Charm & youthful engagement: Ellen Pearson & Laurence Kilsby join Nigel Foster to open the 2026 London Song Festival

Ellen Pearson, Nigel Foster, Laurence Kilsby [Photo: c/o Nigel Foster]

Reaching Out to a Distant Lover: Schubert, Chaminade, Faure, Menotti, Mahler, Duparc, Bridge, Wolf, Roussel, Amy Beach, John Ireland, Korngold, Strauss, Ernest Charles, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, and Rodgers & Hammerstein; Ellen Pearson, Laurence Kilsby, Nigel Foster; London Song Festival at Hinde Street Methodist Church
Reviewed 5 November 2026

Two young singers join Nigel Foster to open the London Song Festival with an engagingly eclectic mix of songs in performances mixing charm and youthful engagement with touching moments

Nigel Foster opened his 2026 season of the London Song Festival with a concert inspired by the 150th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell being granted a patent for the telephone. At Hinde Street Methodist Church on 5 November 2026, mezzo-soprano Ellen Pearson [whom we saw earlier this year in Elena Langer’s Four Sisters at Covent Garden, see my review] and tenor Laurence Kilsby [last seen in Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn & strings with Ben Goldscheider, see my review] joined Foster for a programme of songs under the theme of ‘Reaching Out to a Distant Lover’. Yes, we had ABBA’s Ring, Ring, but Foster’s eclectic mix of material also included Schubert, Chaminade, Faure, Menotti, Mahler, Duparc, Bridge, Wolf, Roussel, Amy Beach, John Ireland, Korngold, Strauss, Ernest Charles, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, and Rodgers & Hammerstein.

The programme took us through a wide variety of distance, both physical and metaphorical. Rather bravely and imaginatively, ‘A message to the Distant Beloved’ avoided Beethoven and concentrated on Schubert. Laurence Kilsby brought out the lyric beauty of ‘Liebesbotschaft’ from Schubert’s Schwanenegesang, with charm and a sense of inner passion. Pearson used her richly vibrant voice to create a sense of urgency in an engaging account of Schubert’s Suleika I ending on a quietly touching moment. Kilsby then returned to Schwanengesang with ‘Die Taubenpost’, combining beauty of line and tone with attention to the words. This was a youthfully engaging account of the song, ending in a touching manner.

Under the theme of ‘So Alone…’ we heard songs by Chaminade and Berlioz. Chaminade’s Attente sounded interestingly exotic, with Pearson bringing out the ornaments in the vocal line as well as giving the whole an urgency. With his vibrant lyric voice and sense of line, Kilsby felt ideal for ‘Absence’ from Berlioz’s Le Nuits d’Ete. He gave us finely moulded phrases whilst making the words mean something, bringing out the song’s lyric melancholy.

‘Separated by the Sea’ featured Pearson in Faure’s Les Berceaux, in an intent and concentrated performance with a lovely supple line. Then Kilsby gave us a relative rarity, Menotti’s Gli amanti impossibili from his 1967 Canti della Lontananza written for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. This was a rather free, rhapsodic piece to which Kilsby brought urgency, intent and ultimately passion.

‘Separated by War’ saw Kilsby and Pearson joining forces for Mahler’s Aus! Aus! The words come from Des Knaben Wunderhorn but the song is not from one of Mahler’s formal sets of Wunderhorn songs, and it was never conceived as anything but with piano. Both singers brought charm and swagger to a narrative about a soldier marching away from his beloved. Kilsby then gave us a third dip into Schwanengesang with ‘Kriegers Ahnung’, here quiet and concentrated but developing urgency and ending bleakly. Pearson concluded the first half with Duparc’s wonderful Au pays ou se fait la guerre, here rendered with melancholy yet also underlying power. Pearson made the abandoned lover feel feisty, and brought fierce power and strength of line to the climax.

The second half began with a jeux d’esprit, ABBA’s Ring Ring, a song of great charm and it worked surprisingly well. List of song writers is interesting, not only Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, but also Stig Anderson, Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody.

‘Thoughts and Dreams and Memories’ saw Kilsby making Frank Bridge’s Come to me in my dreams into something intimate yet urgent, avoiding the sense of over-the-top romance that can often mar this song. Pearson gave Wolf’s Verschiegene Liebe (from Eichendorff-Lieder) a sense of real suppressed excitement. Then Kilsby sang another rarity, Albert Roussel’s Flammes, written in 1908. On almost a monotone at first, the focus was on the fascinating, glittering piano part. Though developing urgent passion with a powerful climax, the monotone returned at the end. Finally in this group, Kilsby sang Amy Beach’s The Western Wind, written in 1889. It had hints of the salon, yet Kilsby and Foster played it with all seriousness, bringing out the intense emotional undercurrents.

‘Does he even think of me?’ saw Pearson in touching form for John Ireland’s Her Song setting words by Thomas Hardy. Pearson continued with Korngold’s Liebesbrifen, a lovely song full of memorable motifs that hint at Korngold’s later opera Die Tote Stadt, in a warmly engaging performance. 

Despite Richard Strauss’s Morgen being associated with the female voice (it was part of a group of songs written as a wedding present for his wife), there is a long history of male involvement. For a start, on both occasions when Strauss recorded it, it was with a male singer. Then the poem, by John Henry Mackay, was about a man. Mackay and Strauss got to know each other through a mutual interest in anarchism! Mackay did not go public with his interest in male-on-male intimacy until after Strauss set the song, so we’ll never know quite how much the composer understood. But as sung by Laurence Kilsby it proved very moving. The intense beauty of Kilsby’s vocal line combining with his attention to small but telling gestures made the song rather touching.

‘We will never be together again…’ saw Kilsby giving us Dawn by Ernest Charles, a composer very much associated with Broadway though his songs were sung by the likes of Kirsten Flagstad and Rosa Ponselle too. This was a big-hearted performance combining popular hints with a serious tone. Pearson made Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’s The Cherry Tree into something rather touching, highlighting folk hints.

We ended with This nearly was mine from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific. In the original sung as a solo by Ezio Pinza but here done as a duet.

As usual Nigel Foster’s programme notes were full of detail along with some interesting nuggets! Roussel’s Flammes was dedicated to Madeleine Aubry, the sister of the man who wrote the words. Her husband, Tony Jules Guerite was a French structural engineer living in London, who was largely responsible for introducing reinforced concrete to the construction industry in Britain. Then Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’s father was a director of a firm, D & W Gibbs, responsible for Gibbs SR Toothpaste!