17 November  2008

RODERICK WILLIAMS baritone

MICHAEL CLEAVER piano

Roderick Williams has sung at the Music Club on more than one occasion before and is an immensely charismatic artist capable of winning anyone over to the delights of English song. He is an exceptionally versatile artist whose intelligent musicality is admired in music from Monteverdi to Maxwell Davies. He has become a familiar and commanding presence on the operatic stage. His burnished and flexible baritone is equally in demand for recitals and oratorio.

For Opera North he has recently sung many of the great baritone roles in Mozart - Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, the title role in Don Giovanni and the Count in The Marriage of Figaro - as well as Figaro in The Barber of Seville. For Scottish Opera he has sung Marcello in La Bohème and Lord Byron in the world premiere of Sally Beamish's Monster. Most recently he performed Ned Keene in Peter Grimes (Opera North). Other notable world premieres include David Sawer's From Morning to Midnight and Martin Butler's A Better Place, both for English National Opera. Forthcoming highlights include Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (Opéra National de Paris, with William Christie) and Papageno in The Magic Flute (Opera North). He has taken major roles in Britten's Gloriana, Walton's Troilus and Cressida and most of the Vaughan Williams operas. Plans include Billy Budd with the London Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding, and Pilgrim in Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress with the Philharmonia.

Roderick has sung concert repertoire with all the BBC orchestras, and many other ensembles including the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. Recent successes include Britten's War Requiem with the Philharmonia, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius in Toulouse, Tippett's The Vision of St Augustine with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the 2005 BBC Proms, Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the world premiere of Birtwistle's The Ring Dance of the Nazarene with VARA Radio (repeated at the BBC Proms).

He is also an accomplished recital artist, who can be heard at Wigmore Hall, at many festivals, and on Radio 3, where he has appeared on Iain Burnside's Voices programme. Recital plans this season include re-invitations to the Cheltenham and Aldeburgh Festivals. His numerous recordings include Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress, Sir John in Love and The Poisoned Kiss, and Britten's Peter Grimes, Billy Budd and Albert Herring (all for Chandos). For Philips he has taken part in Verdi's Don Carlos conducted by Bernard Haitink. His most recent releases are Lennox Berkeley's A Dinner Engagement and Ruth for Chandos, a premiere recording of Vaughan Williams' Willow Wood with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and two discs of English song (Finzi and Vaughan Williams) with pianist Iain Burnside for Naxos.

Programme

Gerald Finzi     Earth and Air and Rain

John Ireland    Four songs: Great things; Santa Chiara; Summer Schemes; I have twelve oxen

Henri Duparc     Four songs: Lamento; La vague et la cloche; Elégie; La vie antérieure

Richard Sisson   Songs (to be announced)

Vaughan Williams  L’amour de moy

Finzi’s favourite poet was Thomas Hardy and he set over 50 of his poems to music; most of them in five cycles, of which Earth and Air and Rain is the second. It dates from 1936 but was not performed complete until 1945. The songs are extremely varied in subject and form but comprise an exceptionally satisfying group. John Ireland was also a prolific songwriter and the four Roderick Williams has selected are among the best known. Henri Duparc’s contribution to the French artsong repertoire is slight but exquisite and these four examples should send music lovers seeking out the others. Richard Sisson is a local composer whose music has been heard a good deal at the Music Club, to the invariable delight of audiences. His contribution to this concert is still under wraps but hopefully will include some new songs. And finally a French traditional song arranged by Vaughan Williams in 1903.

Reviews

“Roderick Williams is a national treasure. Not only is he an intensely musical singer, acutely responsive to the sound and meaning of words, but also his approach to the English Romantic song repertoire is…revelatory.”  BBC Music Magazine