This was the first chance I've had to hear AJ for a while, and I caught a superb half hour. Can't speak much to the first 25 mins or the last 25 - may have been excellent, may have ben naff - but the bit in the middle I can thoroughly recommend both in terms of general interest and of music.
A piece by Richard Bates was excellent in my view - showing how you don't need to go OTT to come up with modern harmonic writing. According to his website he's an ex Winchester music scholar - so he should be OK then
- and more or less at the start of his career. If he can write music of the type played today, then I for one hope he continues to do so.
Then we had some excerpts from Dove's new Oratorio, commissioned in memory of a young lad who died at, I think, 19. The kids who sang it made a great job of it - CBSO choirs - but it was clearly a work that repaid the effort and it showed just why JD is the pre-eminent choral composer of our day. Absolutely glorious stuff.
So if you have 30 mins to spare, listening to the second half-hour of this programme would, in my view, be a rewarding way to spend them.
bws S-S!
PS I add, though, that if, like so many of us, you aren't a fan of the sound of the BBC Singers' women's voices, there were two short Coleridge-Taylor pieces that will grate. But they didn't last long.
A piece by Richard Bates was excellent in my view - showing how you don't need to go OTT to come up with modern harmonic writing. According to his website he's an ex Winchester music scholar - so he should be OK then
- and more or less at the start of his career. If he can write music of the type played today, then I for one hope he continues to do so.Then we had some excerpts from Dove's new Oratorio, commissioned in memory of a young lad who died at, I think, 19. The kids who sang it made a great job of it - CBSO choirs - but it was clearly a work that repaid the effort and it showed just why JD is the pre-eminent choral composer of our day. Absolutely glorious stuff.
So if you have 30 mins to spare, listening to the second half-hour of this programme would, in my view, be a rewarding way to spend them.
bws S-S!
PS I add, though, that if, like so many of us, you aren't a fan of the sound of the BBC Singers' women's voices, there were two short Coleridge-Taylor pieces that will grate. But they didn't last long.