The 2022 Leeds Lieder Festival opens next week, so as a reminder of the extraordinary level of music-making that awaits audiences, here's a beautiful film featuring two artists who will be well known to Gramophone readers: soprano Louise Alder and pianist (and Director of Leeds Lieder) Joseph Middleton.

This moving performance of two songs from Strauss's Four Last Songs - Beim Schlafengehen and Im Abendrot - was made at the Festival back in 2020, when concert halls were still closed to audiences due to the pandemic.

This year's Leeds Lieder Festival runs from Thursday April 28 to Sunday May 1, at the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds. Middleton has curated four days of song that explore the beauty of the earth, the environment, nature, rebirth and how song illuminates our lives.

Artists include: soprano Dorothea Röschmann (who opens the Festival with Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn); Ian Bostridge and Dame Imogen Cooper in an all-Schubert recital featuring the composer's late masterpiece Schwanengesang; and Alder and Middleton reunited, this time for a programme ranging from Fauré to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

For full details, visit leedslieder.org.uk