Oxford Lieder returns to Fairlight

Fairlight Hall are delighted to announce the second season of this exciting collaboration with Oxford Lieder Festival. OLF is the UK’s biggest and most renowned festival of classical song, and the recipient of a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award. As well as presenting many of the world’s greatest musicians in Oxford each October, Oxford Lieder supports the very brightest artists of the new generation both at the Festival and further afield throughout the year. Over the course of the year, Oxford Lieder’s artistic director – the pianist Sholto Kynoch – will introduce exceptional emerging professional singers to Fairlight, in a range of programmes designed to appeal to all and to showcase brilliant young voices and glorious music. Sholto will give a spoken introduction to each programme, and there will be a chance to meet the artists informally over coffee after each of the performances. The perfect way to pass a Sunday morning. This year, a Season Pass is available-  all five concerts for the price of four.

The first programme in the series takes place on Sunday 18 November with Edward Grint singing Gerald Finzi’s ‘Earth and Air and Rain’ and Robert Schumann’s ‘Liederkreis Op.24’. Edward Grint is one of the most exciting bass-baritones of the new generation, an alumnus of King’s College, Cambridge, and the Benjamin Britten Opera School at the Royal College of Music. He performs two songs cycles where the meeting of poet and composer is truly symbiotic: Gerald Finzi’s settings of Thomas Hardy and one of Robert Schumann’s first forays into the poetry of Heinrich Heine. Both composers would set these poets more than any others, and today’s cycles represent pinnacles of the English and German song traditions. Earth and Air and Rain contains such great songs as To Lizbie Browne and The Clock of the Years, while Schumann’s Liederkreis (‘Song Circle’) creates a powerful and cohesive musical narrative around Heine’s bittersweet poems. A superb recital to start our new season of song at Fairlight.

All events begin at 11am- concerts last approximately 1 hour and are followed by coffee and cake. Tickets £10 (including coffee and cake) available from the Fairlight Hall website. www.fairlighthall.co.uk