LiedFest Berlin Oxford - Special Concert
The Modern Song Kollektiv
Hommage to James Joyce
Friday, 30th of May 2025, 7.30pm at the KÜHLHAUS BERLIN
Merry evenings in our house
A celebration of James Joyce
Philip Headlam, direction and piano
Anna Huntley, mezzo-soprano
Joshua Owen Mills, tenor
Dietrich Henschel, baritone
James Joyce (1882- 1941), one of the greatest modernist writers in Europe, was also a fine singer, an avid enthusiast of music and friend to musicians and composers. He gathered friends and family for ‘merry evenings in our house’ to sing, dance and play the music he loved - for the drama, the entertainment and the fun.
A tour of the life of James Joyce through the music of his life: from Renaissance songs by Dowland and Purcell, popular French boulevard songs, English Music Hall and Gilbert & Sullivan to operetta, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and the lively, danceable folksongs and traditional melodies of Ireland and Italy.
Included is a performance of The Joyce Book: a song cycle on his collection Pomes Penyeach with each poem set by a different composer -- from England, Ireland, France, the United States and Italy. Undeservngly fading from sight after 1932, this will be the German premiere.
Program
Part one
The Joyce Book (1932)
13 songs on poems from POMES PENYEACH
E.J. Moeran Tilly
Arnold Bax Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba
Albert Roussel A Flower given to my Daughter
Herbert Hughes She Weeps over Rahoon
John Ireland Tutto è Sciolto
Roger Sessions On the Beach at Fontana
Arthur Bliss Simples
Herbert Howells Flood
George Antheil Nightpiece
Edgardo Carducci Alone
Eugene Goossens A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight
C.W. Orr Bahnhofstrasse
Bernard Van Dieren A Prayer
Part two
Joyce's choice - Merry evenings in our house
Music by James Joyce, Philip Jarnach, Gilbert & Sullivan, Michael W. Balfe, Friedrich v. Flotow, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, John Dowland, Henry Purcell, Giovanni Stefani among others
Philip Headlam, conductor and pianist, has received critical acclaim for his performances in opera houses, with orchestras and ensembles and in vocal recitals in Europe, the U.K. and Canada. He has conducted and performed with the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera, Aldeburgh Festival, Contemporary Music Network, the Britten Sinfonia, B.B.C. Singers (U.K.), Sinfonia Leipzig, Theatre Royale de la Monnaie (Brussels), Banff Centre Opera, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, CBC Festival Orchestra (Canada), Batignano Opera (Italy), Wexford and Bregenz opera festivals, Kurt Weill Fest, Dessau, in broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Belgian radio and on many acclaimed cds (NMC, Prima Facie, Avie, Opera Rara).
He has extensive experience performing 20th century and contemporary music, leading many world premieres and working directly with leading composers including Henri Dutilleux, Georges Aperghis, Luca Francesconi, H. Birtwistle, John Tavener, Judith Weir and many others. He is also conductor and co-artistic director of The Continuum Ensemble (U.K.) and das Modern Song Kollektiv (Berlin) and has been praised for his innovative and dynamic concert and music festival programming.
Praised by The Guardian as a “fast-rising British talent” and a “Rising Star” by BBC Music Magazine, Anna Huntley was awarded the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Vocal Fellowship in 2011, selected by YCAT in 2012, and won prizes at the ‘Das Lied’ Competition in Berlin and the London Handel Singing Competition. In 2018, she was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music for her significant contributions to music.
Anna is a passionate recitalist and chamber musician, performing regularly at prestigious venues and festivals, including Wigmore Hall, Musikverein Wien, Klavier- Festival Ruhr, Oxford Lieder, and Opéra de Lille, with eminent pianists including Graham Johnson, Julius Drake, and James Baillieu, with chamber groups Ensemble Resonanz and the Hebrides Ensemble, and with trombonist, Peter Moore.
Other recent highlights include the European premiere of Walter Arlen’s The Song of Songs with Wiener Symphoniker (featured on Netflix and in Austrian cinemas), Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the City of London Sinfonia, Bach Cantatas at the Wiener Konzerthaus and performances at the London Handel Festival and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, as well as a variety of opera roles for Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Israeli Opera, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera and the Cambridge Handel Opera Group.
Joshua Owen Mills, tenor, has sung with the Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Staattheater Klagenfurt, Aalto Musiktheater Essen, Staatsoper Hannover; Theater Aachen, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, in the U.K. with Scottish Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera, in Finland with the Savonlinna Opera Festival and Jyväskylän Ooppera and Norrlandsoperan, Sweden including the roles of Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) and Nemorino (L’Elisir d’Amore).
In contemporary opera he has sung in Adriana Mater by Kaija Saariaho, South Pole by Miroslav Srnka, Mauerschau by Hauke Berheide as well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a staged production of War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, Lady Macbeth of Mzensk by Dmitri Shostakovich and Alpenkönig und Menschenfeind by Leo Blech (1903).
In concert he has performed with Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Kärntner Symphoniker and Münchner Symphoniker.
Born in Wales, U.K., he is an alumnus of the Opera Studio at the Bayersiche Staatsoper, Munich, Jerwood Young Artist Programme, Glyndebourne Opera and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.
The baritone Dietrich Henschel is known as a regular guest at major opera houses, as a valued interpreter of song and oratorio, as the inventor and protagonist of a wide range of multimedia projects. His repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to the avant-garde.
Henschel began his international career with a co-production between Opéra de Lyon and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris in the title role of Busoni's opera Doktor Faust, for which he was awarded with a GRAMMY.
The singer's leading roles include Rossini's Figaro, Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser, Monteverdi's Ulisse and Orfeo, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Alban Berg's Wozzek and Dr. Schön in Lulu, Golaud in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. Contemporary opera also has an important part in Henschel's repertoire; many great composers such as Pèter Éötvös, Detlev Glanert, Manfred Trojahn, Peter Ruzicka or Chaja Czernowin entrusted him with important roles in the premieres of their works.
In orchestral concerts, Henschel regularly works with conductors such as Sylvain Cambreling, Kazushi Ono, Cornelius Meister and Vladimir Jurowski. Recordings with John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Sir Colin Davis document his oratorio work.
