Peter Medhurst | bass-baritone & piano

Philip Salmon | tenor

Although Shakespeare once remarked of love that ‘it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken’ he also suggested that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’.  Inspired by these thoughts, Peter Medhurst and Philip Salmon present an evening of songs and duets ranging from Dowland, Purcell and Mendelssohn through to Britten, Cole Porter and Flanders and Swann, that dwells on the quixotic and unpredictable qualities of true love.

Rather than engaging a third party pianist to provide their accompaniments, Peter Medhurst plays throughout, which brings unanimity and immediacy to their performance.  The concert is in two halves, with each half running for 40 minutes.

Programme

La bella Franceschina    Italian – 16^th century Anon

I Saw My Lady Weep    J Dowland (1563-1626)

Flow My Tears    Dowland

It Fell on a Summer’s Day    T Campion (1567-1620)

Ardo    C Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Pious Celinda    H Purcell (1659-95)

Sweeter than Roses    Purcell

 There’s Not a Swain    Purcell

 When Daisies Pied    TA Arne (1710-78)

 Sally in Our Alley    H Carey (?) (1687-1743)

 A Dialogue upon a Kiss    H Lawes (1595-1662)

I N T E R V A L

Wohin ich geh’    F. Mendelssohn (1809-47)

Das Veilchen    WA Mozart (1756-91)

Heidenröslein    F Schubert (1797-1828)

Volkslied    Mendelssohn

O Mistress Mine    E Humperdinck (1854-1921)

Who is Sylvia    C Wood (1866-1926)

Lydia    G Fauré (1845-1924)

 The Salley Gardens    I Gurney (1890-1937)

 Tell Me the Truth about Love    B Britten (1913-76)

 I Will Walk with My Love    Irish Anon

The Bindweed and the Honeysuckle    Flanders & Swann

Brush up Your Shakespeare    Cole Porter

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Biographies

Peter Medhurst’s work as singer, pianist and lecturer-recitalist has taken him all over the world, and in the last few years he has toured New Zealand, Australia (twice) and South Africa (four times), and made frequent tours in Europe, giving performances in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Salzburg, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and Spain.  Closer to home, he has presented events at the Barbican, St John’s Smith Square, and the Royal Festival Hall on the Beethoven String Quartets, the Mozart Operas, Vermeer’s Music Lesson, The Twelve Days of Christmas, the Golden Age of Vienna, and Venetian art and music.  He has also directed presentations at the Wallace Collection, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A, linking the visual arts with the world of 17^th & 18^th century music making. 

He is a familiar face to audiences of music societies, regional theatres and British festivals (Henley, Isle of Man, Rye, Amersham, Stevenage, Chichester, Leith Hill, The Three Choirs etc) as well as to those of arts based organisations such as The Art Fund, The National Trust and NADFAS.  On the radio, his appearances include Classic FM’s Susanna Simons’ Show, Radio 3′s In Tune, Radio 4′s Arts Programme, and Midweek with Libby Purves.  His recordings number For Two to Play, Schubert Songs, Handel and His Satellites and a new CD of 16^th & 17^th century keyboard music entitled Tyme at the Virginals.  A recording of 19^th & 20^th century English Songs is scheduled for Winter 2013.

Peter Medhurst was born of German and English parents, and did his musical training at the Royal College of Music where he studied singing with Redvers Llewellyn and Edgar Evans, organ with Richard Popplewell, composition with Justin Connolly and music history with Else Mayer-Lismann, Christopher Grier and Joseph Horowitz.  In 1978, a scholarship from the Austrian government gave him the opportunity to have coaching with the accompanist Erik Werba at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.  On his return to England he took harpsichord lessons with Ruth Dyson, who became his accompanist and fellow keyboard duettist in a professional partnership that lasted until her death nearly 20 years later.

Over the years Peter Medhurst has lectured for the universities of Kent and Surrey, directed a wide range of choirs, vocal ensembles and instrumental groups, and adjudicated and given masterclasses for the British Federation of Music Festivals.

Today, Peter Medhurst is freelance and is based in London.

Although Philip Salmon had no initial ambition to be a singer, it was perhaps inevitable, beginning musical life as a boy chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, where he was already fortunate enough to work with the likes of Carlo Maria Giulini, Benjamin Britten, Lennox Berkeley and Donald Swann, that by the time he became Exhibition Scholar at the Royal College of Music, where he was awarded the Young Musicians’ Recording Prize, and was a finalist for the Young Concert Artists Trust, he felt he had found his vocation. 

His career began in Early Music, spending a year recording madrigals for the BBC with Emma Kirkby and the Consort of Musicke, and as a regular soloist with the Monteverdi Choir, performing and recording under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and with the Hilliard Ensemble.

Since then he has developed a wide concert repertoire, singing with many of the principal orchestras of Britain and Europe, and in the U.S.A., Singapore, Argentina, Israel, Japan and Australia, conducted by, among others, Sir Colin Davies, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Charles Mackerras, Jane Glover, Sian Edwards, and Kent Nagano.  He has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Erato, Oiseau-Lyre, Koch-Schwann, Virgin, Hyperion, and Chandos, and his recording of Paul Spicer’s Easter Oratorio was Gramophone CD of the Month.

Of the many roles Philip has sung for the major British companies, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, his favourite is probably the title role of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande for Welsh National Opera, conducted by Pierre Boulez, or Danilo in The Merry Widow for Opera Holland Park. Abroad he has performed with New York City Opera, and theatres in France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Ireland and New Zealand.  Television appearances have included BBC TV’s award winning ‘opera soap-opera’ The Vampyr, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with Scottish Opera and Mentorn Films, and a recital of Chabrier songs from the Edinburgh International Festival. 

Philip has also led vocal masterclasses in Britain, Rome, Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, and is a vocal coach to the St. Albans Bach Choir and the choir of St. George’s Cathedral, Southwark.

Recently he has sung Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus for Diva Opera with José Carreras and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at the Royal Albert Hall, Schmidt (Werther) for Opéra Les Azuriales, and Acis (Acis and Galatea) with the Centro Italiana di Musica Antica in Rome. His recording of Mendelssohn’s Ave Maria, with the choir of St. Albans Cathedral, has just been released on Naxos.

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Other duo programmes given by Peter Medhurst and Philip Salmon include:

The Songs and Harpsichord music of Henry Purcell

Another Hat is Dropped – a Flanders and Swann evening