Music at Oxford 25th anniversary concert, Sheldonian Theatre (From The Oxford Times)

Music at Oxford 25th anniversary concert, Sheldonian Theatre

1:59pm Wednesday 6th May 2009 in Search By Christopher Gray

Music at Oxford celebrated 25 years of attracting the best singers and players to perform in the city with a wonderful concert on Saturday night featuring two of the brightest stars of the operatic stage.

Soprano Dame Felicity Lott (pictured) and baritone Sir Thomas Allen, with pianist Malcolm Martineau, provided a crowd-pleasing display at a packed Sheldonian Theatre, demonstrating a warm rapport in each other’s company – the consequence one felt sure of many other recitals of this sort – that added an extra dimension to the occasion.

The first part of the evening consisted of a series of four duets, plus a song apiece for the soloists, by Felix Mendelssohn. These were beautifully delivered, without commentary, after which came four duets from Mozart, in all of which romantic entanglement was stated or proposed. I especially enjoyed Sir Thomas as the lecherous Don Giovanni in Là ci darem la mano.

After the interval, with Sir Thomas now in garrulous and amusing introductory form, came the love duet from Act II of Richard Strauss’s Arabella. Then the singers gleefully broke our of their classical yoke with a series of favourites from the likes of Noël Coward, Rodgers and Hammerstein (Dame Felicity’s Wonderful Guy from South Pacific was a particular joy) and Jerome Kern.