James Newby (baritone) and
Joseph Middleton (piano)

Performers

James Newby comes to Hexham with a reputation as one of the most outstanding young musicians of his generation. He is a former BBC New Generation Artist and in 2022/23 was one of the European Concert Halls Organisation’s Rising Stars, an accolade which saw him performing in halls all over Europe. He is also establishing himself as an opera singer and his performance in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera, Greek, in Germany won considerable praise.

Accompanying James is Joseph Middleton. The French music website, ResMusica, has written that Joseph ‘counts, alongside his predecessors Gerald Moore, Geoffrey Parsons, Dalton Baldwin, Graham Johnson and others, among the great accompanists of the English language’.  High praise indeed and not surprising given that the names of singers he has accompanied read like a who’s who of song – they include Dame Sarah Connolly, Sir Thomas Allen, Roderick Williams and Dame Felicity Lott, to name but a very few.

Much of tonight’s programme is drawn from James and Joseph’s recent recording,  I Wonder as I Wander.  Released in 2020, this album was described by Gramophone magazine as ‘a performance that sets the tone, announcing Newby as an impressive artist’. It should be quite an evening!

James Newby – ‘a master of lieder’ – The Times

Joseph Middleton – ‘a perfect accompanist’ – Opera Now

Programme

Britten I Wonder as I Wander; There’s None to Soothe

Schubert  Der Wanderer (D489/493); Auf der Donau (D553); Auf der Bruck (D853)

John Casken  Lines from a Wanderer

Beethoven Maigesang (op. 52 no. 4); Adelaide (op. 46); An die ferne Geliebte (op. 98)

Jonathan Dove All You Who Sleep Tonight

Errolyn Wallen About Here

Lori Laitman Being Happy

Britten At the Mid Hour of Night; Sail on, Sail on

Watch

James Newby and Joseph Middleton perform Jonathan Dove’s All You Who Sleep Tonight

–  and Vaughan Williams’s The Sky above the Roof

–  and Schubert’s Erlkönig (after an interview with James Newby at the Leeds Lieder festival)