Edward Gregson (b.1945) and Alan Bush (1900-1995)

[Serial_Apologist]

Strange combo? Greg spies, anyone?? Doubtless we shall learn more...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014g7k

[french frank]

Strange combo? Greg spies, anyone?? Doubtless we shall learn more...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014g7k

I read your thread title and thought … Not even an obvious chronological connection (except that they did overlap, musically, for about 30 years).

[Lordgeous]

Both very nice guys!

[Serial_Apologist]

I am hearing a typical sort of Anglicised Hindemith and Shostakovitch in Programme 1 at the moment, entirely devoted to Gregson works, and having mental images of 1950s home counties suburban clichés - privet properties, pebbledash renderings, green and brown paintwork, middle aged pipe smokers out trimming their hybrid Ts, mum replacing her apron after taking in the parcel, the Austin Devon parked in the driveway. All nice, cosy and complacent - how lovely it was to feel safe back then and know with a bit of work everything was settled.

I'm sure everything this has to do with Marxism will become clear as the week progresses...

[french frank]

I am hearing a typical sort of Anglicised Hindemith and Shostakovitch in Programme 1 at the moment, entirely devoted to Gregson works, and having mental images of 1950s home counties suburban clichés - privet properties, pebbledash renderings, green and brown paintwork, middle aged pipe smokers out trimming their hybrid Ts, mum replacing her apron after taking in the parcel, the Austin Devon parked in the driveway. All nice, cosy and complacent - how lovely it was to feel safe back then and know with a bit of work everything was settled.

I'm sure everything this has to do with Marxism will become clear as the week progresses...

I'm just listening to an LP (charity shop buy): Melodya live recording, State Symphony Orchestra cond. Алан Буш, of Bush's Nottingham symphony (plenty of Marxist significance in that, I'd guess). А. Буш, a 'progressive public figure, had wide recognition in the Soviet Union. (He also composed an opera called Wat Taylor [sic]).

[Nick Armstrong]

Strange combo? Greg spies, anyone?? Doubtless we shall learn more...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014g7k

Teacher & pupil

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm just listening to an LP (charity shop buy): Melodya live recording, State Symphony Orchestra cond. Алан Буш, of Bush's Nottingham symphony (plenty of Marxist significance in that, I'd guess). А. Буш, a 'progressive public figure, had wide recognition in the Soviet Union. (He also composed an opera called Wat Taylor [sic]).

I saw Alan Bush's Men of Blackmoor when it was staged, at Bristol's Victoria Rooms, sometime around 1972, which was tremendously powerful and moving. I've probably kept the programme handout somewhere. The early 50s cantata Voices of the Prophets, the version with Peter Pears accompanied by the composer at the piano - linked below - is the one I have, and it is still probably my favourite work of his, written in what I'd describe as a muscular John Ireland idiom, full of conviction and likewise tremendously moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ninanq5qIDM

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is this going to become the new Bruckner and Mahler pairing? I remember when they were lumped together on account of their mutual tendency to compose long symphonies, but were otherwise very different.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Is this going to become the new Bruckner and Mahler pairing? I remember when they were lumped together on account of their mutual tendency to compose long symphonies, but were otherwise very different.

I’ve always wondered whether that when they were implausibly lumped together in the Master Musicians series it was because few people were that interested in them in the sixties? Perhaps because quite a few of their symphonies didn’t fit onto 1 LP and a double album was a big investment. About one sixth of my first weekly pay packet in fact.

[Nick Armstrong]

Is this going to become the new Bruckner and Mahler pairing? I remember when they were lumped together on account of their mutual tendency to compose long symphonies, but were otherwise very different.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to look at teacher and pupil, do you? Particularly when the very congenial pupil is on hand for discussions. I don’t think that’s a ‘lumping together’. I think it’s rather interesting.

[french frank]

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to look at teacher and pupil, do you?

No, I meant to give the thumbs up for your last, but forgot

[Serial_Apologist]

the very congenial pupil is on hand

Very congealed, in my opinion. There seems to be a tendency in his kind of music to envisage a certain stage at which people of an assumed disposition felt modern music had gone as far as they could follow it, and that it could lay claim to their following. I can understand that. I could follow most modern architecture up to 1980s Postmodernist stuff, but not much of what has been genuinely innovative since, it gives me vertigo, so it presumably must be similar in music. You could have composers for people who only got as far as Daphnis & Chloe. Or maybe Berg's Violin Concerto. Get together a few sympathisers, name your era, crowdfund a Baroque mass.

[Serial_Apologist]

Gregson offered memories and assessments of his teacher on Tuesday's programme - not all of them accurate, but at least judging him on the how successfully or otherwise Bush succeeded in realising the aims of his music, rather than dissing the aims in themselves. I am beginning to wonder why these composers have been twinned, however: their music and views do not seem to share anything in common, and there are plenty of composers who have had composer pupils.

Does anyone else find Gregson's music too heavy, contrived and derivative?

[Bryn]

I'm just listening to an LP (charity shop buy): Melodya live recording, State Symphony Orchestra cond. Алан Буш, of Bush's Nottingham symphony (plenty of Marxist significance in that, I'd guess). А. Буш, a 'progressive public figure, had wide recognition in the Soviet Union. (He also composed an opera called Wat Taylor [sic]).

Bush's Joe Hill has been broadcast on Radio 3. However, Wat Tyler only made it to East Berlin radio (in Geerman). I'm rather fond of his Piano Concerto which was also broadcast on Radio 3 (from Maida Vale):

[ahinton]

Bush's Joe Hill has been broadcast on Radio 3. However, Wat Tyler only made it to East Berlin radio (in Geerman). I'm rather fond of his Piano Concerto which was also broadcast on Radio 3 (from Maida Vale):

Indeed it has - and one of the composer's finest works, methinks. That Sorabji praised it to the skies when he heard it tells something about how fundamental differences of political viewpoint can on occasion form no obstruction to musical appreciation. I remember that performance of the Piano Concerto, a work that I also much admire, with disappointment that it was so under-rehearsed, coming as it did after a performance of Tippett's marvellous Second Symphony to which far more rehearsal time had been devoted despite it being by far the better known of the two works.