United Kingdom Various: Holywell Music Room and The Weston Library Lecture Theatre, Oxford, 13.10.2025. (CP)
Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome…: Claire Booth and Jâms Coleman (piano)
A Match Made in Heaven: Richard Stokes (speaker)
The Orient Express: Benoît Déchelotte (baritone) and Sarah Murer (piano)
Mörike Lieder: Christian Immler (baritone) and Anne Le Bozec (piano)
Stories in Song is the theme of this year’s Oxford International Song Festival held from 10 to 25 October with the telling of stories acknowledged as a fundamental element of song. Whether this is in the form of a cabaret show in the intimate venue of Holywell Music Room, or the comfortable lecture theatre in the Weston Library for a talk by the Professor of Lieder at the Royal Academy, this day was one to engross and enthral.
As week two of the festival began, the ‘Creativity Unlocked’ theme for this Monday was fully justified. Soprano Claire Booth is one of those very versatile performers capable of delivering the hardest soprano challenges of her much-loved Poulenc to the Faustian mini-drama Hôtel Babylon by Zoë Martlew. Her ninety-minute performance was utterly absorbing and full of fun. It permitted the works of Gershwin, Adès and Charles Ives to blossom in the most colourful manner with adequate mocking of the texts and disdainful amusement being thoroughly enjoyed by an absorbed audience. For a Monday morning, this was an extraordinary experience, seldom has there been such a sultry, intoxicating start to the week at the Holywell Music Room!
The backbone of her recital was Hôtel Babylon where her audience plays the part of the tempted Soul with seven ‘temptations’, each played by a different character in a different musical style. Her depiction of the ‘chef’ is hilarious, so too, the ‘Beautician’, sung at a furious pace with those digital natives of Gen Z most comfortable with Martlew’s language –‘liposuction to give you Kardashian ass’.
Fortunately, Booth had the admirably playful support of Jâms Coleman, a highly regarded soloist and chamber musician, at the Steinway who opened and closed the lid according to the language – ‘Beautician’ concludes with ‘Now, get outta here, vamoose!’. Coleman’s involvement began in Very Pleasant by Charles Ives from Memories (1897). Ives is considered an experimentalist classical composer and pioneer of the modernist movement; his ‘curtain time at the opera’ song was a fitting opener for Booth’s recital entitled Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome. Claire Booth’s extraordinary competence as an actor is a bonus for an individual blessed with a fine soprano voice. She can command an audience regardless of genre.
Coleman’s solo interpretations of Wild’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Somebody Loves Me and Embraceable You were well chosen palate cleansers between Hôtel Babylon and works by Woolrich and Adès.
Richard Stokes gave a carefully prepared introduction to the poet Eduard Mörike, this year being the 150th anniversary of his death. Stokes explored how his poems inspired Hugo Wolf to compose 53 Lieder masterpieces between 1888 and 1889 delivering the extracts from the poems in German and in English when absolutely necessary, interspersed with quotations from several letters plus the funeral oration spoken at Wolf’s graveside in February 1903. This was a truly remarkable introduction to the last event of a packed day in which bass-baritone Christian Immler with the ever-reliable Anne Le Bozec at the piano sang twenty-three of the songs which make up the Mörike Lieder.
As a prelude to the Christian Immler recital, a fine young baritone Benoît Déchelotte – a member of the current Oxford Song Young Artist Programme – presented a well-crafted journey across Europe in song, ably assisted by his charming musical partner, Sarah Murer, who took responsibility for continuity matters to allow Déchelotte to rest his voice: he is recovering from laryngitis. For their journey on the Orient Express he dressed as a French explorer/entrepreneur with beret and sharp suit, allowing Murer to lead the journey from London with works by Ralph Vaughan Williams via Paris and Poulenc to Austria and Alban Berg before heading to Hungary and Bartók, finally reaching Bucharest to sing George Enescu’s interpretation of a poem by Clément Marot. This young man’s baritone voice will surely blossom; he was brave to sing for an hour or more towards the end of the day, showing significant skill at telling stories with a cheerful demeanour.
German bass-baritone Christian Immler made his debut at the Holywell Music Room last year singing the songs of Mozart and Beethoven. He was warmly welcomed back for his delivery of the Mörike Lieder, accompanied by the sublime eloquence of Anne Le Bozec. She brings grace and elegance to the keyboard with the most delicate touch. Together with Immler they form a cohesive unit with a shared purpose. This excellent duo brings a terrific sense of light and shade to an expertly curated selection of Hugo Wolf’s extensive cycle. Both act their parts when the text requires it, notably in the song Zur Warnung, after the ‘convivial night’ and players ‘feeling odd’, Anne Le Bozec buries her head on the keyboard as a pretence of suffering from a hangover! Super, playful fun, Christian Immler enjoying the drama, too. As the text in Begegnung suggests ‘she whisks round the corner’, Immler chases his pianist from the stage!!
Immler’s presence on the platform is immense; his generously lyrical tone is supportive of his tirelessly intelligent interpretations of Mörike’s texts. His gentleness with An den Schlaf and his extremely thoughtful presentation of Zur Warnung were exemplary. Immler shows how happy he is to be working with Le Bozec by applauding her off stage at the end of Der Feuerreiter – a lovely moment in a simply gorgeous evening. Richard Stokes hinted that Immler and Le Bozec could be encouraged to make Abschied (No.53) their encore. They did, to warm applause, bringing an end to a day to live long in the memory.
Clive Peacock