Jennifer Johnston (mezzo soprano) Joseph Middleton (piano)
One Life Stand
Jonathan Dove - My Love is mine
Benjamin Britten - Ca’ the Yowes / O can ye sew cushions Benjamin Britten - The Birds Benjamin Britten - I Wonder as I Wander Benjamin Britten - At the mid hour of night Benjamin Britten - The last rose of summer Benjamin Britten - O waly, waly
Cheryl Frances-Hoad - Two Shakespeare Songs
Joseph Horowitz - Lady Macbeth
Interval
Ned Rorem - Look down fair moon Ned Rorem - I will always love you Ned Rorem - Jeanie with the light brown hair Ned Rorem - Ferry me across the water Ned Rorem - Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening
Samuel Barber - The desire for hermitage Samuel Barber - St Ita’s Vision Samuel Barber - The monk and his cat Samuel Barber - A green lowland of pianos Samuel Barber - Sure on this shining night Samuel Barber - Solitary Hotel
Cheryl Frances-Hoad - One Life Stand
“It packs a hefty emotional punch”, so wrote the BBC Music Magazine when reviewing Jennifer Johnston and Joseph Middleton’s world premiere recording of Frances-Hoad’s One Life Stand. It is a decade since Johnston and Middleton gave the first performance of this cycle at Opera North, during Cheryl’s tenure as Cultural Fellow in Operatic Composition at the University of Leeds, and it is one of the few contemporary cycles that has bedded itself into the song canon, heard frequently in concert halls and at festivals since its inception. Using texts by Sophie Hannah, it is a response to Schumann’s 1840 cycle Frauenliebe und-Leben. The rest of the programme draws a thread through English and American song, including a homage to Rorem, who died in November 2022. Jennifer Johnston is well known to Leeds Lieder audiences as having ‘one of the most generous and beautiful voices in the business’. She regularly appears at the BBC Proms and opera houses including La Scala Milan, and Munich, where a recent recording of Korngold with legendary tenor Jonus Kauffman won her Gramophone Award’s ‘Recording of the Year 2022’. Like Joseph Middleton, she has won a coveted Royal Philharmonic Award.
