16:06:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T16:06:24","slug":"i-love-lieder-dont-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2015\/10\/i-love-lieder-dont-you.html","title":{"rendered":"I love Lieder, Don’t You?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Henk<\/a>

Henk Neven<\/strong>
Photo: Marco Borggreve<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s rare for my wife and me to feel that we are among the younger members of the audience, but this happened at the Oxford Lieder Festival 2015, \u201cSinging Words: Poets and their Songs.\u201d The occasion was a concert of songs by Schumann, Mahler and Mendelssohn at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford. As this tiny, elegant hall is the oldest dedicated music venue in Europe, I suppose it was merely an age-appropriate crowd that came to hear Henk Neven and Imogen Cooper.<\/p>\n

I had not heard or seen the whippet-thin Dutch baritone before. He has a fine presence and an expressive face that makes me imagine he\u2019d be more in demand on the opera stage than his website seems to indicate. Imogen Cooper is simply a great pianist, and the fact that she\u2019s chosen to work with him is an endorsement of Neven\u2019s gifts.<\/p>\n

Heinrich Heine was the poet of the evening, as three of his settings by Mendelssohn, including a charming rendition of Auf Fl\u00fcgeln des Gesanges<\/em> were included alongside the nine Heine poems of Schumann\u2019s Liederkreis <\/em>Op. 24. But it was really the folk poems set by Mahler in Des Knabe Wunderhorn<\/em> that caused a stir. Indeed, Imogen Cooper\u2019s introductory bars of Der Tamboursg\u2019sell<\/em> must have rattled the tea cups of all North Oxford, as her left hand boomed out \u2013 what? \u2013 the rumblings of a train, the clanking of the tumbrils, the firing of the cannons? \u2013 in the figures of the funeral march that sends to the gallows the Drummer-boy who has deserted. It was either heart-stopping or ear-shattering, depending on your disposition. It was a demonstration of pure pianistic power, in which the Steinway seemed larger than the hall that contained it, proof that the piano is a percussion instrument.<\/p>\n

It was in this last set of songs that Neven\u2019s acting ability appeared, as his dark-set eyes, highly plastic mouth and overall body language showed the boy\u2019s terror and that of the deserter of Zu Stra\u00dfburg auf der Schanz<\/em>, and of the dying man of Revelge<\/em>; he was also a convincing rou\u00e9 in Trost im Ungl\u00fcck. <\/em>It\u2019s true that his upper register did not appear very strong, and that he stretched for some of the high notes where a frank falsetto might have been more advisable. It was a performance of passion and drama, rather than precision; but he coped admirably with the volume being produced by the keyboard and pedals. Of Cooper\u2019s playing I\u2019d say only that it makes the orchestral version of Des Knabe Wunderhorn<\/em> redundant. It all goes to show her versatility: I\u2019ve been present when she has played a Schubert concerto where one movement ended in a ppp<\/em> so discreet that you thought you must have imagined it.<\/p>\n

This wonderful 16-day annual October mini-festival is the brainchild of one young man, Sholto Kynoch. Though for once my presence lowered rather than raised the mean age of the audience, Oxford Lieder does a good deal for younger people, especially young singers, with performance opportunities and masterclasses. Sometimes I think I love Lieder more than any other kind of music. Do you suppose you could take a baritone, great pianist and her Steinway as your luxury on Desert Island Discs?<\/p>\n

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  It\u2019s rare for my wife and me to feel that we are among the younger members of the audience, but this happened at the Oxford Lieder Festival 2015, \u201cSinging Words: Poets and their Songs.\u201d The occasion was a concert of songs by Schumann, Mahler and Mendelssohn at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-hV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}