David Bedford: The Tentacles of the Dark Nebula

During the 1960s David Bedford (1937-2011) produced a considerable array of important compositions including Music for Albion Moonlight (1965), Piece for Mo (1963) and A Dream of the Seven Lost Stars(1964-65). In 1969 he wrote The Tentacles of the Dark Nebula as a commission from Peter Pears. The work was conceived for tenor and string group. Tentacles was inspired by one of Arthur C. Clarke’s short stories – ‘Transience’ which is from the collection...

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Len Stevens: Cinema Foyer

Cinema Foyer will conjure up many happy memories for those of us old enough to recall 'going to the pictures' before they became multi-screens. I think of the the State Cinema in Shettleston, Glasgow where I used to go on a Saturday morning with a variety of other ‘urchins.’ We would pay up our 6d for the matinee performance of cartoons and ‘B’ films – often about cowboys. The only refreshments that I can recall were Kia-ora orange juice and Walls...

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Sir Peter Maxwell Davis: Film Music (and other things) from Naxos

The first piece of music by Peter Maxwell Davies that I heard was the iconic masterpiece Eight Songs of a Mad King premiered in April 1969. This ‘monodrama’ had been released on LP in 1971 and I heard it around about the same time as I was coming to terms with Elgar and Vaughan Williams. The contrast could not be greater.   It is a work that I find repellent and fascinating at the same time: which is what I imagine the composer had in mind....

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Franz Reizenstein: Concerto Popolare –At the 1956 Hoffnung Music Festival

I first came across the German émigré composer Franz Reizenstein on an old Lyrita (RCS19) record which I found in Harrods record department sometime in the mid-1970s.  This included the important Piano Sonata in B Op.10 which was written in 1944 whilst the composer was working as a railway clerk. Due to his nationality, he had been interned on the Isle of Man at the outbreak of the Second World War.   In happier times, after the war,...

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Anthony Burgess: A Manchester Overture

Most people associate Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) with the novel A Clockwork Orange which was made into a cult film in the 1970s. Yet there are more than thirty other novels, as well as a raft of non-fiction and two volumes of autobiography for readers to engage with. Burgess was something of a polymath: his occupations are listed as ‘novelist, critic, composer, librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, travel writer, broadcaster, translator, linguist and educationalist.  It is with the man as composer that this post deals with. The...

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John Purser: A Three CD Retrospective of his Music

I have known the name ‘John Purser’ for much of my ‘musical’ life. When I lived in, or visited Glasgow his name seemed to be always ‘in the air.’ Later when I began to investigate the history of Scottish music I found that his book Scotland’s Music was the obvious place to begin.  Yet I do not think that I have consciously heard any of his music until I received these three CDs in the post. The strange thing about Purser is that in spite of...

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Royal Festival Hall: Final Concert of the London Season of the Arts – 1951

This is a concert I would have loved to have attended. It was when the Festival of Britain ‘London Season of the Arts’ came to an end. The programme was devoted to music that was largely inspired by London.  Eric Blom (The Manchester Guardian, July 1 1951) wrote that this programme was ‘a pleasant sort of ‘Lion and Unicorn’ jumble with no recognisable plan, yet making a pattern and an impression’. The London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir...

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David Jennings: Piano Sonata, Op.1 (1999)

I am inclined to challenge the opening sentence of Phillip Fawcett’s programme notes for the premiere performance of David Jennings’ Piano Sonata, Op.1.  Fawcett states that ‘few piano sonatas of note have been written in the post-WW2 years.’  Without trawling too deep into the catalogues of late twentieth century music it is easy to find a considerable number of British composers who have written excellent examples of the genre. One thinks of Humphrey Searle’s Liszt-inspired but serially constructed masterpiece dating from 1951. An equally...

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David Dubery: New CD Recording – Observations: songs and quartet

The Lancashire-based composer David Dubery has informed me that Divine Art Records is releasing a new CD of his music in July 2014 (Metier MSV 28548). It will feature 17 songs for voice and piano as well as the ‘Ibérico’ String Quartet.  The songs include four ‘cycles’ or collections and a single setting, of Shakespeare’s well-known ‘Full Fathom Five’ (1964) from The Tempest.  The album’s title is reflected in a cycle of six poems by Walter de la Mare (1979, later revised) and includes the well-loved poem ‘The Window’ – ‘Behind the blinds...

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Elisabeth Lutyens: A Centenial Celebration

I must confess that I write this review as something less than the greatest fan of Elizabeth Lutyens. However, over the past few years I have begun to ‘review’ my opinions of her works.I guess it goes back a number of years (40 actually) to a piece of her music called O Saisons, O chateau. I still remember feeling that this was some of the most appalling music I had heard up to that date.  I realise that the work had been applauded and encored...

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