Friday 10th April
Eight Haiku
Roderick Williams & Iain Burnside
Roderick Williams OBE – baritone
Iain Burnside – piano
7.30pm (80 minutes, no interval)
St. Laurence’s Church, Ludlow
Tickets £35; £10 (Under 21s)
Festival favourite and internationally-renowned baritone Roderick Williams returns to Ludlow with a programme devised around the UK premiere of music by American composer Libby Larsen. Eight delicate haiku settings are interwoven with thematically related songs by Britten, Finzi, Schubert and more.
Please note this concert will be in St Laurence’s Church, not at Ludlow Assembly Rooms.
“Our greatest living baritone.”
The Daily Telegraph, on Roderick Williams
“She’s the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively.”
USA Today on Libby Larsen
| Libby Larsen | 1. For the living |
| Franz Schubert | Die Sterne |
| Francis Poulenc | Jacques Villon |
| Gerald Finzi | Waiting Both |
| Libby Larsen | 2. Departure day |
| Ludwig van Beethoven | Leichte Segler in den Höhen |
| Joan Trimble | My grief on the sea |
| Libby Larsen | 3. War forced us from California |
| Franz Schubert | Meeres Stille |
| Elizabeth Lutyens | Refugee Song |
| Libby Larsen | 4. At midday |
| Carl Loewe | Der Zahn |
| Ralph Vaughan Williams | Silent Noon |
| Libby Larsen | 5. Hearing sound of train |
| Benjamin Britten | Midnight on the Great Western |
| Libby Larsen | 6. This night memories of past year |
| Gabriel Fauré | Automne |
| Francis Jackson | From a railway carriage |
| Libby Larsen | 7. It’s winter |
| Franz Schubert | Der Doppelgänger |
| Ivor Gurney | Reconciliation |
| Libby Larsen | 8. At daybreak |
| Franz Schubert | Nacht und Träume |
| María Grever | What a difference a day makes |
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!
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.
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.