Celebrating Songs

Last year, even before the Oxford Lieder Festival 2013 began, its webpage already announced the Festival 2014, “The Schubert Project”: they intended to offer a complete performance of Schubert’s Lieder. Yes. The whole lot. Every single Lied.

That means about six hundred fifty songs, which is easier said than done. Such an initiative has my full admiration, regardless who the honoured composer is. Although, in fact,  we are talking about Schubert, the apple of my eye! If we were on Twitter, I would add here two or three < 3 which, after pressing the Return key, would become two or three hearts, but we are on a blog (a very serious one indeed) so you will have to imagine them.

I've been following The Project Schubert on the social networks during all this year and I can't help posting about it just to share with you how pleased I am with this project and also let you know about it (just in case you don't). The festival is starting within a month on October 10th in Oxford, (some concerts are going to be held in London the previous week) and is going to last until November 1st. Three weeks and almost sixty concerts; most of them are going to be song recitals, of course, but in addition most of Schubert's part-songs are going to be played, as well as chamber works and sacred music works (during the religious services every Sunday).

There will also be a series of masterclasses with some of the pianists and singers who take part in concerts, lectures, family concerts and activities at the Botanical Garden, the Ashmolean Museum and the Bodleian Library,... Even some restaurants and pubs are going to offer Viennese dishes. What about the artists? The list is so long that first, I chose and wrote down a few names but finally, I erased them; I think you'd better visit and browse the festival website. You’ll see some of them on this video, presenting the festival and talking beautifully about Schubert which is always good to listen:

My warmest congratulations to the organization, led by its artistic director, the pianist Sholto Kynoch. I can't even imagine how difficult it is to put together a festival like this one, thinking of the budget to start with. By the way, either if we go or don’t, we all can get involved in this project by sponsoring one of the Schubert's songs. Today we are listening to mine, a beautiful nocturne, not as known as, in my opinion, it deserves, perhaps because it's longer than usual. However, as this is a short post, I think we can devote some time to this Lieder: An der Mond in einer Herbstnacht (To the moon on an Autumn night), upon a poem by Aloys Wilhelm Schreiber. We're repeating the last week’s performers, Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau.