Hugh Wood

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A very interesting interview with the composer on his 70th birthday.

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_features.php?id=989

[teamsaint]

His Scenes from Comus gets a Proms run out next week, so a good time to resurrect this classic thread.

[Serial_Apologist]

His Scenes from Comus gets a Proms run out next week, so a good time to resurrect this classic thread.

Scenes from Comus is a very good introduction to 12-tone composition, demonstrating as it did that serial music does not have to be obscure or "difficult", but can be grasped in one listening - not that it has always to be thus of course: it was a breakthrough work in that sense for me - I always think it sounds as if Berg and Walton got together on it!

[edashtav]

Scenes from Comus is a very good introduction to 12-tone composition, demonstrating as it did that serial music does not have to be obscure or "difficult", but can be grasped in one listening - not that it has always to be thus of course: it was a breakthrough work in that sense for me - I always think it sounds as if Berg and Walton got together on it!

That's a useful analysis, S-A, full of tips and hooks. Your suggestion of a Berg- Walton mash-up is splendid!

[bluestateprommer]

Perhaps belated news to those already in the know, but I just found this tribute to Hugh Wood from his publisher, following his passing last week:

https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/news/4269/Hugh-Wood-1932-2021/

[jayne lee wilson]

I think the Symphony Op.21 (geddit) and the Piano Concerto for Joanna Macgregor (which uses the Nat King Cole classic Sweet Lorraine very cleverly and touchingly) are among the best of his maturity....

Very excited by them at their R3 Premieres, revisit long overdue I guess...
Happily, still widely available on disc or stream...

[jayne lee wilson]

I've been listening overnight to the Piano and Violin Concertos.....I'd forgotten what widerangingly imaginative works they are!

The Piano Concerto begins and you think, ah yes, classic post-Schoenbergian etc - but it soon develops in wildly different directions, a sweet wisp of a tune begins to emerge....
This the forerunner of Sweet Lorraine, the theme for the hushed beauty of the adagio variations, which, after a surprisingly Romantic string-led climax, only reveals itself near the end before a marvellously evocative twinkling nocturnal fade. Finale skittishly thrown off à la Ravel G Major.

The Violin Concerto again takes the sounds to dynamic and textural extremes with a slow-fast-slow shape, a brooding mini-db cadenza leads into a very exciting demonic scherzo featuring concerto-for-orchestra-style brass outbursts...
The finale is very unusual, a varied restatement of the first movement but dominated for over half its length by a solo cadenza. Finally the orchestra tiptoes in, ending with a flourish of brassy percussive brilliance.

Highly recommended! The Piano Concerto seems stream/download only (Collins Classics Single (2ndhand CD prices stratospheric), now soundcircus), but NMC have the String Concertos, the Symphony (up next!) and a Chamber Music album. Can't find the Chamber Concerto out there yet though.

Amazing to think, I saw Tasmin Little play the Violin Concerto at the RLPO one dark winter night in 1990s. Very taken with it even then. Don't worry about the audience response - most of them came back in for the pop classics in Part Two...

Excellent listening - do seek them out! The NMC CDs of the Symphony and the String Concertos are still priced OK.

[kuligin]

I first heard Hugh Woods music at a Prom, Scenes from Comus and a pre concert talk by the Composer. I liked the piece immediately and now have the CD and went on to look out for broadcasts and recordings.

Only one other live performance the 5th Quartet played by the Lindsays, but the Local Library introduced me to the Quartets 1 to 3 and the Violin Concerto and Cello Concerto, all works that have repaid many listenings.

I can’t agree with Jayne about the Symphony I just don’t feel the quotes from Zauberflöte works, unlike the reference to Elgar in the Cello Concerto which seems so natural. For me the best works are the Quartets and Songs but there is much to explore if only there were recordings.

Really after Birtwistle and Tippett he was the living English composer that has given me the most pleasure. Despite never knowing him except through the music and the excellent book Staking Out the Territory, the article on Brahms is really worth reading, I was very saddened by his death even at the advanced age of 89.

[pastoralguy]

I’m sure the ‘cellist Lowrie Blake studied with Hugh Wood.

[edashtav]

Perhaps belated news to those already in the know, but I just found this tribute to Hugh Wood from his publisher, following his passing last week:

https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/n...ood-1932-2021/

Goodness, gracious, I hadn’t heard that sad news, bsp. Thanks for the heads-up.
I’ve yet to hear a work by Hugh Wood that I have not enjoyed and admired but, I must admit, that opportunities have been too infrequent fir my liking.

I must order that CD of late pieces that was mentioned in his Publisher’s obit..