If you’re thinking that surname looks familiar, there’s a good reason — Kitty Whately is the daughter of Morse/Lewis star Kevin Whately. Fans of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet will probably remember her as Whately’s on-screen daughter, Debbie Hope, in the second series — something she has no recollection of herself.

“I did that when I was two. I’ve seen the clips, but I don’t remember doing it at all. When I see it now, it looks like my daughter! She’s five now, but when she was that age she was the spitting image of me.”

Unsurprisingly, Kitty is blasé about having a famous dad. “It’s just normal for me. As I was growing up it was just what my dad did; I assumed everybody’s dad did the same! I’m very proud of him, and proud of what he does and what he’s achieved, but fundamentally, he’s just my dad.”

But Kitty is much more than just Kevin Whately’s daughter. The 29-year-old mezzo-soprano is a rising star in her own right, and her appearance at the Lieder Festival came about through winning the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Award.

“The prize was a sum of money and a tour of recitals around the UK. It’s been exciting having the chance to perform at high-profile festivals and with some fantastic pianists. I did a recital in Edinburgh with Roger Vignoles and Sir Thomas Allen, and at the Leeds Lieder Festival with Chris Glynne, as well as recitals in Buxton and London. The Oxford Lieder recital is the last one.”

Kitty is a product of Chetham’s School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Royal College of Music International Opera School. It was while at the Guildhall that she first came across Lieder Festival founder Sholto Kynoch. “I was an undergraduate, and I think he was a post-graduate,” she says. “But I remember when he was setting up the Oxford Lieder thinking I’d love to be part of it.”

Kitty will perform with her mother, actress Madelaine Newton — Kevin Whately’s wife of 32 years — for the first time. Their recital is based on the theme of a woman’s journey through life, and includes Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und-leben (A Woman’s Life and Love), as well as songs by Wolf and Debussy, along with a selection of poetry by the likes of Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti and Edna St Vincent Millay.

For Madelaine, it’s an opportunity to indulge her love of poetry, which she studied with the Open University when her children were growing up.

“We’ve chosen women poets who are contemporaneous with the composers,” she explains. “A lot of the poems are intentionally erotic, but use the symbolism of nature because particularly in the Victorian era it would have been frowned upon for women to write about eroticism.”

Madelaine began her career in 1972 in Newcastle, where she first met Whately.

“We were doing a play called And A Nightingale Sang and toured nationally. We were strangers at the read-through, and inseparable by the end!” she laughs. “Which often happens in theatrical circles. But we’ve stood the test of time!

“This is a new venture for us, and it’s a risk, because Lieder audiences are there for the music. But it will be nice if people get something out of it, and I hope they enjoy it.”