Recently in Interviews

Connections Across Time: Sholto Kynoch on the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival

‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.

Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies (Vol.2) - in conversation with Adrian Bradbury

‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’

Eboracum Baroque - Heroic Handel

Eboracum Baroque is a flexible period instrument ensemble, comprising singers and instrumentalists, which was founded in York - as its name suggests, Eboracum being the name of the Roman fort on the site of present-day York - while artistic director Chris Parsons was at York University.

Schubert 200 : in conversation with Tom Guthrie

‘There could be no happier existence. Each morning he composed something beautiful and each evening he found the most enthusiastic admirers. We gathered in his room - he played and sang to us - we were enthusiastic and afterwards we went to the tavern. We hadn’t a penny but were blissfully happy.’

Soprano Eleanor Dennis performs Beethoven and Schubert at the 2019 Highgate International Chamber Music Festival

When soprano Eleanor Dennis was asked - by Ashok Klouda, one of the founders and co-directors of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival - to perform some of Beethoven’s Scottish Songs Op.108 at this year’s Festival, as she leafed through the score to make her selection the first thing that struck her was the beauty of the poetry.

Mark Padmore reflects on Britten's Death in Venice

“At the start, one knows ‘bits’ of it,” says tenor Mark Padmore, somewhat wryly, when I meet him at the Stage Door of the Royal Opera House where the tenor has just begun rehearsals for David McVicar’s new production of Death in Venice, which in November will return Britten’s opera to the ROH stage for the first time since 1992.

An interview with Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Oxford Lieder Festival's first Associate Composer

“Trust me, I’m telling you stories …”

In conversation with Nina Brazier

When British opera director Nina Brazier tries to telephone me from Frankfurt, where she is in the middle of rehearsals for a revival of Florentine Klepper’s 2015 production of Martinů’s Julietta, she finds herself - to my embarrassment - ‘blocked’ by my telephone preference settings. The technical hitch is soon solved; but doors, in the UK and Europe, are certainly very much wide open for Nina, who has been described by The Observer as ‘one of Britain’s leading young directors of opera’.

Bill Bankes-Jones on the twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival

“We need to stop talking about ‘diversity’ and think instead about ‘inclusivity’,” says Bill Bankes-Jones, when we meet to talk about the forthcoming twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival which runs from 24th July to 10th August.

An interview with composer Dani Howard

The young Hong Kong-born British composer Dani Howard is having quite a busy year.

Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy on Salzburg, Sellars and Singing

For Peter Sellars, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a ‘visionary’ work, a utopian opera centred on a classic struggle between a father and a son written by an angry 25-year-old composer who wanted to show the musical establishment what a new generation could do.

London Bel Canto Festival 2019: an interview with Ken Querns-Langley

“Physiognomy, psychology and technique.” These are the three things that determine the way a singer’s sound is produced, so Ken Querns-Langley explains when we meet in the genteel surroundings of the National Liberal Club, where the training programmes, open masterclasses and performances which will form part the third London Bel Canto Festival will be held from 5th-24th August.

Un ballo in maschera at Investec Opera Holland Park: in conversation with Alison Langer

“Sop. Page, attendant on the King.” So, reads a typical character description of the loyal page Oscar, whose actions, in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, unintentionally lead to his monarch’s death. He reveals the costume that King Gustavo is wearing at the masked ball, thus enabling the monarch’s secretary, Anckarstroem, to shoot him. The dying King falls into the faithful Oscar’s arms.

Martin Duncan directs the first UK staging of Offenbach's Fantasio at Garsington

A mournful Princess forced by her father into an arranged marriage. A Prince who laments that no-one loves him for himself, and so exchanges places with his aide-de-camp. A melancholy dreamer who dons a deceased jester’s motley and finds himself imprisoned for impertinence.

Thomas Larcher's The Hunting Gun at the Aldeburgh Festival: in conversation with Peter Schöne

‘Aloneness’ does not immediately seem a likely or fruitful subject for an opera. But, loneliness and isolation - an individual’s inner sphere, which no other human can truly know or enter - are at the core of Yasushi Inoue’s creative expression.

In interview with Polly Graham, Artistic Director of Longborough Festival Opera

What links Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cavalli’s La Calisto? It sounds like the sort of question Paul Gambaccini might pose to contestants on BBC Radio 4’s music quiz, Counterpoint.

Six Charlotte Mew Settings: in conversation with composer Kate Whitley

Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among the contemporary reading public. When she visited the Poetry Bookshop of Harold Monro, the publisher of her first and only collection, The Farmer’s Bride (1916), she was asked, “Are you Charlotte Mew?” Her reply was characteristically diffident and self-deprecatory: “I’m sorry to say I am.”

"It Lives!": Mark Grey 're-animates' Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the first time. Peake might equally have been describing the novel upon which he had based his 1823 play which, staged at the English Opera House, had such a successful first run that it gave rise to fourteen further adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella in the following three years.

Unknown, Remembered: in conversation with Shiva Feshareki

It sounds like a question from a BBC Radio 4 quiz show: what links Handel’s cantata for solo contralto, La Lucrezia, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and the post-punk band Joy Division?

Remembering and Representing Dido, Queen of Carthage: an interview with Thomas Guthrie

The first two instalments of the Academy of Ancient Music’s ‘Purcell trilogy’ at the Barbican Hall have posed plentiful questions - creative, cultural and political.

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Interviews

Mark Stone
15 Oct 2015

Mark Stone — Oxford Lieder Festival

‘Lieder v. Opera’? At first glance it might seem to be a pointless or nonsensical question.

Mark Stone — Oxford Lieder Festival

An interview by Claire Seymour

Above: Mark Stone

 

One genre is a hybrid, multifaceted art form in which practitioners from diverse artistic and technical disciplines work together, and which communicates to its audiences by means of voice, music, text, movement, and visual and spatial design. It is performed, these days, in venues ranging from pub basements, converted warehouses to lavish opera houses, and, when transmitted live from grand international house, is experienced by audiences of hundreds of thousands of cinema-goers. The other is a symbiotic fusion of word and music, performed by a singer and accompanist in inter-dependent partnership in, most commonly, intimate halls to a few hundred, or less, focused concert-goers.

And yet in a recent article[1], John Gilhooly, the Director of the Wigmore Hall, raised several issues which suggest that because lieder and opera vie for the same limited funding, promotion and audiences, the art forms find themselves in, if not an oppositional, then certainly an uneasy relationship.

Despite Gilhooly’s description of the song recital as an ‘endangered species’, the Wigmore Hall itself is a bastion of art song, staunchly defending its value and ensuring its longevity through the Hall’s committed and adventurous programming. But, one doesn’t have to travel too far outside the capital to find another celebrated sanctuary: the Oxford Lieder Festival, now in its 14th year, runs from 16 th to 31st October in 2015, and, according to the festival’s founder Sholto Kynoch, it too has a mission to promote what is perceived to be the neglected genre of lieder and art song.

Intermezzo 2015 Garsington Opera Mark Stone (Robert), Mary Dunleavy (Christine) credit Mike Hoban.pngIntermezzo at Garsington Opera: Mark Stone as Robert and Mary Dunleavy as Christine [Photo by Mike Hoban]

So, it seemed fitting that earlier this week I found myself sitting in the restaurant at the Wigmore Hall with baritone Mark Stone, discussing opera, lieder and his own forthcoming recital at the Oxford Lieder Festival in which – with tenors Robert Murray and Joshua Elliot, pianist Graham Johnson, and actor Simon Callow – he will celebrate the A.E. Housman’s collection A Shropshire Lad, with readings interspersed with musical settings by Butterworth, Orr, Ireland, Moeran and others.

I began by asking Stone if he agreed with the doom-mongers – whose claims Gilhooly refutes in his article – that ‘the song recital is living on borrowed time’, with ‘patching programming at leading concert venues’ and ‘ageing audiences’ inevitably signalling the decline of the idiom, in the light of the general public’s ‘narrowing attention spans’ which make ‘deep listening to refined settings of poetic texts’ a challenge too far for many. Stone acknowledge the problems for art song, first in economic terms. Given the small size of most lieder venues, managements may often be under pressure to bring in an opera ‘star’ whose name will ensure a full house paying inflated ticket prices, leading to, as Gilhooly notes, promoters scheduling ‘eight song concerts a year, four of which are given by opera singers who rarely perform recitals and habitually take to the stage with underprepared programmes’. But, Stone looked at the issue from the other side too: a big-name diva would inevitably be paid far less for a single lieder recital in comparison to the fee received for a long run in the opera house, and so it might be understandable, if not acceptable, if they felt less inclined to devote as much time to the repertoire.

As for the challenges for audiences, Stone admits that these can be considerable, especially if the genre is unfamiliar. Audiences have to work hard to understand and enjoy a song: they have to listen intently to a text, perhaps in a language not their own, and can’t just sit back and let the music ‘wash over’ them. There’s nowhere to hide in a small venue, and they can feel as much a part of the performance as the singer. It can be difficult too, even for regular lieder attendees, to both follow a text, especially a translation, and simultaneously listen in a sustained way. The processes of listening can get in the way of the ‘experience’ of the song. But, the rewards for trying are immense, and Stone has found that those who are not moved, affected, uplifted and inspired by art song recitals – even if they are novices – are rare. It’s important that we don’t pander to the lowest common denominator, and sink back gently into the hammock, dieting on easy-listening, popularist fare, but that we ask something of ourselves as listeners.

And, for the performer, too, lieder recitals make particular and not inconsiderable demands. First, in contrast to a month of more of rehearsals in the opera house, the lieder singer may have just a couple of rehearsals with his or her accompanist. And, the size of venue is as significant a factor for performer as for listener: intimate settings instigate and require intense relationships between singer and audience – the singer may even feel that he or she is forming an individual relationship with each listener – and these must be sustained, not just through musical expression but also through eye contact. A singer can be sensitive to any movements or changes of mood among the audience in a way that is not the case in a large concert hall or opera house, where both performers and audiences are to some extent ‘protected’ by the distance between them. Stone tells of an occasion when, aware of a slight tension to one side of a small hall, he wondered what was wrong and whether there might be some dissatisfaction with his performance, only for an explosive sneeze to burst forth from the fidgeting listener! But, there are advantages of this intimacy too: one can modulate and manipulate one’s voice with much more nuance and subtlety than in larger auditoriums; Stone draws a parallel with public speaking, citing the difference between giving a lecture to a grand hall seating 2000 and speaking to a small gathering of only 50 people. Most of the venues at the Oxford Lieder Festival are fairly small (the Holywell Music Rooms, for example, a regular venue, seat approximately 200), and thus afford singer and listener the opportunity to share the experience of the song with concentration.

Then comes the thorny issue of language. Stone himself prefers to perform in English, or rather to perform English songs. He argues that no matter how good a non-native-speaker’s English may be, it will still not be ‘perfect’, and thus such a singer will not communicate expression and meaning as directly and truthfully as a native speaker; and, so, the same must be true of English singers performing in foreign tongues. Or, to put it another way, pronunciation is part of the ‘meaning’. We reflected on how the 19th century was such an important period for the development of the German language, and the national identity associated with it, in ways which were not true of English at this time. Perhaps such matters account for the discrepancy in musical and compositional activity and achievement during this period?

Yet, English is an immensely rich language, although it is difficult to pronounce. But, other nations think similarly about their own languages. Stone recalls performing The Merry Widow in France, in French, and – despite his own anxiety when confronted with the lengthy spoken dialogue – being reassured after a performance by an audience member’s praise and insistence that he should sing more French opera. Stone’s intimation that he would like to tackle Pelléas et Mélisande one day led his new ‘fan’ to depart promptly, without comment. Moreover, audiences are amenable to performances of opera in translation if the original language is Italian or German, but less tolerant of English translations of Russian or the Scandinavian languages. Interestingly, when Stone’s own recording company – which has released CDs of songs by Quilter, Ireland, Orr and Havergal Brian among others – issued recordings of songs by Delius, those songs with Scandinavian lyrics were performed in English translation. How would Stone judge the result? They sound unusual, a little strange. Clearly, there are no unequivocal answers to these issues.

Text and language are at the heart of this year’s Oxford Lieder Festival. After the Herculean presentation of the complete songs by Schubert in 2014, this year the Festival programme is led by the poets and entitled: ‘Singing Words: the poets and their songs’. Certainly, without poetry there would be no lieder: Stone remarks that on occasion the poem seems primary – he has sometimes performed a song by, say, Quilter and rejoiced, ‘What a superb poem!’ rather than ‘What a terrific song’. There are also some poetic forms – sonnets for example – which seem to need no musical representation, adornment or interpretation; indeed they seem to resist such reorientation. If a poem is ‘complete’ in itself, why add another dimension? Then, there are poems that may be assimilated into a composer’s idiom at the expense of their own identity: some of Finzi’s settings of Thomas Hardy seem to reach to the heart of the poet’s sentiment and meaning, but there are also songs which set different Hardy texts but which sound, employing as they do Finzi’s idiomatic musical language and voice, alarmingly similar – despite the fact that although Hardy wrote over 800 poems, never is a form or scheme repeated.

But, despite these knotty problems, the art song seems to represent and articulate something essential about the human condition; it is, as Gilhooly suggests, ‘more a spiritual necessity than a garden variety of entertainment’. An operatic role is ‘played’ but a song is ‘experienced’ or ‘lived’, by performer and listener alike. Stone comments, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that an acquaintance once remarked that when making decisions about repertoire and performances a professional singer might ask, ‘Will it bring pleasure, prestige or profitability?’ In the case of the art song, though prestige may come to some, it is pleasure that undoubtedly takes precedent over profitability. We’re back to the economics again. It all comes down to, then, the fact that we need to be prepared to pay for what we value. In fact, both opera and lieder will eventually die unless we do so.

The Oxford Lieder Festival runs from 16th – 31st October.

Claire Seymour



[1] ‘Don’t let the song recital become an endangered species’ was first published in Classical Music in August 2015 and re-printed in the programme of a recital given by Ian Bostridge, Steven Isserlis and Julius Drake at the Wigmore Hall on 7 October 2015.

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):