Pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu and mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean’s Solitude with Schubert was a powerful meditation that bound audience and performer close in the shared acknowledgement of grief, articulated by the musical language of Schubert’s bittersweet writing.

Originating as a response to restrictions of lockdown, Fu’s exploration of Schubert was at first a creative response to making use of time once populated by concert bookings, later threatened by the purposeless inflicted by mass cancellations. As documented in Matilda Hay and Rachel Allen-Green’s tender documentary about the project, Fu’s fascination fuelled his instinctive exploration of Schubert’s piano sonatas. Schubert and his music became a companion, one that later surfaced Fu’s own experience of grief following the death of his father in 2018. “In grief you learn what you’ve been holding on to,” Fu says to camera in the documentary screened before the performance, “and learn what you need to let go of.”

The film established grief as a shared experience as something that connects us. It also underlined the ever-present need to demystify it. Contributions from members of a Suffolk ‘grief walk’ resonated with a lightness that only comes from the feeling of being implicitly acknowledged. Many touched on the difficult of expressing the unsettling contradictions experienced when coming to terms with an absence. When Fu, appears performing Schubert at the Red House to members of the walk, he illustrates a truth often overlooked: music is the language that helps us make sense of it where words often fail. Music doesn’t simply help us understand the grief, but helps us connect on a fundamental level with those around us who have experienced it too. Grief, then, is the glue that no one ever speaks of. Maybe we should speak of it more.

Screening the film before the performance primed us for the emotions Schubert’s writing summons. It also heightened the senses for the finer points of its delivery. In this regard, Betts-Dean secured her status as Festival revelation this year. Her appearance in Visit to Friends on the two consecutive nights before was, amongst an already strong cast, a standout performance. Here in recital singing first Einsamkeit and later Schwanengesang, we get more of her voice in an intimate setting and can speculate on its production. The vocal line seems to emanate from the back of the mouth, giving a sense of a great open space in which the sound resonates before it’s released into the outside world, consonants gently attached as it goes. The effect is sophisticated. The roundness of vowels resonates fully, making for a more inclusive feel to singing, maybe even more visceral. It is an encapsulating sound that has a consistent through-line, grace, and an incredible reach. Octave leaps trigger joy: feather-like caresses that linger long after the audience leaves the Britten Studio.

Betts-Dean is clearly excited in recital, connecting with Fu instinctively, looking to the audience with glint, a grin, or a heartfelt gesture with the hand. This strong connection has the odd effect of leaving us feeling like we’ve known her for longer than the scheduled running time for the concert. She is a musical guarantee. There is much enthusiastic applause for her role in this special event.

In the Schubert Piano Sonata No. 21 Fu conjures a wide range of colours, timbres, and dynamics that create emotional anchors for the tumult of grief. In the first movement there is joy and defiance, resilience and strength to be heard: the musical demonstration of vulnerability. Sadness is present but there is unshakeable determination to move forward: we’re not denying loss, accommodating absence. Fu demonstrates immense power at the keyboard, readily switching into ‘sports mode’ to summon bold urgent statements from the piano that thunder around the auditorium, later approaching sequences of introspection readily, bringing a sense of childlike curiosity. This is a document as to his experience but also a bid for connection for those experiencing it themselves — a quiet signal of a shared experience.

Resilience and hope emerge from the stillness of the second movement opening, during the middle section of which there’s a feel of burnished copper. In this movement the ostinatos have a touch more clarity than in the first which is appreciated. In the third movement, energy abounds in the spirited scherzo where this adapted absence appears, for me at least, to signal new life and a sense of long overdue and joyous release. The final allegro with its commanding bell-like sounds points to a different future, one fortified by growth and one decorated with intricate detail — a heightened sensory response — before finally crashing to a celebratory close, sealing the connection between us in the audience in a joyously self-affirming way.