Sholto Kynoch is the founder and director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, where he has accompanied countless song recitals over the past ten years, working with singers including Daniel Norman, Susanna Andersson, Geraldine McGreevy, Mark Stone, Kate Royal and Jonathan Lemalu. He is also active as a chamber player, performing in many top concert halls.
Since you do lots of chamber and accompaniment, why did you decide to focus the festival around song?
I don’t think that it was a conscious decision – the festival didn’t have its roots in any master plan! We put on some Schubert song recitals and someone had the idea of calling it the Lieder Festival, then it just spiralled from that. With the Lieder Festival we’re filling a niche: art song has fallen by the wayside in this country over the last 60 years and is now enjoying something of a renaissance. I like to think that we’ve played a part in that. Chamber music has always been well served by plenty of performers and concert halls, and although I’m involved as a performer I don’t feel that it needs the same boost that song does.
How did you get involved with art song?
In the same way a lot of people did, I think: I heard a recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert when I was about 16 and fell in love with it straight away. Around the same time, Opera North gave a workshop at school. At lunchtime, a friend and I were bashing through Schubert’s ‘Erl King’, and unbeknownst to me one of the singers was listening through the door. He came in and said that I should be an accompanist. That was the first time I’d heard that word and it sparked an interest. When I was a student in Oxford I played for lots of singers and got to know lots of repertoire. I’ve been into it ever since.
You’ve mentioned Schubert, but which other composers fired up your passion for art song?
I’ve covered it from quite a traditional standpoint: the canon of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. English song as well has always been of interest to me: lots of Oxford students are into their Quilter and Vaughan Williams, and I’m definitely one of them. I’d say Wolf too, who’s the connoisseur’s composer I guess. For the past 3 years we’ve been recording Wolf’s complete songs live – the last disc had 12 world premieres on it. We’ve got two concerts in this festival and four concerts next year still to record.
The festival does a lot for young talent. Which of your Young Artists are you particularly excited about?
All of them! Our adjudicator, Sophie Daneman, was distraught at the end of our auditions in May because she just couldn’t decide. We had to award it to three people in the end! They’re all going to be doing a lot for us over the next few years. All of the people who are promoted under our platform are going places. The people who won last year are coming together for one of our evening recitals this year (Sónia Grané and Edwige Herchenroder; Victor Sicard and his pianist Anna Cardona). Those four have all been doing amazing things. They were just students when they applied to us but now the concerts which we awarded them are just starting to happen. Since winning our award, they’ve all gone on to win prizes in other competitions and have been offered big roles in opera companies. They’re all doing extremely well. Many singers get swept up rather quickly in the musical world, but we’re making sure that they keep the art song angle in their career at the moment.
Not only do you do a lot for singers, but you’re involved with education too (from primary school children to amateurs). What effect do you see the art song having on such wide and varied audiences?
The adult events are a new thing for us and they’re going to get bigger and bigger over the next few years because there’s a lot of enthusiasm for it. It’s a real strength of Oxford that lots of people are involved in the music scene even if they’re not musical themselves. The masterclass that we run for amateur singers has been massively over-subscribed (we’ll have to do at least 2 next year!), and the chorus which we’re running has had a huge amount of interest too. We’re not just setting up a choir, but we’re trying to push them towards this repertoire. It’s something that people value and we’ve had a lot of nice feedback.
Perhaps more overtly beneficial is the work we’re doing in some schools. It’s remarkable every year. We have fantastic workshop leaders, John Barber and Sophie Grimmer, who have worked with us for the past 5 years. We work with different school each year and inspire the kids to create a whole programme of songs that they write themselves. John sits at the piano and they come up with a theme of what they want to write about: this year, a visit to the Ashmolean. John’s skill is to see that the children really write the stuff. Of course they need guidance, but he will ask them to sing snatches of melody which he will elaborate for them in different ways. They decide what it will be, and they write the words. In one of the workshops I attended last year, John was asking for a snippet of melody in response to a particular emotional situation. A boy who had been sitting silently suddenly stood up and came up with something that was perfect and was immediately incorporated into the song. After the event, we received feedback that it had completely transformed him not only during the course of the workshop but afterwards as well.
There are so many studies into the effect of music upon everybody, especially young people: the combination of words and music, the performance element and the knowledge that they’re being involved in such a big project has a big effect on them. We’ve never tried to make them like any particular type of music, or themed the workshops around any composer. It has always been based around some kind of story, but they always create the music. We try to open up their creativity without forcing anything upon them.
There must be a lot of work which goes into the festival…
We have quite a small team. I do the artistic planning and the liason with artists and agents. We all work on a lot of other things as well, but at the moment we’re planning right through to 2014, which will be a much bigger Schubert-themed festival. We spend a whole year planning, but also try to plan further ahead as well. It’s a balancing act between keeping the festival going and the other things in our lives.
What direction do you see the festival going in over the next few years?
The Schubert festival in 2014 is going to be a huge event! It’s certainly going to put us on the map in a level up from the one which we’re on at the minute. We’ll get attention from all over the world, not just from the UK. We have to consider the transition from a relatively informal gathering of committed people to a fully-fledged organisation. It’s exciting, but also very daunting! There’s certainly going to be a lot going on over the next few years. We know we can get great artists and great programmes, but we’re hoping to expand upon the education side of things.
How about your CD label?
The Wolf has definitely been a big project! One of the things we’re doing next year is a complete Britten performance. We’re not going to record a whole lot (there was a relatively recent recording) but we’re recording the Canticles in February. Dan Norman (a regular at the festival) will be singing that. That will probably be released around the time of the Festival next year. There are definitely plans for more discs afoot!
What is it that makes Oxford perfect for the Festival?
A key thing is obviously the setting for the concerts. The Holywell Music Room is our core venue. It’s a historic building with good acoustics for singers and a good atmosphere – it’s perfect for this kind of repertoire. We also do the late night candlelit concerts in the New College chapel. The city is the right size for this sort of festival. In London, we’d be overwhelmed and it would be hard to get a buzz around the festival. Oxford is big enough to support something of this size. Inevitably, not every resident of the city is interested or even knows about it, but you feel that there are people who are really excited while the festival is on. It’s more than just a series of concerts. We’re lucky to have a good mix of young people and a large music-loving population. We have lots of people coming not only from Birmingham and London but internationally too. It’s a good city for a festival.
The Oxford Lieder Festival runs from 12th-27th October 2012. http://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/
This interview was conducted for a feature in the Cherwell newspaper.
Katy Wright 