Helen Charlston & Emma Abbate

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)

Emma Abbate (piano)

 

Women in Song

Songs written for, by and about women

Clara Schumann

Sechs Lieder, op. 13

Ich stand in dunklen Träumen

Sie liebten sich beide

Liebeszaube

Der Mond kommt still gegangen

Ich hab’ in deinem Auge

Die stille Lotusblume

Josephine Lang 

from Sechs Lieder, op. 10

Die Schwalben

Mignons Klage

Scheideblick

Franz Joseph Haydn 

Arianna a Naxos

 

INTERVAL

 

Robert Schumann 

Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, op. 135

Abschied von Frankreich

Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes

An die Konigen Elisabeth

Abschied von der Welt

Gebet

Aaron Copland

Nature, the gentlest Mother from ‘12 poems of Emily Dickinson’

Rebecca Clarke 

Down by the Salley Gardens

Dilys Elwyn-Edwards

Cloths of Heaven

Juliana Hall 

To mother

Florence Price 

Night

Madeleine Dring 

It was a lover and his lass from ‘Seven Shakespeare Songs’

 

Helen Charlston is quickly cementing herself as a key performer in the next generation of British singers. She won first prize in the 2018 Handel Singing Competition and was a finalist in the Hurn Court Opera Competition, and the Grange Festival International Singing Competition. She was a ‘Rising Star’ of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment 2017-2019 and a 2018 City Music Foundation Artist. In 2021, she joined Le Jardin des Voix academy with Les Arts Florissants, and the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme, and also won the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards.

In 2020, Helen premiered The Isolation Songbook with Michael Craddock and Alexander Soares, which is a set of 15 newly commissioned songs and duets written during lockdown as a musical response to the changing world in which we found ourselves.

Recent and upcoming concert highlights include Handel’s Messiah with BBC NOW and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bach’s Weihnachtoratorium with Casa da Musica, Judas Maccabaeus with the RIAS Kammerchor, Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Paul McCreesh, Bach’s St Matthew Passion on a tour in The Netherlands, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, a worldwide tour of Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony, the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra and Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and solo recitals at Wigmore Hall, Leeds Lieder, Cheltenham Festival, York Early Music Festival, London Handel Festival, Händel-festspiele Halle, and Korčula Baroque Festival.

The Neapolitan pianist Emma Abbate enjoys a demanding career as a piano accompanist and chamber musician. Described as "an amazingly talented pianist" by the leading Italian magazine Musica, she has performed in duo recitals for international festivals and concert societies in Austria, Portugal, Italy, Poland and USA, and at many prestigious UK venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House, St John’s Smith Square, St George’s, Bristol and at the Aldeburgh Festival, in addition to broadcasts on BBC Radio 3.

Emma's varied discography includes a series of acclaimed recordings devoted to Italian vocal chamber music, the latest of which are with the mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp (Sera d’inverno: Songs by Ildebrando Pizzetti) and baritone Ashley Riches (Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Shakespeare Sonnets). A keen advocate of contemporary music, Emma has released two discs devoted to works by Stephen Dodgson that include his piano quintets with the Tippett Quartet. Other world-première recordings include works for cello and piano by Algernon Ashton and Krzysztof Meyer with Evva Mizerska. Emma also cultivates an active interest in historical keyboards, and has performed and recorded on a range of original instruments for the Finchcocks Charity and at Hatchlands Park and the Russell Collection. She has recently released Weber's complete keyboard duets on an original Viennese fortepiano together with Julian Perkins, with whom she has also recorded Mozart's complete keyboard duet sonatas. Their latest release, entitled Tournament for Twenty Fingers, features piano duets by British composers from the twentieth century.

Based in London, Emma is a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and a staff coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Following her graduation from the S. Pietro a Majella Conservatoire in Naples and an Advanced Diploma from the S. Cecilia Conservatoire in Rome, Emma studied in London with Yonty Solomon. She has been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in recognition of her ‘significant contribution’ thus far to the music profession.