Newsletter autumn 2008
COLCHESTER NEW MUSIC NEWSLETTER AUTUMN 2008
What an excellent New Music Day we had this year!
The line-up of Gemini, the new music specialist group who were with us this year, contained some of the top flight of performers in the country specialising in new music: soprano Sarah Leonard, clarinettist Ian Mitchell, viola player Rose Redgrave, percussionist Joby Burgess and pianist Huw Watkins.
Colin Blundell's review of the concerts is below.
A personal highlight for us was that we were able to take part in the celebrations of Roy Teed's eightieth birthday. This led to an unscheduled rendition of Happy Birthday to you at the midday concert at the Headgate.
A sadder event was the death of our long standing Treasurer, Richard Rose. Richard was the retired Managing Director of the Colchester firm, Rose's Calendars. He was always encouraging and helpful and nothing was ever too much trouble for him. Richard's support and enthusiasm for music in Colchester went far beyond CNM. His wife Mary told me that the day he died he had been to a Rotary music event at the Albert Hall.
We have booked Gemini again for next year and they will be in Colchester on Wednesday 27 May 2008 with Alan Bullard as the Featured Composer. As this year there will be midday and evening concerts and afternoon student workshops.
If you wish to submit a composition for possible inclusion in the programmes, the instrumental line-up will be clarinet (bass clarinet and basset horn), tenor sax (possibly doubling on soprano or alto, but NOT baritone), violin, cello and piano. Scores should reach me (Alan Parsons) by 1 March 2009.
Also this coming year I am hoping to arrange a Composers' Workshop with the Kingfisher String Quartet. More on this later.
Stuart Russell is planning to do some work with composers on electronics. This will lead nicely into our plans for 2010 when (funding permitting) I intend to invite new noise: Joby Burgess again, with the oboist Janey Miller, plus electronics. I should dearly like to invite Jonathan Harvey to be the Featured Composer for that occasion.
Colchester New Music Day May 14th 2008
Sarah Leonard and Gemini: Ian Mitchell (clarinet), Rose Redgrave (viola), Toby Burgess (percussion), Huw Watkins (piano)
Maybe Harrison Birtwistle's Ring a Dumb Carillon served as a model of what New Music is.
Of all the pieces performed this day Julia Usher's two offerings came closest to modelling on it. Il Pozzo di San Patrizio is an exciting musical evocation of the journey down and up the 62 metres deep well at Orvieto. Incalmo (libretto devised by Julia and Ruth Smith) is a tight music drama. Sarah Leonard, as Glassblower, gave a spirited declamation with many inventive percussion effects and parallel declamations on clarinet & piano.
In the evening concert, Alan Parsons' riveting Mantissa came next to modelling the Birtwistle. To begin with this is a discussion piece between piano and marimba, with the limpidity of viola and cello; long tunes emerged when viola, cello and marimba got together.
At the other end of the musical spectrum, there was Tim Torry's In the Thousand Million Worlds, a setting of a Buddhist text with elements of Vaughan Williams and Holst in meditative mode. The mood lingered on...
Tim's piece concluded a scintillating evening which started in similar mode with Mark Bellis' The Genealogy of Christ. A trance-like, beautiful, sparing song-line, setting a text from St Luke: Jesus... which was the son of... which was the son of... all the way down the 77 generations to Adam and God on a final long high B flat.
Stuart Russell's energetic Carillon for Julia Usher thrust impulsively onwards threaded on clarinet & viola..
The lunchtime concert began with Paul Buckley's Tiger Tiger. The viola is heard against woodblock commentary. The clarinet is constantly about to make a breakthrough with its own tentative melodies...
Alan Bullard's wordlessly sung Lament requires the reading of the words of the folk-song, All things are quite silent, to know that the young wife's husband has been press-ganged to fight in the Napoleonic wars. When the actual words are sung at last, simple descending phrases against ominous chords on the piano depict the horror of the situation.
Roy Teed's Aubade starts with a viola solo of a distinctly pastoral kind. There are lively wake-up calls on viola and piano with wistful pauses that return to the opening viola gesture. The ending is energetic and expansive.
Paul Buckley described my own Five Variants as ‘abstract pastoralism' which pleased me greatly.
Colin Blundell
Colchester New Music collaborates with Colchester Institute in promoting the New Music Days and between the Midday concert at the Headgate Theatre, Colchester and the evening concert at the Institute Sarah and Gemini gave a Student Workshop at which interesting and inventive pieces by Rob Philpott, Rob Miles, Alex Lynn and John Phipps were played and discussed. I seem to remember that one of them had something to do with bees and a wasp!
Comment
Did you enjoy this year's Proms? The big event for me was the Stockhausen Day. There were excellent performances of Gruppen and Kontakte in the early evening concert. I found Cosmic Pulses somewhat overwhelming - rather like being in a central line underground station with a thunderstorm going on! The big mystery to me was why the BBC neither televised nor repeated any of this day. Other things I enjoyed were the beautiful playing of the Berlin Phil in Brahms's Third Symphony, the NYO in Varese's Ameriques, the moving Bach St John Passion from John Elliot Gardiner and Bernard Haitink's masterful performance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony, not forgetting RVW's Flos Campi, Serenade to Music and Sinfonia antartica. One thing puzzles me about the Proms in recent years. Where does the annoying practice of clapping between the movements come from? The annoying part about it is that, listening on the radio, it sounds so self-conscious and far from spontaneous. Perhaps there's a conspiracy motivated by Roger Norrington! Afterall he's got his foot in the door at the BBC conducting the Last Night - perhaps there's going to be a complete take-over of everything musical. I'm one hundred per cent behind Roger when it comes to vibrato, personally I hate it as much as he does - just imagine The Ring without vibrato!!!!! But clapping between the leitmotives - no thank you!!!
For further information see our website or contact:
Alan Parsons (Director CNM) 32C Military Road, Colchester, Essex, CO1 2AJ
Tel: 01206.510784
Email: alan.parsons27@ntlworld.com
