One of the first female choral scholars at Trinity College, Cambridge, mezzo-soprano Susanna Spicer went on to sing under conductors such as Simon Rattle, Kurt Masur, John Eliot Gardiner, and Trevor Pinnock.

As a graduate of ‘the other place’, I assumed that she wouldn’t be too familiar with Kidlington, so I offered directions to my home, where we had arranged to meet.

“No need thanks, I know exactly how to find it,” came the reply.

It transpired that Susanna grew up just a few doors away, and that I’d worked for her father as a callow trainee at Oxford University Press.

She took Saturday music classes at Edward Feild School, Kidlington, and there’s a strong family link with the Oxford Bach Choir.

“Both my parents were very keen amateur singers. They were mainstays of the Oxford Bach Choir for many years. I also sang in the choir from the age of 13 to 15: I didn’t divulge my age — when they asked me which college I was at, I had to reply that I wasn’t actually at the university. Luckily, they didn’t pursue the question.”

What, I asked Susanna, inspired her to go professional?

“It never occurred to me to do anything else,” she laughed. “I was always going to give it a go, and if it failed, fair enough. I would then join the real world. But having said that, I initially went to the Crescent School in Norham Gardens, and a teacher there, Kay Sawtell, wrote on my first report, ‘she’s settling in quite well, although she is slightly on the bossy side — she seems to lead the class singing’. My mother still quotes that report. My parents always encouraged me, although when I wanted to go to music college, they made sure I got a secretarial qualification first.”

Before Susanna arrived, I’d been listening to a rather doom-laden Radio 3 speaker, who suggested that a professional singer can be much affected by mood and health in general, as well as too much talking, smoking, and drinking. It sounded as if a hermit-like lifestyle was called for.

“A lot of it is tied up with psychology,” Susanna commented. “If you’re in a good place personally, then you can overcome most of the things that are thrown at you. If you’re remotely vulnerable or anxious about a concert, then you do worry about getting on a bus, in case someone blows germs over you. As a singer, you don’t have an instrument to hide behind, you can’t rely on a Stradivarius to produce the goods for you. You are your voice.

“There are times of year when you do get in a panic — before Christmas is the big one, because it’s always a very busy patch. You’re usually going to try to fund January on the basis of what you take in during December. And certainly I may avoid a noisy party if I’ve got a big concert the next day. But life has got to be lived — part of a singer’s role is to be quite extrovert.”

Now living in London and Herefordshire, Susanna Spicer returns to Oxfordshire shortly to appear as a soloist for the Woodstock Music Society.

“As far as we are concerned,” WMS secretary Evelyn Hendy told me, “She is a star, because she once took over a very difficult role for us at extremely short notice, and pulled it off with great success.”

“I got a call 24 hours in advance about a piece by Vaughan Williams called Five Tudor Portraits,” Susanna explained. “It’s not done very often, so I hadn’t come across the piece before. But luckily I did have a copy — it was left over from my parents doing it with the Bach Choir. It was also lucky that a lot of my living has been earned from being a good sight reader. I pick things up pretty quickly.

“So, I had 24 hours to get a rather unusual role under my belt — it’s actually a narrator talking about a character who is a drunk. Woodstock decided they wanted me to illustrate the drunk, so I had to stagger up the aisle! It all went off remarkably well.

“The extraordinary thing was that it happened again with exactly the same piece last November. Again I got a call at 24 hours’ notice — this time from Norwich. It was a rather more sober production, so I didn’t repeat the drunken bit in the aisle.”

This time in Woodstock, Susanna is a soloist in Tippett’s A Child of our Time, a work in which the composer uses spirituals in the same way as Bach used chorales in his Passions. The text is prompted by the story of Jews persecuted following the assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a 17-year-old Jewish boy in 1938.

“It’s an interesting work, and I’m very fond of it,” Susanna said. “It’s quite a technically challenging piece — I’m not sure I should tell you this, but I think I’ve only once done a performance which has been 100 per cent correct so far as the soloist is concerned. Audiences can come out thinking it wasn’t a very good performance when actually it was very good — it’s the way Tippett writes that makes it sound chaotic. But it’s a very powerful work.”

lMichael Tippett’s A Child of our Time will be performed at St Mary Magdalene Church, Woodstock, on Friday, March 27, and Saturday, March 28. The concerts will also include Handel’s Water Music, and Let thy Hand be Strengthened. Tickets from 01865 721644 or email wmsoc@btinternet.com