A special evening presented by the Gustav Mahler Society UK, featuring acclaimed pianist Iain Farrington and mezzo-soprano Rozanna Madylus. The programme promises a rich and varied journey through music by Mendelssohn, Bach, traditional repertoire, and evocative songs by Gustav and Alma Mahler. Each of these provide context and details of the influence they had on the composition of Mahler's Fifth Symphony and the highlight of the night will be Iain's own arrangement of the symphony, reimagined for solo piano - perfect for the venue’s warm, salon-style setting. Mahler himself recorded the first movement of the Symphony on a piano roll, and gave the first private performance of the whole piece to Alma at the piano.
With Farrington’s artistry and Madylus’s expressive voice, the concert offers an intimate yet powerful celebration of Mahler’s world, blending familiar masterpieces with fresh interpretations.
With Farrington’s artistry and Madylus’s expressive voice, the concert offers an intimate yet powerful celebration of Mahler’s world, blending familiar masterpieces with fresh interpretations.
ProgrammeFelix Mendelssohn
Song without words in E minor, Op.62, No.3 J.S. Bach Prelude and Fugue in A major & D major, BWV 864 & 850 Traditional Weinsteirer Landler Gustav Mahler Liebst du um Schönheit Wo die schönen Trompetten blasen Alma Mahler Einsamer Gang In meines Vaters Garten ~interval~ Gustav Mahler 5th Symphony (arr. Farrington) |
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Iain Farrington |
Iain Farrington has a busy and diverse career as a pianist, organist, composer and arranger. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and at Cambridge University. He has performed as a soloist, accompanist and chamber musician at all the major UK venues, as well as in the USA, Japan and all across Europe. Iain has made numerous recordings, and has broadcast on BBC Television, Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. He has accompanied a number of the country's leading musicians, including Willard White, Bryn Terfel and Lesley Garrett, and has worked with many musicians across various genres, including Paul McCartney, Hans Zimmer and Laufey.
With his Art Deco Trio he regularly performs and records his own jazz-inspired arrangements and compositions. Iain played the piano at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics with Rowan Atkinson, the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, broadcast to a global audience of around a billion viewers. Iain regularly performs with chamber orchestras such as the City of London Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia and Aurora Orchestra. He has performed a wide range of contemporary and recent music, notably with the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Singers, including portrait concerts of Birtwistle, Ligeti, James MacMillan and Judith Weir. He has given several concerts of music by Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles, by invitation of the Schoenberg family. Iain has recorded numerous film and TV soundtracks for Hollywood, Disney and independent productions, including Star Wars and The Hunger Games.
Iain has composed for film, opera, ballet, orchestral, choral and instrumental pieces, with performances worldwide. His orchestral compositions for the BBC Proms include Extra Time for the 2024 Last Night of the Proms, Earth Symphony in 2022 (with Hans Zimmer), Gershwinicity in 2018 for five soloists and orchestra, including saxophonist Jess Gillam, and Beethoveniana for all five BBC orchestras recorded during the 2020 lockdown. For the Wallace and Gromit Prom in 2012 he composed a jazz guide to the orchestra Wing It and a Double Violin Concerto. Iain composed an organ piece Voices of the World for the 2023 Coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey and arranged a number of orchestral works for the occasion. Iain co-composed the soundtrack to the Horrible Histories Movie in 2018, orchestrated all of the songs for the Horrible Histories Proms in 2011 and 2023, and composed /arranged the score to Planet Earth 3 Live in Concert in 2024. With the poet and DJ Craig Charles he has composed three full length orchestral works combining poems and music in new versions of old fairy tales.
He has arranged hundreds of works in many styles, including opera, instrumental and choral, African songs, cabaret, klezmer, jazz and pop. He has made many reduced arrangements of large orchestral works for chamber ensembles, enabling performances in small venues, often with young conductors. These are widely performed across the globe, and include symphonies by Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. Other notable arrangements include a musical based on the songs of Ivor Novello, the orchestral score for a play version of A Clockwork Orange, jazz songs for the singer Jacqui Dankworth and folk songs for the singer Sam Lee. In 2018, Iain arranged and performed nearly all of the Mahler Symphonies for piano solo at the 1901 Arts Club. Iain is committed to bringing classical music to children and has composed numerous orchestral works for family concerts, including the Wallace and Gromit Prom, and the Peppa Pig Concert. He has composed and arranged much music for amateur choirs, youth orchestras and beginner instrumentalists, and has written dozens of songs for schools to perform. For the BBC Ten Pieces project, Iain has made arrangements of numerous classical pieces that can be performed by mixed ensembles of any performing ability, all freely available online.
With his Art Deco Trio he regularly performs and records his own jazz-inspired arrangements and compositions. Iain played the piano at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics with Rowan Atkinson, the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, broadcast to a global audience of around a billion viewers. Iain regularly performs with chamber orchestras such as the City of London Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia and Aurora Orchestra. He has performed a wide range of contemporary and recent music, notably with the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Singers, including portrait concerts of Birtwistle, Ligeti, James MacMillan and Judith Weir. He has given several concerts of music by Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles, by invitation of the Schoenberg family. Iain has recorded numerous film and TV soundtracks for Hollywood, Disney and independent productions, including Star Wars and The Hunger Games.
Iain has composed for film, opera, ballet, orchestral, choral and instrumental pieces, with performances worldwide. His orchestral compositions for the BBC Proms include Extra Time for the 2024 Last Night of the Proms, Earth Symphony in 2022 (with Hans Zimmer), Gershwinicity in 2018 for five soloists and orchestra, including saxophonist Jess Gillam, and Beethoveniana for all five BBC orchestras recorded during the 2020 lockdown. For the Wallace and Gromit Prom in 2012 he composed a jazz guide to the orchestra Wing It and a Double Violin Concerto. Iain composed an organ piece Voices of the World for the 2023 Coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey and arranged a number of orchestral works for the occasion. Iain co-composed the soundtrack to the Horrible Histories Movie in 2018, orchestrated all of the songs for the Horrible Histories Proms in 2011 and 2023, and composed /arranged the score to Planet Earth 3 Live in Concert in 2024. With the poet and DJ Craig Charles he has composed three full length orchestral works combining poems and music in new versions of old fairy tales.
He has arranged hundreds of works in many styles, including opera, instrumental and choral, African songs, cabaret, klezmer, jazz and pop. He has made many reduced arrangements of large orchestral works for chamber ensembles, enabling performances in small venues, often with young conductors. These are widely performed across the globe, and include symphonies by Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. Other notable arrangements include a musical based on the songs of Ivor Novello, the orchestral score for a play version of A Clockwork Orange, jazz songs for the singer Jacqui Dankworth and folk songs for the singer Sam Lee. In 2018, Iain arranged and performed nearly all of the Mahler Symphonies for piano solo at the 1901 Arts Club. Iain is committed to bringing classical music to children and has composed numerous orchestral works for family concerts, including the Wallace and Gromit Prom, and the Peppa Pig Concert. He has composed and arranged much music for amateur choirs, youth orchestras and beginner instrumentalists, and has written dozens of songs for schools to perform. For the BBC Ten Pieces project, Iain has made arrangements of numerous classical pieces that can be performed by mixed ensembles of any performing ability, all freely available online.
Rozanna Madylus |
Born in Leicestershire, England, of Ukrainian descent, Rozanna is a 2020/21 City Music Foundation Artist and represented by Connaught Artists.
Recent highlights include being awarded the Audience Prize at the Mastersingers’ Carole Rees Awards Wagner Voice Competition 2023 and being invited to perform the role of Rossweisse in Wagner’s Die Walküre as part of Longborough Festival Opera’s Ring Cycle 2024. She was also nominated for a 2024 Offie (Off West End) Award for her performance as Hänsel in Hampstead Garden Opera’s production of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. Her first CD, performing alongside Sir John Tomlinson and Counterpoise in Kokoschka’s Doll, is available on Champs Hill records. She will also feature as a soloist on the recording of John Casken’s Memorial as part of a collection of his choral works, which will be available on Métier/Divine Art Records later this year.
Previous roles include Erste Norn Götterdämmerung (The London Opera Company), Olga Eugene Onegin (Summer Music at Semley Grange), Rossweisse Die Walküre (Longborough Festival Opera), Erda Das Rheingold (cover for Longborough Festival Opera), Wife/Eve in Ed Hughes’ States of Innocence (after Paradise Lost), Erda Siegfried (The Mahler Players), Hänsel Hänsel und Gretel (Hampstead Garden Opera) La Messaggera/Speranza/Proserpina L’Orfeo (cover for Longborough Festival Opera), Lapák (Dog)/Zlatohřbítek (Fox) The Cunning Little Vixen (Hampstead Garden Opera), Ljubica in Ana Sokolović’s a cappella opera Svadba ‘A Wedding’ (Waterperry Opera Festival), Žofka in Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared (Waterperry Opera Festival), Cordelia/Fool The Shackled King by Casken (Counterpoise), Forester’s Wife The Cunning Little Vixen (Longborough Festival Opera YAP), Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barefoot Opera), Third Lady The Magic Flute (Waterperry Opera Festival), Prinz Orlofsky Die Fledermaus (Berlin Opera Academy), Alma Mahler The Art of Love / Kokoschka’s Doll (Counterpoise), Mother Goose The Rake’s Progress (cover for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Second Woman/Second Witch Dido and Aeneas (Birmingham Opera Company), Jezebel Naboth’s Vineyard by Goehr (Melos Sinfonia), Beggar Woman Death in Venice (Garsington Opera), Smeraldina The Little Green Swallow by Dove (British Youth Opera), the title role in Handel’s Ariodante (Royal Academy Opera), Madame de la Haltière Cendrillon (RAO), Fidalma The Secret Marriage by Cimarosa (cover for BYO), the title role in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (RAO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra) and Maddalena Rigoletto (Stanley Opera). As a member of the chorus, she has performed with English National Opera, The Royal Opera House, The Monteverdi Choir and Wexford Festival Opera.
After completing her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Rozanna decided to dedicate herself to classical singing. She is a graduate of The Royal Academy Opera School, where she studied with Jonathan Papp and the late Anne Howells. She was a recipient of The Karaviotis Scholarship, The Sir Charles Mackerras Award and The Carr-Gregory Trust Award. During her time at The Royal Academy of Music, she was a member of Academy Song Circle and a finalist in the prestigious Patrons’ Award. Rozanna was also awarded The Karaviotis Prize at Les Azuriales Young Artist Competition, Nice, France, in August 2012 and, in the summer of 2013, attended the Solti Accademia in Castiglione della Pescaia. Rozanna was on the Young Artist Platform at The Oxford International Song Festival (formally The Oxford Lieder Festival) and, since then, she has been invited to perform in various concert halls around the UK and abroad, including St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Wigmore Hall, The Royal Festival Hall, The Holywell Music Room, Kings Place, The Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin, The Prokofiev Hall at The Mariinsky Theatre and The St Petersburg Philharmonic.
Recent highlights include being awarded the Audience Prize at the Mastersingers’ Carole Rees Awards Wagner Voice Competition 2023 and being invited to perform the role of Rossweisse in Wagner’s Die Walküre as part of Longborough Festival Opera’s Ring Cycle 2024. She was also nominated for a 2024 Offie (Off West End) Award for her performance as Hänsel in Hampstead Garden Opera’s production of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. Her first CD, performing alongside Sir John Tomlinson and Counterpoise in Kokoschka’s Doll, is available on Champs Hill records. She will also feature as a soloist on the recording of John Casken’s Memorial as part of a collection of his choral works, which will be available on Métier/Divine Art Records later this year.
Previous roles include Erste Norn Götterdämmerung (The London Opera Company), Olga Eugene Onegin (Summer Music at Semley Grange), Rossweisse Die Walküre (Longborough Festival Opera), Erda Das Rheingold (cover for Longborough Festival Opera), Wife/Eve in Ed Hughes’ States of Innocence (after Paradise Lost), Erda Siegfried (The Mahler Players), Hänsel Hänsel und Gretel (Hampstead Garden Opera) La Messaggera/Speranza/Proserpina L’Orfeo (cover for Longborough Festival Opera), Lapák (Dog)/Zlatohřbítek (Fox) The Cunning Little Vixen (Hampstead Garden Opera), Ljubica in Ana Sokolović’s a cappella opera Svadba ‘A Wedding’ (Waterperry Opera Festival), Žofka in Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared (Waterperry Opera Festival), Cordelia/Fool The Shackled King by Casken (Counterpoise), Forester’s Wife The Cunning Little Vixen (Longborough Festival Opera YAP), Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barefoot Opera), Third Lady The Magic Flute (Waterperry Opera Festival), Prinz Orlofsky Die Fledermaus (Berlin Opera Academy), Alma Mahler The Art of Love / Kokoschka’s Doll (Counterpoise), Mother Goose The Rake’s Progress (cover for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Second Woman/Second Witch Dido and Aeneas (Birmingham Opera Company), Jezebel Naboth’s Vineyard by Goehr (Melos Sinfonia), Beggar Woman Death in Venice (Garsington Opera), Smeraldina The Little Green Swallow by Dove (British Youth Opera), the title role in Handel’s Ariodante (Royal Academy Opera), Madame de la Haltière Cendrillon (RAO), Fidalma The Secret Marriage by Cimarosa (cover for BYO), the title role in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (RAO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra) and Maddalena Rigoletto (Stanley Opera). As a member of the chorus, she has performed with English National Opera, The Royal Opera House, The Monteverdi Choir and Wexford Festival Opera.
After completing her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Rozanna decided to dedicate herself to classical singing. She is a graduate of The Royal Academy Opera School, where she studied with Jonathan Papp and the late Anne Howells. She was a recipient of The Karaviotis Scholarship, The Sir Charles Mackerras Award and The Carr-Gregory Trust Award. During her time at The Royal Academy of Music, she was a member of Academy Song Circle and a finalist in the prestigious Patrons’ Award. Rozanna was also awarded The Karaviotis Prize at Les Azuriales Young Artist Competition, Nice, France, in August 2012 and, in the summer of 2013, attended the Solti Accademia in Castiglione della Pescaia. Rozanna was on the Young Artist Platform at The Oxford International Song Festival (formally The Oxford Lieder Festival) and, since then, she has been invited to perform in various concert halls around the UK and abroad, including St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Wigmore Hall, The Royal Festival Hall, The Holywell Music Room, Kings Place, The Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin, The Prokofiev Hall at The Mariinsky Theatre and The St Petersburg Philharmonic.