Mark Padmore CBE tenor, Ana Manastireanu piano

What better way to open the 2023 Leeds Lieder Festival than with Mark Padmore, one of the great song recitalists of our time, and a firm favourite with Yorkshire audiences.

In a typically wide-ranging programme, Schumann stands at the head of the recital, first in partnership with Hans Christian Andersen. The poems are by turns folkish, macabre, touching and heartfelt. Twilight and shadows are painted in these songs, and these themes are continued most masterfully by Eichendorff in one of the pinnacles of German Romanticism: Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39.

The second half of the programme turns to the highways and byways of English song. Finzi’s masterpiece ‘Channel Firing’ rubs shoulders with new works by Tansy Davies and Sally Beamish.

One of the real success stories of recent years remains our burgeoning Young Artists Programme. Through our rigorous training, Leeds Lieder has seen the blossoming of a new generation of song enthusiasts, and it is especially welcome to see Ana Manastireanu, a Leeds Lieder Young Artist from 2019, appear alongside Padmore in this opening recital.

A Leeds Lieder Festival 2023 event.