Friday 21 October

The festival may only run for two weeks but seems to mount more events each year. I was there for a single day and managed to get to six separate events ranging from lieder to Bach Cantatas, and taking in lectures on the way.

The lunchtime recital at Holywell Music room was given by Andre Schuen with an all Schubert programme. Accompanied by Daniel Heide, he opened in operatic style with Auf der Bruck and Der Wanderer an den Mond but produced a fine introspection for Nachstuck and Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskurn. After many songs with serious if not depressive content he finished happily with Willkommen und Abschied.  He is certainly a young singer whose career we will follow with interest.

The afternoon was given over to three items all linked to the Festival’s theme – The Schumann Project. As well as many concerts given over entirely to Schumann’s lieder, Bach Revived considered the importance of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Sterndale Bennett to the revival of Bach’s music in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Dr Hannah French lectured in the Western Library on the importance of all three composers to the revolutionary change in attitude in the first part of the century, when the concept of J S Bach moved from the antiquarian musicologist, assuming the composer was of little interest and impossible to perform, to the present situation where he is treated in an almost godlike way.

Mendelssohn’s performance of the St Matthew Passion on 11 March 1829 is seen as the turning point. By modern standards this was not a complete performance and nor did is use anything like the instrumentation we have come to expect today. However it gave audiences, and musicians, a clear understanding of the magnificent potential of the work and from then on interest gathered exponentially. Mendelssohn was closely aided by the singer Edvard Devrient – who noted that it had taken an actor and a Jew to reinstate the greatest of Christian works!

The atrium of the Weston Library is not an obvious place for a recital but the Festival aims to present a number of sessions free to encourage a wider audience. Thus after the lecture we heard soprano Turiya Haudenhuyse sing songs by Bach and Schumann, ranging from an entrancing Bist du bei mir from Bach to the bleak setting of Zwielicht by Schumann. The link to the lecture came in the form of arrangements that the composers had made of Bach to make him more acceptable to the contemporary audience. So Schumann had added a piano part to Bach’s solo Violin Sonata No2, and Mendelssohn a similar piano part for the Violin Partita No3. These were finely played by violinist, Jonathan Stone with Sholto Kynoch at the piano. Working against a confused background of clinking teacups from the cafeteria and people coming and going, it still managed to be remarkably effective.

Back in the lecture theatre Richard Wigmore, who had provided many of the lieder translations, spoke about the influence of Bach on Schumann’s song settings.

Little time to recuperate before the early evening instrumental recital in the Holywell Music Room. The Phoenix Piano Trio comprises the violin and piano soloists we had heard immediately before, together with cellist Christian Elliott. They gave us Niels Gade’s Novelletten and Mendelssohn’s second Piano Trio. The Gade is a deeply romantic work, often jolly and extrovert in its scoring with a gentle lyrical Larghetto.  The Mendelssohn was on a different emotional level, sturm und drang from the outset though it comes to a joyous conclusion, using a brief chorale which never overpowers the more enthusiastic lyricism.

The main evening recital was given by soprano Julianne Banse. She apologised at the start for the cold she had developed and it was clear this was not an excuse. Though it did not curtail the performance it was obvious at times she was genuinely suffering and her breathing was often restricted. This did not prevent her from giving us a well focused and highly sensitive reading of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und-leben and the five Gedichte der konigin Maria Stuart.  The evening had opened with five songs by Mendelssohn, concluding with a humorous reading of Andres Maienlied ‘Hexenlied’ and seven by Brahms, of which Die Mainacht impressed.  She was accompanied throughout by Marcelo Amaral whose postludes in the Schumann were moving and always apt.

Most of the audience then moved down the road to New College Chapel where the Oxford Bach Soloists gave a late night performance of three Bach Cantatas. The last of these, BWV55, featured tenor James Gilchrist whose passionate rendition brought the day to a fitting close. Earlier we had heard countertenor Alexander Chance in radiant form for BWV 89 & 115. Here was another young singer who we will follow with interest. Between the cantatas Robert Quinney had shuttled between the chamber organ in the orchestra to the organ gallery to perform two of Schumann’s Fugues on BACH. After so much intimate music in Holywell it was exhilarating to be exposed to the power of the New College organ.

All of this in one day – and one day out of sixteen.

If you have not been, then next year’s Festival runs from 13-18 October and will focus on The Last of the Romantics – Mahler and fin-de-siecle Vienna. www.oxfordlieder.co.uk