Oxford Lieder Festival

Now in its eighth year, this glorious song fest looks bigger and better than ever, with no fewer than 22 concerts lined up, interspersed with various fringe events.

“There’s a real festival feel because there’s something going on all the time,” Sholto tells me. “So rather than just a series of concerts packed into two weeks, there’s a lot of daytime events as well, and people can dip in and out of it.”

We had met at the Corner Club in Turl Street, and Sholto had just rushed over from Wallingford School, where he has been working with a small group of sixth form pupils.

Education has been an important part of the festival for some years, and is it something that Sholto is keen to develop.

“The main projects we’ve done in the past have involved going into two primary schools, working with about 75 kids over the two weeks before the festival, and building up a 45-minute performance of songs that the children have written themselves,” he explains.

“This week we’re going to Wallingford School, and working with ten of their most gifted sixth form students. Those older children will then go into two primary schools, Fir Tree and Crowmarsh, and lead the workshops for the younger ones.

“So the younger ones get to meet some of the children from the school they’re almost certainly going to, and the older kids have this huge responsibility, which they really rise to.

“Last time we did it the concert at the end was so inspiring, I thought we really must do it again. It’s actually the first official event of this year’s festival, and it’s open to the public. It should be an amazing event.”

School workshops generally tie in with at least one of the Lieder Festival concerts.

This year the children have written a song cycle around a German folk tale, which links into the main opening concert, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a collection of folk poetry in settings by Mahler, Brahms and Schumann.

“The Mahler ones are the best known, and we’re doing them all,” says Sholto. “It’s great music, and they all paint very vivid pictures, so that should be a good way to start the festival.”

One of the highlights this year is a mini Benjamin Britten festival, which takes place over the first weekend.

In a programme arranged by pianist Julius Drake, Oxford tenor Daniel Norman will be singing all five of the Canticles spread across three concerts, alongside some of Britten’s folk song arrangements and harp suites, and music by Purcell, Beethoven and Schubert – composers that Britten loved and found particularly influential.

Another highlight — and a real scoop for the festival — is the European premiere of Evidence of Things Not Seen by American song composer Ned Rorem.

“He’s an amazing writer of songs,” says Sholto. “His work has got its own voice, but it’s also very accessible. It’s very melodic writing, and he always picks very interesting texts as well.

“This is a huge song cycle, with 36 songs in it, and a range of poets. It’s for four singers, always in different combinations, so there’s some solo songs, some unaccompanied songs, and some that are duos, trios and quartets.

“It’s been performed and recorded in America, but it’s never been performed outside the States.

“It’s a bit different to what we normally do, but it should be quite an amazing event, so I hope people will turn up in droves!”As is now traditional, the three Schubert song cycles will feature during the festival, starting with Winterreise on October 17, performed by Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, and closing over the final two nights with Die schöne Müllerin, performed by tenor Christopher Maltman, and Schwanengesang, sung by festival favourite James Gilchrist.

Elsewhere, there is a Mendelssohn evening, marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, as well as various lunchtime and late-night concerts, recitals by some of the most promising students from the Guildhall and the Royal Northern College of Music, a mastercourse and a study day.

It is, perhaps, one of the impressive festivals yet, with a particularly good mix of music and some high-profile guest performers.

Does it get increasingly difficult, I asked Sholto, to follow each festival with something better the following year?

“No, I don’t think so. We’ve always got loads of ideas, and we can’t do everything at once, so we’ve always got a backlog of ideas. Each year we try to improve — we get better at organising it, we get a better name and we can attract more of the world’s best-known people. I think also as our audience gets more trusting, we can push the barriers a bit more.”

lThe Oxford Lieder Festival runs from October 16 to 31. For full details, visit oxfordlieder.co.uk. Box office: 01865 305305.