If you should happen to be free and in London in the evening on Monday week (23rd June) and like Schubert, please do come along to Christ Church in Highbury, where Sarah Wilkinson and I will be performing his song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin.

It’s a few years now since I have done any serious singing of extended length, so I’ve been enjoying spending time learning the cycle and just getting back into singing properly. Although I’ve sung various of the twenty songs in it on various occasions over the years, there are a good many that I didn’t know at all so have been learning from scratch – and of course it is quite different doing the cycle as a whole rather than just individual songs.

I find the cycle itself of Wilhelm Müller’s poems, which Schubert set to music, not an entirely easy one. While there is an essential story of ardent love, followed by disappointment, bitterness and more, there are also some other ideas and emotions in there which I confess I haven’t yet fully understood. Müller’s “hero” seems to be a troubled individual with a lot of demons to wrestle with – only some of which I feel are explained by the differences between early 19th century Germany and 21st century London.

However I’ve enjoyed spending time on it, uncovering more and more of what Schubert has hidden away in there. I am a big fan of Schubert generally (I used to enjoy playing his Impromptus for the piano a lot) and the way in which he has put Müller’s poems to music really is great fun to explore. Despite the decidedly serious tone of some of the poems, I am particularly impressed with the way he manages not to get bogged down by that, and he has plenty of fun with them too.

We’re going to do one or two other things in the concert as well, but the Schubert cycle will be the bulk of it.

It is a great cycle of songs, and Sarah and I have been working hard on it, so I hope it will be a good evening – please do think about coming along if you should be free and nearby!

The concert is at 7.30pm on Monday 23rd June at Christ Church, Highbury, London N5 1SA (map here) . Tickets £6 on the door (proceeds to charity).

Most casual observers who are not particularly interested in the European Union and its development can surely be excused having really, by now, lost interest in this saga.

Born from the lengthy process of Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s Constitutional Convention (itself the most open and consultative process for reforming the EU ever undertaken) all the way back in 2003, then re-drafted by European Prime Ministers into a Constitution, which was then rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, then re-drafted as the Lisbon Treaty, the ratification of which in this country it would be fair to say has caused its fair share of fuss, it has now been rejected by the people of Ireland.

The tempting conclusion is surely to say that really we must have had enough of this treaty by now: it’s time to accept that this project really isn’t going to happen, and to give up on it. Many will say that its rejection for the third time in a public referendum shows that it just doesn’t have the support of Europe’s publics, denying it popular legitimacy and that therefore the Lisbon Treaty should surely just follow the example of Captain Oates and wander off into the storm, muttering that it may well be some time coming back.

This reaction would be understandable – and of course, consistent for those who have opposed it throughout. But it would be quite wrong. Read the rest of this entry »