Peter Maxwell Davies - Stedman Doubles (original 1955 version) скачать в хорошем качестве

Peter Maxwell Davies - Stedman Doubles (original 1955 version)

Performed Live by Psappha Ensemble on 19 January 2017 at Hallé St Peter's, Ancoats, Manchester UK. Dov Goldberg - clarinet Tim Williams, Oliver Patrick & Edward Cervenka - percussion Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) Stedman Doubles (1955 original version) 1. Adagio non troppo – Allegro 2. Allegretto con moto – Allegro molto energico – molto presto Stedman Doubles was written in February 1955, for clarinet and three percussion players. It was meant to be performed by fellow students at the Royal Manchester College of Music, but it was considered unplayable, and had to languish for more than a decade, when it was drastically revised for the Pierrot Players, the chamber and music-theatre ensemble run by Harrison Birtwistle and myself, and performed in a much slimmed down version, for clarinet and percussionist. At the time I was a student on the joint course of the University Music Department and the College, and had been flung off the University composition course. To obtain a degree I had, therefore, to give a piano recital, and write a thesis: I chose to write about Indian Classical Music. The present work was an unofficial ‘sidekick’ to this thesis – it was very much influenced by the principles of raga improvisation and Indian rhythmic procedure, and was meant to demonstrate to myself that such processes had some practical application in Western music. I recently rediscovered this score in a heap of manuscripts I sent to the British Library, and I am delighted that it will be performed by its original performers, Psappha, even if it is forty years late. © Peter Maxwell Davies (written in 1995) About the composer: Peter Maxwell Davies Peter Maxwell Davies began his creative life as a student in Manchester (1952-6), discovering, with his contemporaries Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander Goehr, new possibilities by way of Indian, medieval and European avantgarde music. Pieces he wrote in his early 20s already show characteristic features of instrumental extravagance verging towards violence, and slow, troubled contemplation, as well as a melding of medieval-Renaissance and modern-serial techniques with traditional symphonic continuity. He went to Darmstadt in 1956 and studied further with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome (1957-9). A post at Cirencester Grammar School (1959-62) stimulated him to revitalize school music, and he continued to write often for young performers. He then went to Princeton (1962-4), and while there began his first dramatic piece, the full-length opera Taverner. Work on this led him into areas of intense experience (madness, blasphemy, self-betrayal) and prompted an outburst of wild parodies and theatre pieces, many of them devised for his own ensemble of six players. Following his move to Orkney in the early 1970s, his music became on the surface calmer. Music-theatre pieces were outnumbered by songs, setting the island poetry of George Mackay Brown and concerned with ancient stabilities of myth, ritual and pastoral. In 1977 he established the midsummer St Magnus Festival in Orkney. At the same time he returned to large-scale instrumental composition, eventually to produce whole cycles of symphonies, ‘Strathclyde concertos’ for Classical orchestra and string quartets, besides other symphonic works and sonatas. All these grew out of his understanding that tonal forces of long range and deep ambiguity might be created by a modal gloss on major-minor harmony. There could even be a restitution of tonality echoing Sibelius or Prokofiev, yet characteristically undercut by doubt and disintegration. He was knighted in 1987, and was Master of the Queen’s Music from 2004 to 2014.