Summer 2007

 

I'm just back from an exciting few days recording Mahler Rückert Lieder, Wagner Wesendonck Lieder and Liebestod with the Quatuor Schumann in a wonderful hall in Switzerland. We were supposed to do it in June last year but I lost my voice in mid-hayfever-season and was somewhat apprehensive that the only time we could reschedule it was this June! Anyway, we managed it and I hope the results will be as interesting as the sessions were enjoyable! I went straight from there to Riga to do one performance of 'La Voix Humaine' in the production from Lyon with Juraj Valcuha in the lovely Opera house in Riga. I loved my all too brief visit to Latvia and the warm and friendly people who looked after me there. Riga is a beautiful city, spacious and airy with lots of parks, and the nearby Baltic Sea coast was spectacular. I wished I could have stayed longer to explore, but I had a recital with Sir Thomas Allen in London, and that was, as ever, a treat.

 July brings a recital in Andernach, with Eugene Asti, in Martin Randall's Rhine Valley Music festival, and three English Festivals: Cheltenham, Buxton and Winchester, with Malcolm Martineau. Meanwhile the garden is beautiful and it is lovely to have a little more free time to appreciate it! FL