Goehr, Alexander (1932 - 2024)

[oliver sudden]

Guardian obit:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/aug/27/alexander-goehr-death-composer-whose-influence-on-20th-century-british-music-cannot-be-underestimated

[french frank]

Guardian obit:

Clements taken to task somewhat by the first commenter.

[oliver sudden]

Clements taken to task somewhat by the first commenter.

Seemed a bit half-hearted for an obituary if you ask me but what would I know?

[Serial_Apologist]

Clements taken to task somewhat by the first commenter.

I have to agree with his remark about PMD's music feeling somehow more effortful than Alexander Goehr. It saddened me however when Sandy effectively abandoned twelve-tone composition just at the moment when he was composing works that were unquestionably enriched by his application of serial procedures and not at all difficult for the "average serious music lover" to take on board, in favour of an idiom that became increasingly based on and then totally dependent on the double augmented scale, which was and is so easy a way out! - Knussen and quite a few others eventually fell for that route too after making promising starts.

[bluestateprommer]

From the Schott Music Group website:

https://www.schott-music.com/en/blog/alexander-goehr-1932-2024/

From Gramophone:

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical%20music%20news/article/the-composer-alexander-goehr-has-died-at-the-age-of-92

[Retune]

I've just been exploring some of Goehr's work on YouTube, and was very struck by the Romanza for Cello and Orchestra, a really impressive work with the scale (if not the form) of a concerto, written for Jacqueline du Pré but apparently never recorded by her in the studio. A live version with Barenboim and the Philharmonia is claimed to be the 1968 Brighton Festival premiere on YT, but a CD release of perhaps the same recording on the Intaglio label presents it as an RFH performance from later that year.

Another obit in the Telegraph:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/08/27/alexander-goehr-composer-manchester-birtwistle/

[smittims]

I well remember the broadcast premiere of Romanza. Part of it was broadcast a few years ago when Alexander Goehr was 'Composer of the Week'. I believe Jackie had difficulty with it and had to be enouraged to go through with it, hence no studio recording.

I have read that she had difficulty with modern music generally, and played very little of it . I'm grateful therefore for her fine performance of the Priaulx Rainier concerto at the 1964 Proms with the ever-dependable Norman del Mar at the helm. It has appeared as a BBC Legends CD .