Wales Comes to Oxford

Here I am in Oxford for a performance of my piece Beiliheulog (see petereynoldscomposer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/song-for-hidden-chapel.html for more details of the piece) 

It was part of a concert, This is Wales C21, at St Hugh’s College, put on by Claire Roberts from Ferryside, Carmarthenshire, who I met when she won the Young Composer of Dyfed prize in 2009. Claire is now a third year music student at Oxford University and decided to put on a St David’s Day concert (albeit on 7 March) of music by Welsh composers.

I was very proud to be one of group of composers who she asked to provide pieces, along with John Metcalf, Andrew Wilson-Dickson, Rhian Samuel, Gwyneth Glyn, Joseph Davies, Gareth Moorcraft and Claire herself. And Hanna Hopwood was also on hand to read some poetry in Welsh.

We had a full hall of people who turned out on the Friday to hear the music – though it might also have been the lure of a table groaning with Welsh cakes and Bara brith (not looking forward to my encounter with the weighing scales tomorrow).

Flautist Daniel Lewis, viola player Ffion Beven and harpist Lucy Nolan made a fantastic job of my piece, which is very quiet throughout and Claire boldly decided to put it in the programme as a final item. Thanks again Claire, it was a great evening.

footsteps in the Dora

Live Music Now selects young, professional musicians and sends them out into the community to perform for older people and children with special educational needs across the UK. On Saturday night, in the Dora Stoutzker Hall at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Live Music Now Wales gave a Gala concert featuring some of the extraordinary musicians who have taken part in the scheme over the years, including Llŷr Williams, Hannah Stone, Only Boys Aloud and the Mavron Quartet.

The Mavrons gave their seventh performance of my quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows preceded by Francesca Kay reading her poem, Unicorn, from which the title comes. It is one of a collection of poems, Mythical Beasts, that can be purchased from Francesca’s Etsy shop www.etsy.com/uk/shop/quarto17

The quartet have been giving some wonderful performances of the piece over the last month in Ystrad Mynach, Lampeter and Reading and it’s been a great honour to work with them on it. We’re making a CD of it in March. Here they are rehearsing during the afternoon, just prior to the concert.  

Many thanks to all the performers and Gillian Green at Live Music Now Wales for a great evening.

Quartet amongst the books

Fantastic performance of my quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows by the Mavron Quartet last Wednesday night.

 

 

They gave a concert the beautifully refurbished Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye.

Here’s photo of them on the stage after the performance together with me and Francesca Kay who read her lovely poem, Unicorn, before the performance.

We were all wonderfully looked after following the performance at John Stark’s house with delicious veggie snacks.

There's another performance on Sunday 15 December at 11.30am in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre at the National Museum of Wales.

 

 

More performances of footsteps quiet in the shadows

The Mavron Quartet give two performances of my recent quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows next week. It’s based both on a poem by Francesca Kay (from which the title is taken) and on the mysterious second movement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto – just two simple chords of A minor and B major. No one knows what Bach meant – he may have intended it as the basis for a cadenza or improvisation.


The Mavron Quartet are including an arrangement of Bach’s Concerto in the concerts, but the arranger has left the chords out! I had the leviathan task of writing out parts for the whole second movement (see below) – it must have taken all of ten minutes …

I’m thrilled that Francesca will also read her poem before both performances – if you fancy buying a copy of the collection from which it is taken, you can find her at Wales Millennium Centre this weekend selling it along with lots of other Christmas goodies (see Francesca’s blog - ).



The performances are on Wednesday 11 December at Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye at 7.30pm (tickets from 01497 820322) and Sunday 15 December in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre at the National Museum of Wales at 11.30am.

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/whatson/?event_id=6895

www.mavronquartet.co.uk

Dino Commission

I’m just starting work on a new commission from Tŷ Cerdd, the National Music Centre for Wales. It’s for narrator and the Welsh Brass Trio for young children, from age four upwards. The words are being written and narrated by Francesca Kay whose work I have admired for ages. Francesca has already written some fantastic children’s pieces with Mervyn Burtch and Gareth Wood. We used to work together on the educational projects for the Lower Machen Festival and last year I set her three winter haiku for soprano and piano.

The text for this is very different though: it’s all about dinosaurs and the problems that come up when a stegosaurus falls asleep on the road, blocking the traffic. Expect something very different from my most recent scores…

At a recent meeting Charlotte Griffin from Tŷ Cerdd gave me three of her young son’s miniature dinosaurs – they are now sitting on my piano willing me to write the music.

www.tycerdd.com 

Follow Francesca Kay’s blog at www.francescakay.blogspot.co.uk  and see her website at www.francescakay.co.uk

Four-Minute Facelift

I wrote my four minute opera, The Sands of Time, (with writer Simon Rees), twenty years ago for a one-off performance. It had to be composed very quickly and I didn’t produce the neatest score in the world.

Twenty years on it’s still getting performances every year and each time I feel a bit more embarrassed about the old score. At the end of November, Intimate Opera of Indianapolis are giving four performances, so I asked Michael McCartney to produce a newly engraved score.

Michael is a highly skilled music editor and has produced a beautifully laid out and proportioned score so that the performers will have better materials to work with.

For details of Intimate Opera's forthcoming production, see http://www.intimateopera.org/IntimateOpera/Performances.html

Listen to a recording of the premiere https://soundcloud.com/peter-reynolds-2/the-sand-of-time-an-opera-in

Autumn Festival in Flanders

The Transit Festival of contemporary music in Leuven, Flanders, is one of my favourite destinations. A packed weekend of music and talks – there’s almost no time to eat!

In between events I enjoyed the wonderful medieval town, bathed in autumn sunlight. Its town hall is one of the most impressive gothic buildings in Europe.

I heard lots of fabulous new pieces and performers, including an excellent new commission from Bernhard Lang based on Boris Karloff’s Dracula films and incorporating bits of their soundtracks – fun, but also tough and challenging. Today I’m writing up a review of the weekend for Tempo. 

More details at Transit’s website www.festivalvlaamsbrabant.be/programma/transit