LESW25 – Buzz!

An exciting opportunity to hear the visionary Australian mezzo Lotte Betts-Dean –  “a force in music to be reckoned with” (Nicholas Daniel OBE) –  performing at LESW for the first time alongside her father, the renowned Australian violist and composer Brett Dean. 

Joined by Iain Burnside, Lotte and Brett offer us a programme bursting with music about living life to the fullest. From Frank Bridge’s yearning songs for voice, viola and piano  – “What heart knows another? Ah! Who knows his own?” – to Sally Beamish’s titular Buzz, wishing for “a Bee’s experience / Of clover and of Noon!” We’ll also hear Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae for viola, written on the very instrument given to Britten by Bridge –  his teacher –  when they parted for the last time in 1939; and Brett Dean’s Last Night I Starred, I Shone, written for his daughter and premiered in 2023.

“Impressive control, an irrepressible sense of drama and extraordinary self-assurance… Betts-Dean manoeuvred unflustered between registers and vocal modes with an unbroken sense of line and an unmissable, urgent musicality. She’s certainly one to watch.” Flora Willson, The Guardian