American soprano Christine Brewer and her long-term accompanist Roger Vignoles have recently recorded a series of encores once sung by artists such as Kirsten Flagstad and Helen Traubel. They opened the Oxford Lieder Festival’s spring programme with a concert featuring Wagner, Richard Strauss and a selection of these delightful ‘encores’.

Brewer has a wide repertoire, including Handel, Gluck, Verdi, Wagner and Britten. Her versatility was evident in the contrasting halves of the concert. She has a powerful voice, wonderfully suited to the melting phrases and intense emotions of the music in the first half. The opening song of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, Der Engel, was exquisite. Strauss’s Befreit (Freed) was another highlight. In the confines of the Holywell Music Room the effect of her voice was exhilarating.

She and Vignoles were just as convincing in the ‘lighter’ pieces in the second half. The songs, all by American composers, were sentimental, witty, even downright bizarre. Brewer displayed a gentler, more relaxed, personality in this music. I loved the bluesy Happiness is a thing called Joe by Harold Arlen, and Frank La Forge’s passionate eulogy to hill walking. John La Montaine’s setting of the Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods included some nice sound effects in the accompaniment and ended with surprising jauntiness.

The funniest piece was Review by Celius Dougherty, a mock press notice of a concert by one Miss Sadabelle. It’s full of pompous clichés, giving Brewer and Vignoles plenty of scope for comedy. Two encores followed, Frank Bridge’s Love went a-riding and Mira from Bob Merrils’s Broadway musical Carnival!

My friend Peter, who was present, has a way of summing up concerts. His verdict on Christine Brewer was ‘She knows how to do it.’ Look out for the CD Echoes of Nightingales due for release by Hyperion in March.

For details of future concerts in the Oxford Lieder Spring Series see www.oxfordlieder.co.uk