Issue No.63
Friends Newsletter Say hello to ’
January 2014
Marcus Farnsworth
Contents...
pages one an d two Interv ie with Marcu s Farnsworth w Ensemble 36 0 news page three Music in the Community page four Music in the Round is 30 Classical Sh effield page five Yo ung String Q uartet Elias String Quartet page six New Staff page seven Just a Note Charlotte B ray | Buy a Bar page eight D iscover new venues
Angus Smith finds out about the challenges of Schubert’s song cycle and a new festival in Southwell. Do you have previous experience of performing Die Schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise? Yes, I have performed both cycles a number of times, and with different duo partners. Have you ever performed them in quite such close proximity before and does this present any special challenges? No, and I must say that I am very much looking forward to doing them both in one weekend. I imagine (and hope!) that the full immersion technique will help me to find even more detail in the works. There is one special challenge, and that is the level of mental stamina that is required to deliver both pieces successfully. Doing just one of these works is normally quite a feat on its own, so this will
feel a little like running the gauntlet! How do you approach song cycles of this magnitude? What are the physical, intellectual and emotional challenges? Initially, one of the great challenges is memorising the works. It is one thing to memorise and internalise the songs individually, but quite another to do that with an entire cycle. Another challenge is the pacing of the works. Both of these things get easier with every performance. I am striving to be in a place where on the one hand I am conscious of the work as a whole and therefore able to pace it appropriately, but more importantly to be in the moment with each poem. Without that feeling of being present, a whole
cycle can count for nothing however beautifully it is performed. What excites you about these pieces? Schubert was a master of the miniature, hence his prowess as a song composer. He is able to distill a poem into song form perfectly. He writes beautiful but simple melodies that allow the text to shine, and his imaginative piano writing illuminates the text subtly without being over the top. What is special for me about these works is that we get to see him paint a huge emotional journey by stitching together all these perfectly formed miniatures. We see every
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