Though its programmes often range right across the song repertoire, the foundation of the Oxford Lieder festival, as its name suggests, has always remained the German lied, with the songs of Schubert in particular a regular component. This year there is nothing but Schubert, for the festival is devoting itself to performing every one of his 650-odd songs in three weeks of recitals, masterclasses and lectures.
The programmes have been designed in an imaginative but never over-prescriptive way, and the opening concert was intended to give a flavour of what festival regulars might expect. Eight singers were involved – three tenors (John Mark Ainsley, James Gilchrist and Daniel Norman), four baritones (Neal Davies, William Dazeley, Stephan Loges and Christopher Maltman) with the mezzo Sarah Connolly – and the founder and continuing artistic director of the whole enterprise, Sholto Kynoch, was their accompanist.
Ranging right across Schubert’s composing career from with the distinctly over-wrought Der Vatermörder D10, which Schubert composed when he was about 14, a bit of everything other than the song cycles was included. There were even a couple of the male-voice part songs, and the sequence ended with the late Ständchen, D920, involving Connolly and all the other singers. Kynoch had grouped the songs thematically, covering topics that Schubert returned to again and again: songs about water, the spring, night and, inevitably, death.
Some of the performances were routine, others rather special – Maltman’s dark, detached account of Der Tod und das Mädchen D531; the sense of wide-eyed wonder that Dazeley brought to Der Wanderer D649; Ainsley’s lyric freshness Frühlingsglaube D740 and Ganymed D544. And there were surprise rarities, too, like the Drei Gesänge D902, Italian settings of Metastasio which sound like numbers from a forgotten Rossini opera, to which Davies brought tremendous buffo energy. The real musical meat in the festival, though comes later.
• Oxford Lieder festival continues until 1 November. Venue: Sheldonian, Oxford
