Leading Scottish composer of powerful, visionary, often fraught works, written in a post-tonal harmonic language, one that made primary usage of the Octatonic mode in multiple transpositions as a flexible basis for a freely chromatic, motivically-generative symphonism, rich in drama and orchestral colour. This is a language of choice for many composers of today who avoid the extremes of post 50s Darmstadt modernist "complexity", conservative revanchism and Minimalism while staying faithful to notions of an aesthetic continuity, as represented in composers ranging from Sibelius, Prokofiev and Martinu, to McCabe and Hoddinott. To arch-modernists the approach may thus be seen as too bound to limiting outworn conventions; my own feeling is that Thomas offers listeners schooled in 19th and early 20th century musical conventions one other way into more modern modes of form and expression besides the Schoenberg lineage that is sometimes (mistakenly in my view) presented as a stumbling block. Here is the fine Third Symphony of 1979:
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Not sure now how I stumbled across him, but I have a couple of CDs of his music.
Piano concerto
Introit (Towards the light)
(David Wilde/SNO/Bryden Thomson, on Chandos)
Violin concerto
(Ernst Kovacic/National Youth Orchestra of Scotland/Christopher Seaman, on the NYOS' own label, as CD NYOS 001)
Both worth investigating imho.
I particularly like the use of a plainsong melody in Introit. -
Introit is strongly commended in one of the write-ups I found on the composer. Apologies for the link I provided not working - there seems to be some block on it, unfortunately.Originally posted by Pulcinella View PostComment
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I remember hearing his Piano Concerto many years ago in the days of Studio 7 concerts at the old BBC Oxford Road studios in Manchester, with David Wilde as soloist. I quite enjoyed it as far as I can remember but did not know it had been recorded.Comment
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Back in the dark ages, the SNO used to run a week of concerts called Musica Viva where contemporary composers would get a voice and I remember the SNO’s long time leader, Edwin Paling playing Wilson’s violin concerto under, iirc, Sir Alexander Gibson.Comment
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