Vancouver pianist Wenwen Du sings the praises of rock-star tenor Ian Bostridge
The two musicians will team up for a pair of art-song recitals this week, one in Vancouver and one in Ottawa
Wenwen Du (left; photo by Lily Li) and Ian Bostridge (photo by Marco Borggreve)
Nebula Performances Society presents Ian Bostridge and Wenwen Du at the Vancouver Playhouse on May 14 at 7:30 p.m.
IF THE WORLD of art song can be said to have “rock stars”, Ian Bostridge has certainly earned that status. The 61-year-old English tenor has toured the globe, performed with the world’s great orchestras, and picked up three Grammy Awards for his recordings. Along the way he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to music, which puts him in the company of Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, and Rod Stewart.
Like many a rock star, Bostridge has indulged an interest in decidedly dark and esoteric topics. Before he became a professional singer at the notably late age of 27, he had an entirely different career as an academic. In fact, Bostridge (who earned a PhD in philosophy from Oxford University) even wrote a lauded and influential book called Witchcraft and Its Transformations, c. 1650–1750. See what I mean? Total rock star.
In the admittedly rarefied art-song world, having Bostridge hand-pick you to accompany him is a bit like getting an offer to go on tour with Coldplay. That was the position Vancouver pianist Wenwen Du found herself in a few years ago. (The Bostridge part, that is; Coldplay already has a pretty good piano player.)
“In 2013, I was a chosen pianist for the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme,” Du tells Stir in a Zoom interview. “It’s one of the most prestigious young-artist programs in the world. They chose six pianists and 12 vocalists, in Aldeburgh, which is [Benjamin] Britten’s hometown. I think it was Ian Bostridge’s first public master class. So he was the instructor with his pianist, Julius Drake.”
Being taught by Bostridge and Drake was, it probably goes without saying, a Very Big Deal. For Du, it was about to get even bigger.
“It was like my dream,” she recalls. “I was the young artist in his class, and I played, and then I think Julius had to leave for the final concert. So Ian had no pianist, and he chose me, out of everyone, to play for him. And then, after the course, his agent sent me an email saying, ‘Ian was really impressed with your playing, and he’s going to North America.’ So then we started to tour.”
The two musicians have kept in touch ever since, and now, as the director of local arts organization Nebula Performances, Du finds herself in the position of both artist and impresario. So it seems only natural that she would not only bring Bostridge to town for a recital, but also act as his accompanist.
And the duo is performing not just here, but also a few days earlier in the nation’s capital. The Ottawa performance, which takes place at Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre on May 6, will be Nebula’s first presentation outside Vancouver.
It will also mark the first time that Du plays the pieces on the program: The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op. 35 by Benjamin Britten, and a selection of lieder by Hugo Wolf set to poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
“I felt like, in Vancouver, Wolf is a little underrated as a lieder composer,” Du says. “People come here for Schubert, Schumann, when you think of lieder—or Brahms, or even Mahler or Strauss. But Wolf, to me, is absolutely equivalent to Schubert. In my opinion, some of his settings of Goethe’s texts I love even more than Schubert’s, and everyone knows how much I love Schubert.”
It’s all familiar ground for Bostridge. In fact, working with pianist Graham Johnson in 1995, he recorded the complete Holy Sonnets for his very first album, The Red Cockatoo and other songs. About a decade later, he released an entire album of Wolf’s lieder with Italian maestro Antonio Pappano at the keys.
Because Du and Bostridge have never played these pieces together, they’ll need to spend more time rehearsing than they usually do before recitals. “We have a very strong connection, musically, and if it’s repertoire like a Winterreise or something like that, we don’t even rehearse at all,” Du reveals. “He’s the most amazing artist in that he listens so well. Everything coordinates so well.”
The pair should be able to squeeze in some rehearsal time in the day or two between Bostridge’s arrival in Vancouver and when they hit the stage in Ottawa—although not, presumably, during the flight.
After their shows together, Bostridge and Du will teach an art-song master course together, which will no doubt seem like a full-circle moment for the pianist. This time, however, it will be on her home turf: Nebula’s headquarters under the Oak Street Bridge, which boasts a 90-seat performance hall and several practice studios.
“It will be a really immersive learning process for these young artists,” Du says of the course, in which a dozen young singers and three emerging pianists will attend a mix of private lessons and group classes. “And then we have the final concert, because they learn so much and we must feature them. That’s my goal at Nebula. So we have the final concert with these participants on the evening of May 16 at Nebula Performances, and then Ian flies off on the 17th.”
Like the jet-setting international rock star he is. 
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