Music for the South Downs (2022)
SHOP
Catalogue No: MSV 28623
EAN/UPC: 809730862328
Artists: New Music Players, Primrose Piano Quartet
Composers: Ed Hughes
Release Date: June 2022
Genres: Chamber Music
Periods: Contemporary
Discs: 1
Total Playing Time: 68:38
Ed Hughes’ refreshing, cultured, lovingly patterned music is built around a thoroughly contemporary theme; our present-day contemplation of landscape, and how we give it the attention and respect it deserves. Via music, the composer suggests, which works like the weather on a hilly walk in the South Downs. Our perceptions constantly change and re-energise as we encounter familiar objects while colours, shadings and vegetation are in a constant flow of development. The same can be certainly said of all the works in this rich collection, which surge forward with textural warmth and harmonic continuity.
JUDITH WEIR
Ed Hughes’ music has been recognised for its outstanding craft and originality; operas, silent film, chamber, orchestral and piano works have been premiered around the world and recorded for Métier with commissions from Mahogany Opera Group, Brighton Festival, Glyndebourne, London Sinfonietta, I Faglioni and other leading ensembles.
The South Downs is a range of chalk hills extending about 260 square miles across the South East of England. Ed Hughes’s music has special qualities which, like the area that inspired it, have universal appeal.
Ed Hughes:
Flint - Movement 1 (4:15)
Flint - Movement 2 (4:13)
Flint - Movement 3 (5:18)
Nonet - Movement 1 Con moto (5:31)
Nonet - Movement 2 Tranquil (5:54)
Nonet - Movement 3 Flowing (5:49)
Lunar 1 (6:07)
Lunar 2 (8:43)
Chroma (10:04)
The Woods so Wild - Movement 1 (5:31)
The Woods so Wild - Movement 2 (2:29)
The Woods so Wild - Movement 3 (4:38)
Elements of folk music, the merest touch of jazz in some of the rhythms, and melody lines on the outer fringes of tonality pervade Hughes’ musical style. The difference between ‘pop’ and ‘classical’ music is that with pop, one listening is all you need. With classical, and especially with Hughes, every time you listen, you discover something new, surely a treasure-house of musical inspiration.
Alan Cooper, British Music Society
Five works are presented, the first four performed by New Music Players, one of two ensembles Hughes founded and directs, and the fifth Primrose Piano Quartet, formed in 2004 and named after the Scottish violist William Primrose. Scored for string ensemble and conducted by the composer, the three-movement Flint (2019) inaugurates the release strongly with a vibrant evocation of the the Sussex landscape. As the music undulates, dives, and dips, the image of a figure navigating the twists and turns of a verdant setting comes easily to mind. A sense of calm pervades the lilt of the central movement, with Hughes subtly working references to a Sussex folk song transcribed by George Butterworth in 1912 (“A Lawyer He Went Out One Day”) into the tapestry. Though the music largely unfolds gently, Hughes isn’t averse to disrupting its harmonious veneer with chromatic flourishes and sharp-edged accents. Much like a plunge into nature, the threat of danger is never far away, no matter how peaceful the journey.
Also in three parts, Nonet (2020) departs from Flint in augmenting four strings with flute, clarinet, horn, piano, and trumpet. Again the impression of brisk walking motion is conveyed in the effervescent outer movements through rhythmic thrust and the polyphonic interweave generated by the nine instruments. Similar to Flint, the central movement in Nonet is generally tranquil, though shadings of dissonance add hints of mystery and unease to the material’s slightly chillier mood. A kindred tonality infuses Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 (2021), studies Hughes wrote after attending an exhibition of Isamu Noguchi works at the Barbican Art Gallery. Arranged for flute, violin, cello and piano, the pieces are more abstract than the first two—fittingly so as the Lunar works were intended by Hughes to be evocations that are strange, luminous, and unearthly. That said, a pastoral quality nevertheless emerges in Lunar 2 when woodwind textures figure prominently. For the last New Music Players performance, Chroma (1997) reinstates the strings-only scoring of Flint for a single-movement ten-minute setting. In character, however, its enigmatic character and mercurial design make it a more natural partner to the Lunar works.
Similar to Flint, The Woods So Wild (2020-21), written for and dedicated to the Primrose Piano Quartet, also references an early song, in this case one from the Tudor era, “Will Yow Walke the Woods soe Wylde.” The euphonious combination of strings and piano makes for a consoling opening movement, even if the interweaving of multiple melodic patterns destabilizes the music slightly. As the melodies intertwine, the impression created is of the early song being boldly refracted through Hughes’ twenty-first-century lens. A slightly slower middle movement imposes a lyrical, contemplative tone before the material transitions into the closing part without pause, the material growing rapturous as it wends its intricate way to the finish.
Ron Schepper, Textura
Plangent modality is brought to bear on the animated melodic weave...warmly recommended
…a release of works partly inspired by and even permeated with the qualities of the South Downs, making for a cohesive selection whose five constituents are tellingly thrown into relief by having been so arranged... reveals a notable awareness of the evolution of Western music not just over this past century but across what might reasonably be termed the ‘humanist’ tradition which stretches back through the Enlightenment to the Renaissance.
Flint ... evokes the Sussex landscape in terms of natural cliff formations and man-made quarries. The three movements are pointedly distinct – often angular gestures of the first being contrasted with the restrained fervour of its successor (in which a local song once collected by George Butterworth threads it way across the content), before the third highlights solo violin for a texture whose shifting emphases add appreciably to its expressive impetus...
The Woods So Wild turns to the medium of piano quartet and a song from the Tudor era whose plangent modality is brought to bear on the animated melodic weave of its opening movement as on the harmonic eloquence of its central intermezzo – duly heading into a finale whose rhythmic intricacy does not prevent the song coming through affirmatively at the close
... Hughes’s music has an understated virtuosity such as adds greatly to the attraction of those pieces featured here. The performances are audibly attuned to this music, whether those by the Primrose Piano Quartet (arguably the finest such ensemble in the UK) or New Music Players which Hughes founded over three decades ago...
There are four earlier releases of Ed Hughes from Métier and those who have acquired some or all of these will want this new one too. Those new to his music will find the latest selection an appealing way into this composer and, as such, to be warmly recommended.
Richard Whitehouse – Arcana