Live online: Oxford Lieder Festival: Brahms, Britten and Purcell

Katie Bray was the winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2019. Her programme today with the acclaimed pianist William Vann and violist Hélène Clément is a perfect and carefully devised complement to our study day on ‘Brahms’s Circle and the Musical Past’, and the concert given later today by James Gilchrist and Elizabeth Kenny.

They perform Brahms songs that reflect his interest in musical history, as well as his two songs with viola that were dedicated to Amalie and Joseph Joachim (see study event part one). Connecting the baroque to the 20th century, we hear Henry Purcell’s ‘Mad Bess’ and ‘Morning Hymn’, arranged by Benjamin Britten. In anticipation of the Dowland songs we will hear performed by James Gilchrist and Elizabeth Kenny, they also include Britten’s Lachrymae for viola and piano, a set of variations on Dowland’s ‘If my complaints could passions move’. Violist Hélène Clément is well known to Oxford audiences as a member of the Doric String Quartet: it is particularly special to hear her play Britten’s Lachrymae as she plays on Britten’s old viola.

This concert will be streamed completely live from the Holywell Music Room. Shortly afterwards, it will also be available to watch again (using the same ticket and link) until 1 November 2020. Click here for further information on how tickets will work this year.