Saturday 12th April
Buzz!
Lotte Betts-Dean – mezzo
Brett Dean – viola
Iain Burnside – piano
7.30pm (75 minutes, no interval)
St Laurence’s Church, Ludlow
An exciting opportunity to hear the visionary Australian mezzo Lotte Betts-Dean – “a force in music to be reckoned with” (Nicholas Daniel OBE) – performing at LESW for the first time alongside her father, the renowned Australian violist and composer Brett Dean.
Joined by Iain Burnside, Lotte and Brett offer us a programme bursting with music about living life to the fullest. From Frank Bridge’s yearning songs for voice, viola and piano – “What heart knows another? Ah! Who knows his own?” – to Sally Beamish’s titular Buzz, wishing for “a Bee’s experience / Of clover and of Noon!” We’ll also hear Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae for solo viola, written on the very instrument given to Britten by Bridge – his teacher – when they parted for the last time in 1939; and Brett Dean’s Last Night I Starred, I Shone, written for his daughter and premiered in 2023.
“Impressive control, an irrepressible sense of drama and extraordinary self- assurance... Betts-Dean manoeuvred unflustered between registers and vocal modes with an unbroken sense of line and an unmissable, urgent musicality. She’s certainly one to watch.”
Flora Willson, The Guardian
| Frank Bridge | Three Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano |
| Madeleine Dring | A Bay in Anglesey Through the Centuries Separation It was a Lover and his Lass |
| Arthur Bliss | Two Nursery Rhymes: The Dandelion The Ragwort |
| Ralph Vaughan Williams | Prelude, from Vocalises |
| Sally Beamish | Buzz |
| Nicola LeFanu | Songs for Jane No 1: Far Away |
| Michael Berkeley | Sonnet for Orpheus |
| Brett Dean | I Starred Last Night, I Shone |
| Benjamin Britten | Lachrymae |
| Edmund Rubbra | Two Sonnets after William Alabaster |
Lotte Betts-Dean
Lotte Betts-Dean is an Australian mezzo soprano based in the UK with a wide ranging repertoire and a passion for curation, programming and collaborative project development.
Praised for her ‘irrepressible sense of drama and unmissable, urgent musicality’ (The Guardian) and ‘arrestingly opulent voice’ (Gramophone), Lotte is equally at home in chamber music, art song, contemporary repertoire of all kinds, early music, opera and narration. Lotte is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, an Ambassador for Donne UK – an organization supporting women in music – and recently won Young Artist of the Year at the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. Lotte is a regular at major festivals and venues across the UK, Australia and Europe, including Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Aldeburgh Festival, Oxford Song, West Cork Chamber Music and Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Her operatic credits in baroque, 20th century and contemporary opera include Grand Théâtre de Genève, Bayerische Staatsoper, Nevill Holt Festival and State Opera of South Australia. Her fast-growing discography includes albums recently released on Delphian Records (Stuart MacRae, Arthur Keegan), Another Timbre (Catherine Lamb), NAXOS (Phillipos Tsalahouris), Divine Art Métier (Michael Finnissy), and BIS (Brett Dean) with further albums due for release on Platoon (Schubert) and Delphian (Britten). Lotte is represented worldwide by Askonas Holt.
Brett Dean
Australian-born Brett Dean was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic for fourteen years, during which time he began composing. His music is championed by leading conductors and orchestras worldwide, including Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons and Marin Alsop.
Dean has gained international recognition through works such as his clarinet concerto Ariel’s Music (1995), which won a UNESCO Composers award, and Carlo (1997). In 2009 Dean won the Grawemeyer Award for violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing, and in 2017 his opera Hamlet was premiered at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, winning a South Bank Sky Arts Award and International Opera Award. Dean also appears with orchestras, ensembles and festivals worldwide as a conductor and violist.
In the 2024/25 season, Dean conducts the Australian National Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra and performs at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music and the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival. Elsewhere, he conducts the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Lapland Chamber Orchestra and the Riot Ensemble.
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.
