Pianist, organist and composer Michael Brough partners with talented young clarinettist Lucy Downer for the first London performance of Brough's Sonata for Bass Clarinet and Piano. The concert also features mezzo soprano Patricia Hammond for the London premiere of Brough's settings of poems about the Dales by local residents Pete Roe, Ann Pilling and Felicity Manning, commissioned by the Swaledale Festival 2011. To hear the entire concert use the player at the top right hand side of this page, video excerpts appear below.
A Swaledale Sequence for low voice, clarinet in A, and piano op27
This triptych was commissioned by the Festival in 2010 for presentation at Arkengarthdale the following year and sets three verses by local poets, Pete Roe, Ann Pilling and Felicity Manning. The pieces contrast strongly, both in their mood and in the manner in which the forces are used, Like the Sonata, they are tonally based and end in the keys of their openings. “Beauty lives just down the Dale”, Pete Roe’s poem, tells of the love of a hardworking character which illuminates all the rough moorland tasks of everyday life. The music is in F sharp minor and ends in the major, and the voice enters, after a substantial introduction, with the main theme of the piece, setting the eponymous phrase of the song. The music ebbs and flows in both mood and material, with the notions expressed in the text, including a tramping, marching section, before the romantic climax, in both C major and C sharp major in quick succession, leads to a return to the opening ideas. The second song, “Life”, in which Ann Pilling’s penetrative words allow a quirky setting, or perhaps exploration, of her attitude to the natural surroundings of the dale, uses the clarinet and the voice without the piano until almost the end, making the piece a Yorkshire two-part invention. Like the companion pieces, it begins in a minor key (in this case A minor) and ends in the major, as Pilling’s upbeat conclusion dictates. In the course of the piece, the voice and clarinet weave around each other seductively. The hectic final song, written in C sharp minor, attempts to set to music a storm during the night in which terrified sheep huddle together for security by a wall; in the morning there is water everywhere. The music starts with a stormy introduction and an angular theme for the singer, depicting the harsh wind and cascading, churning water. This turmoil is stayed twice in the course of the song, once for a pushing, champing section showing the sheep by the wall and finally, after a great crash, introducing a new theme on the words “Winter darkness lasts..”. The water then subsides and the daylight returns to reveal the debris of the night before. At the very end, the piano recalls the sheep motif and the song sequence is allowed to end positively. Full poem texts appear at the end of this page.
Sonata in D flat, for Bass Clarinet and Piano op25
(1) First movement - "Lento cantando - poco marziale" (2) "'Trauermarsch' - Adagio" and (3) Finale - "Strepitoso - tranquillo liberale - Tempo I"
This piece was written in 2009 for Lucy Downer following a chance encounter at the Royal Academy of Music where she was playing the bass clarinet in the evocative Fantasy-Quintet (for that instrument and string quartet) by York Bowen. It is in three movements, conventionally laid out as an extensive opening piece loosely in sonata form, based heavily on a twelve-note theme with two subsidiary motifs; a central monothematic adagio and a toccata-like finale. Writing for the bass clarinet has been a rewarding exercise in every sense: the immense range of the instrument from the bassoon’s low B flat to an upper limit fixed only by the discretion and skill of the player and its large dynamic range have been exciting to explore. The ability of the two instruments to exchange places (solo/accompaniment) was also satisfying. The first movement opens with the (bass) clarinet stating a motto theme using all twelve semitones (leaving the listener not knowing what style to expect) which in fact rapidly is repeated and underlain by romantic gestures by the piano. A short transition leads to a cadenza for the instrument which, in turn, leads to an important subsidiary idea with a martial feel to it, before the third main idea, in G flat major, provides a lengthy romantic interlude. During the subsequent extensive development of the opening twelve-note motto theme, the martial motif reappears in the home key of D flat and eventually the romantic third theme makes its second appearance before a brief coda. The second movement makes use of a long cantilena jotted down in 1868 in his diary (Das braune Buch”) by Richard Wagner, which he apparently intended as material for a piece on the subject of Romeo and Juliet, perhaps as a gloomy companion for the Siegfried Idyll; at any rate, Wagner failed to pursue the idea and the long tune seems to have been noted and forgotten ever since, perhaps because it was written in the key of A flat minor, which has been preserved as the key of the Sonata’s slow movement. A tolling bell note in the piano and brief preparatory phrase leads to Wagner’s theme which is then expanded and developed quite passionately before being restated in the major key, bringing a romantic climax , although the doom-laden bell feature appears again before a final close with the piano decorating the theme, once again in A flat minor. After a series of descending flourishes for both instruments, the finale starts properly in F minor with a pounding version of the sonata’s twelve-note motto theme providing the context for some fairly virtuoso work for both instruments. This leads, eventually, to a still centre for the movement in which a new tune appears like a hymn, reaching individual cadences decorated by final arpeggios for the piano and, in turn, to a second half of the central interlude introducing an emphatic repeated note idea which reaches its own climax in E flat major, dying away and coming to a stop before the toccata restarts. To accommodate a substantial cadenza for the bass clarinet, itself based on the motto theme, the toccata itself is then somewhat abbreviated, and leads to a coda involving a final climax combining the martial theme with the interlude’s repeated note section, all in the home key, in which the sonata ends quietly.
Michael Brough was educated at Leeds University and has been a solicitor for almost twenty years. Outside the law, he has been organist at London’s Holy Trinity Sloane Street for the last eighteen years; he is active as a pianist, accompanist and is the composer of over a hundred musical works, a number of which have received first performances in Britain and in Europe. He is currently a member of the London Diocesan Synod and takes an interest in wider affairs in the Anglican church, having spent a year in Southern Africa as a teacher.
Lucy Downer studied at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating in June 2008 with First Class Honours in her BMus degree, and Distinction in her Postgraduate Diploma in Performance. During her studies she won several awards, including the Buffet Crampon Clarinet Prize and David Taylor Award. As a soloist Lucy has performed with orchestras including the Oxford Sinfonia, the Banbury Symphony Orchestra and RAM Symphony Orchestra. She is particularly interested in the bass clarinet, and has given many solo and chamber music concerts. She frequently enjoys collaborating with composers on new works, which has resulted in several world premieres in venues such as St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Southbank Centre and the Wigmore Hall. In 2005 she was a quarter-finalist (last 8) in the Henri Selmer World Bass Clarinet Competition in Holland, as the only UK player. As an orchestral musician, Lucy has played with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra, and as a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Foyle Future Firsts apprenticeship programme. Lucy has been generously supported by the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, the EMI Music Sound Foundation and Banbury Charities. She has just recorded her debut CD “Conversations” with pianist Claire Howard Race, featuring among others a world premiere by Nick Planas and the first British recording of Paul’s Patterson’s ‘Conversations’, from which the CD takes its name.
British-Canadian mezzo-soprano Patricia Hammond studied singing in Canada and Switzerland before moving to the UK in 2001. She has appeared as an oratorio soloist in Europe and North America, as well as London’s Queen Elizabeth and Royal Festival Halls under Ivan Fischer and Sir Simon Rattle with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and recently performed in Geneva’s Victoria Hall as part of the Fête de la Musique. In opera Patricia has appeared at the Wexford Festival, Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre and the Herodus Atticus Theatre in Athens. She has been featured on BBC Radio 3 and BBC4 Television, and Radio 4′s “Midweek” with Libby Purves in April 2010. “Le Charme”, her CD of French song, was Editor’s Choice in the American Record Guide in 2007, and in 2010 released “One Day When We Were Young” on a Sony compilation of nostalgic favourites. British composer Michael Brough has written a set of songs for her commissioned by the Swaledale Festival, which will see their debut at the festival this year. In addition to her work in classical music, Patricia is a fervent researcher of popular songs from bygone eras, and collaborates with a number of jazz musicians including Matt Redman and Nick Ball, who have written the arrangements for her new CD, “Our Lovely Day,” for Imperial Music and Media.
