Saturday 11th April
Gerald Finzi’s World
The composer and his friends
Ailish Tynan – soprano
Roderick Williams – baritone
Matthew Rose – bass
Iain Burnside – piano
8.00pm (75 minutes, no interval)
Ludlow Assembly Rooms
Tickets £35; Under 21s £10
Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside are joined by soprano Ailish Tynan and bass Matthew Rose, as our Finzi celebrations reach their climax, with a picture in song of Finzi’s friendship group, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edmund Rubbra, Howard Ferguson and William Busch.
“Our greatest living baritone.”
The Daily Telegraph on Roderick Williams
“Unforced sincerity and astonishing beauty of tone.”
The Guardian on Ailish Tynan
“Matthew Rose has few peers among operatic basses.”
Bachtrack
| Gerald Finzi | I need not go |
| Ralph Vaughan Williams | Orpheus with his lute |
| Gerald Finzi | The Clock of the Years |
| William Busch | Rest |
|
Ben Pease Barton |
the change (world premiere) |
|
Howard Ferguson |
Calen-O |
| My Grandfather Died | |
| Gerald Finzi | So I have fared |
| For life I have never cared greatly | |
| Edmund Rubbra | Out in the dark |
| Gerald Finzi | Channel Firing |
| I said to Love | |
| Judith Bingham | The Shadow Side of Joy Finzi |
| Jeremy Dale Roberts | Spoken to a bronze head |
| Gerald Finzi | In a Churchyard |
| Robin Milford | The Pink Frock |
| Gerald Finzi | Proud Songsters |
Why not sponsor a favourite song?
You can sponsor a favourite song in your own name or anonymously, or dedicate a special piece of music to someone special. It’s the perfect gift for the music lovers and Finzi fans in your life!
We’ll include your sponsorship in the festival programme book next to the song title, with your own personalised wording. Once you’ve chosen a song, email Toria to arrange your sponsorship.
There isn’t a fixed donation amount for sponsorship. We make a suggestion of £50, but if that’s not affordable but you’d like to participate, please get in touch. If you’d like to offer more, or even sponsor a whole event, that’s fine too!
Ailish Tynan
Irish soprano Ailish Tynan came to prominence when she won the 2003 Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.
Ailish’s recent and upcoming appearances include the Governess (The Turn of the Screw) and Despina (Cosi fan tutte) for English National Opera; Berta (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) at Glyndebourne; and Christine in the World Premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Festen for the Royal Opera. Concert engagements include Handel’s Messiah at the National Concert Hall, Dublin; Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Royal Festival Hall; and Mozart’s C Minor Mass at Westminster Abbey.
Other operatic roles include Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Ballet & Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte), Berta (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Madame Cortese (Il Viaggio a Reims), Madame Podtotshina’s Daughter (The Nose, Royal Opera), Mimì (La Bohème), Zemfira (Aleko), Vixen (The Cunning Little Vixen, Grange Park Opera), Tigrane (Radamisto, English National Opera), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte, Teatro alla Scala), Despina (Così fan tutte, Garsington Opera, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse), Héro (Béatrice et Bénédict, Houston Grand Opera, Opéra Comique, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg), Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier), Nannetta (Falstaff), Atalanta (Xerxes, Royal Swedish Opera), and Miss Wordsworth (Albert Herring, Opéra Comique, Opéra de Rouen). Her concert performances have included Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 2; Verdi’s Requiem; Haydn’s The Creation; and Handel’s Messiah. She has appeared at both the first and last nights of the BBC Proms.
Roderick Williams
Roderick Williams is one of the most sought-after baritones of his generation. He performs a wide repertoire from baroque to contemporary music, in the opera house, on the concert platform and is in demand as a recitalist worldwide.
He enjoys relationships with all the major UK opera houses and has sung opera world premieres by David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Michael van der Aa, Robert Saxton and Alexander Knaifel. Recent and future engagements include The Traveller (Death in Venice) for Welsh National Opera, the title role in Eugene Onegin and Yeletsky (Pique Dame) for Garsington, Papageno for Covent Garden, Sharpless (Madame Butterfly) for ENO and van de Aa’s Upload with Cologne Opera, Bregenz Festival and the Dutch National Opera.
Roderick sings regularly with all the BBC orchestras and all the major UK orchestras, as well as the Berlin, London and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Singapore Symphony, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Bayerische Rundfunk, London Symphony and Bach Collegium Japan amongst others and will be artist in residence for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 25/26. His many festival appearances include the BBC Proms (including the Last Night in 2014), Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Bath, Aldeburgh and Melbourne Festivals.
Roderick Williams has an extensive discography. He is a composer and has had works premiered at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Purcell Room and live on national radio. In December 2016 he won the prize for best choral composition at the British Composer Awards. He is Composer in Association of the BBC Singers.
He performed the three Schubert song cycles around the UK culminating in performances at the Wigmore Hall and has subsequently recorded them for Chandos. Future releases include more Schubert, Schumann in English as well as works by Vaughan Williams.
He was Artistic Director of Leeds Lieder in April 2016, Artist in Residence for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra from 2020/21 for two seasons and won the RPS Singer of the Year award in May 2016. He was awarded an OBE in June 2017 and sang at the Coronation Service of King Charles.
Matthew Rose
British bass Matthew Rose studied at the Curtis Institute of Music before becoming a member of the Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Matthew’s international career has seen him enjoy a close relationship with The Metropolitan Opera, for whom he gave his 100th performance in 2022. His roles there include Filippo II and Monk (Don Carlos), Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Claudio (Agrippina), Masetto and Leporello (Don Giovanni), Oroveso (Norma), Ashby (La Fanciulla del West), Talbot (Maria Stuarda), Bottom (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Night Watchman (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Frère Laurent (Roméo et Juliette) and Colline (La bohème).
The 2025/26 season includes Matthew’s return to Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, as Sarastro in The Metropolitan Opera’s beloved Holiday Presentation, and as the Speaker of the House for the Royal Ballet and Opera in London. Matthew also performs in Seattle Opera’s concert performances of Daphne as Peneios and with Sir Mark Elder in L’enfance du Christ at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. In the summer of 2026, he returns to Grange Park Opera for the roles of Fasolt Das Rheingold and Philip II Don Carlo.
Passionate about music and vocal education, Matthew runs Folkestone on Song, an organisation that brings song and singing to Folkestone and East Kent via an international song festival, a bursary award for emerging artists, and a singing academy. He is also the co-director of the Spoleto Vocal Arts Workshop, in association with Mahler & LeWitt Studios and Vocal Masterclass Stockholm.
Iain Burnside
Interweaving roles as pianist and Sony Award-winning broadcaster with equal aplomb, Iain Burnside (“pretty much ideal” BBC Music Magazine) is also a master programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition.
He has performed in recitals with many of the world’s leading singers. Earlier in his career he had the privilege of working with Dame Margaret Price, Victoria de los Angeles, Galina Gorchakova and Susan Chilcott. More recent collaborators include Rosa Feola, Ailish Tynan, Lawrence Brownlee and Roderick Williams. For Wigmore Hall he has curated a number of recital series, featuring both English and Russian repertoire.
He has been Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend since its inception in 2002, committed to exploring this rich, diverse repertoire and to celebrating different generations of vocal talent. His discography of over sixty recordings straddles an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Judith Weir, with a special place reserved for the highways and byways of English Song. CDs of Britten, Finzi, Ireland and Vaughan Williams with Roderick Williams have been critically acclaimed, as have their recordings of the three Schubert cycles. Burnside’s association with Delphian Records spans both a hugely diverse range of British composers and the complete songs of Rachmaninov (“electrifying” Daily Telegraph).
Burnside has a long association with BBC Radio3, both as programme maker and presenter. In demand as teacher and animateur, he works at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, on the Jette Parker Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House and as International Visiting Artist at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. For Guildhall School Burnside has written and devised a number of highly individual theatre pieces, based variously around Schubert, Brahms, Gurney and Britten. Other musical activities feature Burnside as a committed chamber musician, notably as a founder member of Trio Balthasar. He has served on a variety of international competition juries, both for singers and for pianists, among them Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, Busoni Competition in Bolzano, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competition. He is Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera.