Selected album reviews:
Fanfare Magazine. May/June 2023:
Ed Hughes (b.1968) Music for the South Downs
Flint (2019) Nonet (2020) Lunar (2021) The Woods so Wild (2020-21)
New Music Players. Primrose Piano Quartet.
rec. 2021, London and Sussex MSV 28623
The music of Ed Hughes rarely fails to impress. A Métier disc of his music reviewed in 2020 (Fanfare 43:6) served to confirm impressions of a twofer reviewed in Fanfare 36:2. Here, Hughes uses his “lovingly patterned” music (Judith Weir, quoted at the outset of the booklet) to create an affectionate portrait in sound of the South Downs, a range of chalk hills extending to around 260 miles of south-east England. Hughes was commissioned by the South Downs National Park Authority to write a score to a film by Sam Moore, South Downs: A Celebration, marking the National Park’s 10th anniversary.
Beauty and affection are present in bucketloads here. Hughes’s musical vocabulary is wide, and while musical responses to countryside might conjure up images of the English Pastoralists, Hughes very much has his own voice, as the first piece, Flint, attests. Written in 2019 and scored for string orchestra, it is intended to evoke the chalk downs of the Sussex countryside with its sudden verticals and “cuts” (such as quarries, or where land meets sea). We hear the contrasts most obviously in the first movement, as well as elements of the idea of patterns undergoing process. The slow movement paraphrases an English folk tune collected by George Butterworth in 1912. Hints of Pastoralism are continually undercut and disturbed, adding a sense of disquiet before the finale brings it all together: a solo violin sings above a texture based on the song from the slow movement.
The Nonet dates from 2020 and was written for the present performers, the New Music Players. If one goes to Ed Hughes’s website, one can see the film. It’s highly recommended: the celebration of Nature and its changes is sensitively and beautifully done. Listening without images, though, puts the spotlight on Hughes’s processes. Edward Maxwell’s trumpet is notable for his accuracy over disjunct yet lyrical passages. Hughes speaks of the second movement as “like a walk in Winter sunlight,” referring to the more objective feel and the glistening textures; meditative, its influence is reflected in the finale, which in some ways hearkens back to the first movement but with a lighter textural and sonic feel, one that approaches joy.
Unsurprisingly the music turns inwards for the nocturnal world of Lunar, two studies for a quartet comprising flute, violin, cello, and piano. Inspired by an art exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London by Isamu Noguchi that included wall-mounted sculptures entitled “Lunars,” Hughes’s piece takes the idea of objects that are simultaneously luminous and evocative of (strange) landscapes. The piece is actually a contrasting pair of movements, inner for the first then radiant for “Lunar 2.” The performance here is particularly noteworthy: The ensemble captures Hughes’s individual way with texture perfectly in the first movement before “Lunar 2” dances. There is a real sense of affection embedded in this performance, and the superb recording supports maximal detail.
Written somewhat earlier, in 1997, Chroma for 11 strings uses a layering technique applied to tempo, pulse, and rhythm that ensures a shifting surface, with a string quartet of solo players who act as a “center” with melodic elaborations all around. It is very much a shifting mass of sound; but the “mass” itself feels quite light.
Scored for piano quartet, The Woods So Wild (2020–21) was written for and dedicated to the present performers. Again, Hughes uses “found” material from England, this time the tune Will Yow Walke the Woods soe Wylde, possibly sung by King Henry VIII. It is interesting how Hughes dislocates the tune both metrically and harmonically, his own language contrasting with the song’s modal basis. The Primrose Piano Quartet players form a spectacular unit; their understanding of Hughes’s vocabulary is impeccable, as is their performance. A short second movement re-introduces the old tune before its end; the mood overall strikes me as crepuscular before the final movement grows towards an apotheosis. The composer himself points to his methodology here as using “cross-rhythms and weaving polyphony like the intertwining roots, branches, moss and leaves of a sunlit wood.” It works brilliantly.
More proof then, if proof were needed, of Hughes’s stature as a composer, all held in fine performances; this is a superb disc.
Colin Clarke (Fanfare)
Ed Hughes (b.1968) Music for the South Downs
Flint (2019) Nonet (2020) Lunar (2021) The Woods so Wild (2020-21)
New Music Players. Primrose Piano Quartet.
rec. 2021, London and Sussex
MÉTIER MSV28623
Hughes has been an enriching presence on the UK new music scene since the BBC broadcast of his orchestral piece Crimson Flames marked him out as a name to watch over three decades ago. He has assembled a sizable as well as diverse body of work across a broad range of genres, one which 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.
The present sequence opens with Flint that 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. Although written to complement a film by Sam Moore (which can be seen via Hughes’s website), Nonet is musically self-sufficient – whether in the undulating variety of incident in its initial ‘Con moto’, the sense of being side-tracked and even waylaid in the central ‘Tranquil’, or a gradual feeling of emergence then arrival in the final ‘Flowing’.
Very different in its concept is the Lunar diptych – inspired by Isamu Noguchi sculptures and juxtaposing the darkly translucent harmonies of ‘Lunar 1’ with the agile luminescent gestures of ‘Lunar 2’. The earliest work here, Chroma is also the most abstract in terms of content that derives meaning from its interplay of outward volatility with underlying calm; a process made manifest in the distinction between string quartet and string ensemble over much of its course. Finally, 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.
Does it all work?
It does indeed. Without drawing attention to itself in technical terms, 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. Nor does the sound, recorded at two different venues, leave anything to be desired in clarity and perspective. The composer has provided informative annotations.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. 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
—-
This disc of chamber music, most skilfully played, includes a quarter of an hour, three-movement piece called Flint which, in its pell-mell, plunging, troublous power and centred peacefulness, takes a lesson or two from Michael Tippett, notably his Corelli Fantasia. Closely recorded, it achieves something not that far from massed string orchestral impact.
The Nonet - also in three movements and similar in duration to Flint - is similarly impelled; just more diversely and dangerously varied in its tumbling multiple instrumental detailing. Its central ‘Tranquil’ is peaceful and forms a satisfying contrast with the increasingly tense and Nyman-like ‘Flowing’. This and the other pieces carry some of the nature and birdsong impress implied by the composer’s own words: “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.”
Lunar is a somewhat longer piece (24 minutes), again in three movements (‘Lunar 1’, ‘Lunar 2’ and ‘Chroma’). The first two pursue their course in meditative, mysterious and threatening paragraphs. The work’s final buzzing ‘Chroma’, while impressively complex, includes what feels like a folk dance in the ‘weave’.
The Woods so Wild is again in three movements and these melt forwards in lyricism and ecstasy. There’s that Tippett melos mediated with a touch of early Howells and the instrumental writing of Warlock in his The Curlew.
The booklet is most beautifully composed and executed with colour photographs of the South Downs and extended insights by the composer into the witchery of his music.
Rob Barnett
Musicweb
—
https://brazen-head.org/2023/09/25/transporting-music/
On a couple of occasions, I have cycled across the South Downs, and even managed (once) the slow climb up Ditchling Beacon. I should have had Ed Hughes’ music to accompany me. It would have made a wonderful bike ride even more special.
His Music for the South Downs is a recent release on the Metier label and part funded, in a most enlightened way, by the South Downs National Park Authority. The music embraces the rolling landscape and its endless natural variety. We can be in open fields and wooded valleys, beside fresh bright streams and rolling waves. The music is both evocative and grounded in this verdant environment. Listening to Flint Movement 2 on a dull and rainy afternoon, I was transported to a forest watching the sunbeams dance through the leaves – and then in the next movement I am on the bank of a fast-flowing stream. Such is the magical power of Ed Hughes’ music.
It was composed for Sam Moore’s film, South Downs: A Celebration, to mark the National Park’s tenth anniversary, and is played by the New Music Players, founded by Hughes and the Primrose Piano Quartet. Ed is professor of composition at the University of Sussex and is very obviously steeped in the South Downs landscape. He has walked the paths that he now portrays in this music. I will ensure that Hughes’ music is with me when I next tackle the South Downs trails. He might even encourage me to ascend effortlessly up Ditchling Beacon. And that takes some doing.
Richard Dove
American Record Guide Critics’ Choice 2020 (the top 10% of discs chosen by the original reviewers) - January 2021
Sunday Times selected in ‘100 Best Records of the Year’ - 13 December 2020
Ed HUGHES (b. 1968)
Time, Space and Change
Cuckmere: A Portrait (2016-18) [30:31]
Media Vita, for piano trio (1991) [10:34]
Sinfonia (2018) [30:23]
New Music Players Piano Trio
Orchestra of Sound and Light/Ed Hughes
New Music Players/Nicholas Smith
rec. 2018, Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, University of Sussex; The Warehouse, Theed Street, London
MÉTIER MSV28597 [71:35]
Review. Seen and Heard International. August 2021
Sun, New Moon and Women Shouting.
I Fagiolini / Robert Hollingworth (director) with VOCES8. Livestreamed from VOCES8 Centre, London, 14.8.2021
in ‘Au Naturel’ - “Fascinating, stimulating tour of the seasons from I Fagiolini”
Ed Hughes’s remarkable setting of Tom Lowenstein in Sun, new moon and women shouting, an I Fagiolini commission that centres on the traditions of the Inuit community, Tikigaq, and its legends. This one work for Winter is remarkable (and makes equally remarkable demands on its executants, not least the sopranos). The exciting, vibrant first parts cede to ‘The Spirit of the Moon and Women’ and the story of Raven Man and Alinnaq’s healing. A long, single piece to end this fascinating, stimulating tour of the seasons.
Colin Clarke
“My thanks to the Brighton Festival for this marvellous event. It's a great walk; there were carpets of cowslips on the way up and English bluebells on the way back down. And the weather - rain then shafts of sunlight then blue sky - added to the drama. But the astonishing thing was the music and how that enhanced the experience. It seemed to mirror our mood - energetic on that stiff climb up, expansive, contemplative even, as we gazed across Sussex from the top, tricky rhythmically as we came back down that awkward eroded chalk path. And the technical bits worked perfectly for me - I just stuck my phone in my pocket and listened though my earpieces. I didn't look at the pictures or text, I didn't want to lose momentum. And that was the other thing about the music, it drove us on, it gave structure to the walk. I really want to listen to that music again in the cool light of day - and read the text. I haven't been so struck by a piece of contemporary music for some time. Every moment of it was so full of interest.”
Andrew Polmear. 15 May 2021. On the Brighton Festival Ditchling Museum Soundwalk - Echoes App - Music by Ed Hughes
Brighton Festival attendee Max Crisfield reviews his exploration of the South Downs on our unique nature trail
Mark Twain famously professed that ‘golf is a good walk spoiled’. I must confess that when it comes to stepping out for a country stroll I, like Twain, am something of a purist: I tend to prefer my walks unencumbered – by golf, by commentary, even by conversation. I’m also a bit of a tech idiot.
As such, I’m probably not the best candidate for this immersive, interactive hike up Ditchling Beacon. But here I am – app uploaded, Bluetooth enabled, earphones in – entering the first ‘echo’, which triggers Ed Hughes’ specially composed sound score, and, you know what, it’s kind of cool. And as the walk unfolds – across fields of yellow cowslips, up steep chalk escarpments to the high downland plateau, the music tracking the changing contours of the topography as we walk, I become more and more entranced. The views are pure Ravilious – soft, undulating, treeless. The music, like the route, veers from jagged and a little vertiginous to serene and wide-angled.
As for the technology, my incompetency knows no bounds. At one point, as I try to locate myself by zooming in on my smartphone, it seems that I have strayed into the outskirts of Birmingham. Luckily, I am accompanied by two women who in my experience are far better at tricky things like geolocation and knowing which way up to hold your phone, and I am soon put right.
My initial reservations aside, this is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Maybe we didn’t give it our full, undivided attention – we chatted and laughed and sometimes had one earphone in, one out – but I can safely say that far from being a ‘walk spoiled’, this was a ramble enhanced. And as we sauntered back through shaded bluebell woods towards Ditchling, the final ‘echo’ playing a fanfare to our triumphant return, I was already planning a second, solo outing. Highly recommended.
Max Crisfield 25.5.2021 - Brighton Festival
Review. Planet Hugill. May 2020
Ed HUGHES (b. 1968)
Time, Space and Change
Cuckmere: A Portrait (2016-18) [30:31]
Media Vita, for piano trio (1991) [10:34]
Sinfonia (2018) [30:23]
New Music Players Piano Trio
Orchestra of Sound and Light/Ed Hughes
New Music Players/Nicholas Smith
rec. 2018, Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, University of Sussex; The Warehouse, Theed Street, London
MÉTIER MSV28597 [71:35]
“His ability to adapt, recreate and bend this music to his own voice is remarkable”. Thus did my colleague John France conclude his review of this enchanting disc. The phrase “his own voice” resonates most emphatically with me. In the mid-1990s I recall hearing Hughes’ Orchid sequence and a fascinating piece called Lanterns and clocking his music as elaborate and strange but incontrovertibly English. In recent years he has established himself as a composer of soundtracks, frequently for vintage silent shorts and most lately to accompany topographically-inspired films made especially for the Brighton Festival. I reviewed his most recent release on Métier, Symphonic Visions, a double DVD which contained examples of both (with the relevant films) – most impressive was the mesmerising Brighton: Symphony of a City. It is obvious that Hughes has refined his methods in the quarter century since I first encountered his music, but his voice remains defiantly identifiable – and it persists here throughout two big, recent works which bookend a brief piano trio composed at a point when Hughes had barely graduated.
Cuckmere: A Portrait is another Sussex soundtrack – a collaboration with Cesca Eaton, a film-maker most associated with some of the more popular BBC music series and documentaries to have emerged in recent years. While the new issue doesn’t include the film, it is available via this link, and Hughes’ appealing score is certainly best appreciated through headphones. Eaton’s film is effectively a chronological travelogue which traces the Cuckmere from Autumn to Summer from its source near Heathfield in East Sussex to the spot where it flows into the English Channel at Cuckmere Haven, halfway between Seaford and the white cliffs at Seven Sisters. The river is renowned for the number of its meanders and the sharpness of their twists and turns, and the film consequently benefits from the frequent aerial shots which readily communicate the strangeness of its form against the glorious backdrop of the Sussex countryside. Hughes again employs his ‘house’ ensemble, the Orchestra of Sound and Light, here consisting of 18 players (single winds, trumpet, piano percussion and strings). If Brighton-Symphony of a City was as much a musical depiction of human activity within the context of a bustling resort, Cuckmere is exclusively a portrait of nature. In its half-hour span Hughes’ seems fully immersed in the essence of the river, although his score is astoundingly fresh and utterly devoid of cliché. One often senses the spirit of the barcarolle in the gently lapping pulses and shapes which hint at arpeggiation, but his resourceful use of the modest ensemble encapsulates a sonic landscape in constant flux, albeit one that’s leisurely and subtle. It is the mark of a true collaboration when image is so perfectly married to music that one becomes almost unimaginable without the other, and that is certainly the case here, just as it was with the Brighton piece. Having said that, hearing the score as pure music without the images on the disc enables the listener to focus more closely on Hughes’ most identifiable compositional fingerprints; an ear so sensitive to timbre that a modest ensemble is sufficient for him conjure a canvas vibrant in colour and texture, an instinctive ability to apply rhythm which is never allowed to dominate or overwhelm, and in this case a conception of ‘flow’ which embodies the barely perceptible metamorphosis of the landscape as the seasons change, even allowing for the brief interludes which demarcate them. Cuckmere: A Portrait does exactly what it says on the tin; it’s warmly communicative and approachable, yet unusual – and it encapsulates Hughes’ readily recognisable stylistic characteristics most elegantly.
The couplings are tougher propositions, but clearly the products of the same composer. Media Vita was one of Hughes’ earliest performed works and was inspired by John Sheppard’s renowned half-hour motet, although this is far from obvious. The listener is plunged in medias res with piano figures already insinuating themselves around and between a knotty violin line and latterly a growling cello. Media Vita is challenging but rewarding - the pianist bears much of its weight. Elusive melodic Ideas cascade and tumble atop one another – there is something unexpectedly Ivesian here, stark cello chords and passionate high flung violin lines become entangled while the pianist strives to rhapsodise his way through. A brief duet for the strings at 6:20 is strikingly rich and hints at the harmonic facilities of Sheppard’s source work. But the logic of Hughes’ piece is immediately restored when the piano returns. Media Vita ends as it began, in the middle of something the listener has perhaps happened upon uninvited.
Sinfonia is another big, recent piece, although not a ‘symphony’ according to one’s modern, formal preconceptions of the word. It’s scored for a similar-sized ensemble to that required for the Cuckmere work, and incorporates six movements; the first five of these derive directly from specific historical English sources. Thus Agincourt is a polyrhythmic, rather celebratory twist on the eponymous carol and Stella Celi Extirpavit a brief re-imagining of John Cooke’s early 15th century motet whose text was apparently ubiquitous at the time of the plague. In this movement a lucid dance pulse is blended with and overlaid by yet more (rather inebriated) polyrhythms, but the ideas emerging from these collisions are richly melodic and indubitably atmospheric in terms of evoking a distant past. These two movements neatly illustrate Hughes’ concept –the work is a symphony in the sense of (quoting the composer’s note) “the word’s connotation of …’concord of sound’…a suite of short movements which are connected…to imply a journey through time and personal understanding of what it means to compose out of the historical.” The Sinfonia is certainly a more challenging prospect for the listener- from time to time one is reminded of Peter Maxwell Davies’ absorption of Medieval or early Renaissance influences; in the third, fourth and fifth movements Hughes similarly plays around with Dunstaple’s Veni sancte spiritus, TaIlis’s In ieiunio et fletu and Gibbons’ The Silver Swan, while the final movement is a manipulation of a generic form (the In Nomine) rather than a specific piece which jumps forward four centuries and adopts materials drawn from the 1930s London Sound Survey, including a lavender seller’s street cry, a childrens’ game and even traffic noise. All of this adds up to an extended work which is unapologetically tough, but never anything less than lucid and rewarding for the listener.
The performances of all these pieces are superb. As one might imagine, they are all unforgiving for the performers in terms of their exposed solo lines – there are certainly no hiding places but the personnel of both the Orchestra of Sound and Light and the New Music Players (both involving many performers whose names will be extremely familiar to lovers of British new music) take the abundant challenges Hughes has presented in their stride. Métier’s sound is first-rate and perfectly tailored to the specific needs of Hughes’ singular pieces. Documentation is detailed and helpful. To “try before you buy “as it were, I encourage every reader to sample the Cuckmere work (and Cesca Eaton’s beguiling visuals) via the link provided above.
Richard Hanlon
Review American Record Guide Summer 2020
MSV 28597 Time, Space & Change
Ed Hughes has come our way before, but this my first encounter with his music. I find it enthralling. His command of his craft is such that he is able to move between angular dissonance and smoother consonance with ease. Cuckmere: A Portrait is a substantial work for chamber orchestra, written to accompany a film about the River Cuckmere and its ever-changing flood plain. He finds inspiration in the movement and tension of the natural landscape, along with the ever-changing seasons. Taken on its own, the music isn't so much an illustrative portrait as a vibrant transformation of Cuckmere's natural cycles into music. His early 1991 piano trio 'Media Vita' and the recent 2018 Sinfonia for chamber orchestra reflect his career-long interest in English Renaissance music. Sinfonia is of most interest; peel back the layers of chromatic decoration and crisp polytonality and you will find Renaissance melodies utterly transformed by his musical language. It is a masterpiece that satisfies the endless tension between tradition and modernity in classical music. This is truly exciting music—Ed Hughes has an uncommon skill.
Nathan Faro (American Record Guide)
Review British Music Society Newsletter Summer 2020
MSV 28597 Time, Space & Change
The New Music Players, a 17 member chamber orchestra, are the performers in the final work on the CD, the six movement ‘Sinfonia’ (2018). The first five movements are each based on works by early English composers, although the composer of the first movement ‘Agincourt’ is probably unknown. The others include Dunstaple (or ‘Dunstable’), Tallis and Orlando Gibbons.
As in ‘Media Vita’ Hughes deconstructs the originals and reassembles them in his own individual modernist style. ‘Agincourt’ in particular is very violent since this, after all, refers to war.
I particularly enjoyed the fourth movement which is more closely based on Tallis with some attractive string playing, and the imaginative finale ‘In Nomine’ which is more loosely based on Christopher Tye, but even including the song ‘The Muffin Man’. This is very much the composer’s own music.
Alan Cooper (British Music Society)
Review. Musicweb-international. March 2020
Ed HUGHES (b. 1968)
Time, Space and Change
Cuckmere: A Portrait (2016-18) [30:31]
Media Vita (1991) [10:34]
Sinfonia (2018) [30:23]
Orchestra of Sound and Light/Ed Hughes (Cuckmere)
New Music Players Piano Trio (Media Vita)
New Music Players/Nicholas Smith (Sinfonia)
rec. 2018, Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, University of Sussex; The Warehouse, Theed Street, London
MÉTIER MSV28597 [71:35]
The opening work on this CD is superb. Cuckmere: A Portrait (2016-2018) was originally conceived as a score to accompany a film depicting ‘a year in the life of the River Cuckmere and Haven in Sussex’. This richly diverse landscape lies in a flood plain (fortunately at present undeveloped); the river wends its way towards the iconic Seven Sisters and then out into the English Channel. The liner notes say that this area has inspired many artists, including the great Eric Ravilious.
Ed Hughes has explained that this score is all about movement: ‘movement across a landscape, movement within the landscape and movement that is the unstoppable flow of the river, the passage of time and the changing of seasons’. Into all this activity, a few moments of perfect peace interpose themselves. There are eight movements or sections. This represents the four seasons (successively autumn, winter, spring and high summer), plus an opening prelude and three interludes. This music reminds me of the old Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who wisely said that we cannot step in the same river twice’ (Frag.41). Hughes’s score reflects the old English meaning of Cuckmere, which is quite simply ‘ever-flowing’. The sound world here is stunning. The music ranges from a gentle minimalism to piquant dissonances. The scoring is always colourful, innovative and illuminated. It makes for an ideal impression of a river flowing inexorably towards the sea.
Media Vita is a remarkable work. Written early in Hughes’s career, it is like a free fantasia on 16th century composer John Sheppard’s eponymous motet. This has been reworked, expanded and twisted into a piano trio. Once again, the instrumental scoring adds considerable value to this interesting formal [re]creation. The style and mood of the music certainly made me recall that 'In the midst of life we are in death' – the text that Sheppard used for his masterpiece.
…[’Sinfonia’] is a remarkably taut score, with many felicitous moments. The sound is often dissonant, yet there are several lyrical and sometimes even romantic passages emerging from, or sinking into, the progress of the work.
The playing is excellent in all three works. The recording is ideal. Ed Hughes has written illuminating liner notes that give both an outline and a detailed analysis of each work. A good biography of the composer can be found on his website.
When so much modern classical or art music seems to be caught in the doldrums of commercialised sub-Einaudi meanderings and insipid harmonies, it is refreshing to come across a composer who writes in a style that is challenging without being off-putting. I cut my teeth on music in the early 1970s, so I was not averse to hearing ‘progressive’ music by the greats of that time such as Stockhausen, Peter Maxwell Davies and Pierre Boulez. After a series of ‘isms’ including minimalism, computer music, new simplicity and new complexity, Ed Hughes’s music comes as a refreshing change. I guess that it is post-modernist and eclectic in the sense that the composer is willing and able to use a wide variety of musical inspirations and palettes. He writes in a trajectory from the earliest English vocal music composers of the 14th century down to the present day, His ability to adapt, recreate and bend this music to his own voice is remarkable.
John France
Sunday Times review. 1 March 2020.
Ed Hughes Time, Space and Change
New Music Players/Orchestra of Sound and Light, cond Ed Hughes/Nicholas Smith
Métier MSV28597
The title of this rich disc alludes to England and its music. Cuckmere: A Portrait is the transformed score for a film about a river…Repetition yields to free-floating metrics in the piano trio Media Vita, based on John Sheppard’s motet; historical revisiting is the formative principle of the Sinfonia (Smith conducts). The technique recalls Peter Maxwell Davies; the sensibility is different.
Paul Driver
“Hughes’ score [Cuckmere: A Portrait] takes the river as its source, its restless energy bubbling through the strings and broadening out into rich, majestic textures in the wind and brass. Here is music that asks questions rather than making statements. Never the familiar ‘Behold, our magnificent cliffs’ but instead, ‘Why does this landscape fascinate us and what’s our place in it?”
— Eleanor Knight, The Argus, 8 May 2018
This engrossing DVD from Métier is dedicated to the music of Ed Hughes, whose interest in film music and soundtrack seems to have grown substantially in recent years. It showcases five attractive scores together with the silent films, for which they were written. Two of these are shorts drawn from the really early days of film; Hepworth and Stow’s Alice in Wonderland and Georges Méliès’s Le Voyage dans la Lune, from 1902 and 1903 respectively. Alexandre Alexeeieff and Claire Parker’s deeply unsettling 1963 animated treatment of Gogol’s surreal story Le Nez (The same Nose that inspired Shostakovich’s work) features an atmospheric piano score as does Night Music, an 18 minute compilation of contemporary imagery (selected by the composer himself) relating to the wartime construction and combat flying of the legendary Lancaster bomber aircraft. One of the sources of this footage, the 1942 short Sky Giant is included as a pendant with its original soundtrack voiced by the legendary Leslie Mitchell.
Unquestionably, however, the main attraction here is Hughes’s superb score for Lizzie Thynne’s evocative dawn-to-dusk portrait ‘Brighton: Symphony of a City’ for an orchestra of 21 players. In an extensive accompanying essay Mervyn Cooke traces the history of the film genre known as the ‘city-symphony’, a term which describes the documentary film portrait of a particular location, usually with music. Arguably the most famous example was Walther Ruttmann’s 1927 Weimar-era masterpiece ‘Berlin- Die Sinfonie der Großstadt ’ which was scored by the provocative Marxist composer Edmund Meisel and which both Hughes and Thynne have cited as a major influence on this Brighton project. This is most obviously made manifest by the sectioning of the work into seven ‘movements’, the musical form thus being echoed by the film’s structure.
The images never settle on one idea for long and seamlessly incorporate fleeting episodes of archive footage. This allows the composer to constantly vary the colours, textures and rhythms of his music - given the modest size of his ensemble he does this most effectively. In a work of this length a soundtrack could easily degenerate into tokenistic repetition, but the sheer variety of the material Hughes produces is deeply impressive...
The Orchestra of Sound and Light turn in a detailed, committed and beautifully recorded account of Hughes’s score under the composer’s baton. The group sounds more ample in number than it is. It would be easy to trot out a list of composers’ names, who are recalled here and there, but ultimately Hughes’s music is very much his own...
The two earliest films on the present disc are scored for a quintet made up of flute, clarinet and piano trio. Both Alice in Wonderland and Le Voyage dans la Lune feature gentle, verdant music. The surviving print of the Alice movie was almost irretrievably damaged and has been restored as far as is possible. What remains is effectively a dream sequence which initially sees Alice follow the White Rabbit into the Hall of Many Doors. She is miniaturised (via some primitive camera trickery) and encounters a somewhat disinterested looking Cheshire Cat prior to a chaotic Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and the bizarre Royal Procession, during which Alice avoids execution before waking up. All of this is condensed into 10 minutes. Hughes’s score is hypnotic and gently fantastical, its jerky rhythms matching the distortedness of the flawed restoration. The music for the Royal Procession hints at neo-classicism and features florid piano-writing, which exudes a pastel, xanthic quality...
The concluding item Hughes has scored is Night Music, a selection of archive clips he has arranged himself to depict both the assembly lines during the manufacture of the Lancaster bomber and its nocturnal role in combat over Germany. The score, played in this case by Richard Casey, another contemporary piano specialist, also features idiomatic piano writing together with discreet, expertly integrated live electronics...
The entire package has been thoughtfully curated and is attractively presented. I cannot speak highly enough of Mervyn Cooke’s deeply illuminating introductory essay which is a model of its kind. There are two DVDs to cover both PAL and NTSC formats. Each film is uniquely fascinating but the thread that connects them is Ed Hughes’s skilfully conceived and delightfully accessible music which receives unstinting advocacy from all the performers here. I have spent a couple of most enjoyable evenings with these discs and I hope that those who read these thoughts will be persuaded to acquire them.
Full review here
DVD available to order: Metier; Amazon
Richard Hanlon, MusicWeb 26 April 2018 on Symphonic Visions (DVD) METIER DVD MSVDX103
Ed Hughes’s score for a mid-size ensemble, and recorded by the Orchestra of Sound and Light, is just as colourful as the images on screen, too. I liked the trumpets heralding the morning, and few dissonant or experimental moments that reflected the grittiness and bustle of the urban environment. The film and music both fall into seven distinct movements and there is very impressive variety in pace, rhythm and txture across different scenes. It seems he was really inspired by the material, and the results are a joy. He has done excellent work on the shorts on the disc too – Alice in Wonderland (1903), A Trip to the Moon (1902, the black-and-white version), The Nose (1963) and Night Music, a montage of archive footage chosen by Hughes himself. Silent London
Link to: Symphonic Visions: DVD
Pamela Hutchinson, Silent London27 March 2018 on Symphonic Visions DVD. Brighton: Symphony of a City
Tallis [in iejunio et fletu], for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, had such gorgeous poise and expression. I loved the contrasting feel of the flowing lines from the piano momentarily emerging in between the textures and melodic lines. Amazing energy from the violin solo lines.
Rowland Sutherland, flautist & composer, 8 February 2018 on Tallis [in iejunio et fletu]
The Nose, a cartoon film based on Nikolai Gogol’s story of an official whose nose goes missing and develops a life of its own with a score by Ed Hughes. Although made in 1963 the film makers Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker had created a work in black and white film which was reminiscent of the early days of cinema. Transparent harmonies matched the shimmering patterns of life in the film, while the piano adopted a more percussive stance in the more grotesque and humorous moments. Clare Hammond’s piano playing throughout was superlative. Link
Roger Jones, Seen and Heard International17 July 2016 on The Nose (Cheltenham Festival)
" Clare Hammond offered a programme of five works, all of which married musical invention with the evocation of strange imaginary worlds. Ed Hughes’s The Nose [was] written to accompany a 1963 animated version of Gogol’s satirical short story "
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph12 July 2016 on The Nose
" Beware: this opera may take you hostage with its ability to get under your skin and its willingness to use any technological means to do so... Loosely based on Jean Cocteau's history of heartbreak, opium addiction and impaired creativity, Hughes's Poet protagonist is faced with a choice... as with any good opera, this one convincingly creates its own logic... Roger Morris's libretto gains much of its entrancing quality through the leeway of ambiguity plus provocative discussions about the moral implications of bringing people back to life. The 12-member ensemble reveals much effective compositional strategy with motivic repetition, nagglingly obsessive long-held notes in the winds and just plain alchemy...Purely electronic interludes are full of oblique commentary... "
David Patrick Stearns, Gramophone1 May 2014 on When the Flame Dies (review of Metier CD/DVD release)
" Ed Hughes's When the Flame Dies ... manages to pack considerable dramatic punch... Hughes's music fizzes with invention, deriving maximum colour from his small band... There's also a striking electronic interlude, crackling into life through radio static to represent Cocteau's 'Zone', the liminal space between dream and reality, inspiration and banality. "
Leo Chadburn, Tempo (Vol 68, Issue 268, April 2014), pp 105-10720 March 2014 on When the Flame Dies (review of Metier CD/DVD release)
" Following on from ‘Dark Formations’, the wide-ranging conspectus of his ensemble and instrumental music (reviewed in January 2013), Metier continues its coverage of Ed Hughes with his chamber opera When the Flame Dies. Originally a project for the now seemingly defunct Opera Genesis programme at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury studio, this was subsequently presented at the 2012 Canterbury Festival in association with Sounds New (whose tireless promotion of new music and younger composers is well worth reiterating) and can rank among the more successful such works to have come and gone with some frequency at a time when the quantity of new operas has hardly been marked by their quality.
The present piece has its basis in the life and work of Jean Cocteau – specifically the tragically young death of his muse (and probably lover) Raymond Radiguet, whose passing was both commemorated and transcended in the play Orphee – as well as more indirectly several plays and films. From this, Roger Morris has derived a libretto that, written mainly in rhyming couplets, has its moments of over-literal and prosaic albeit without succumbing to the inhibitions that have shackled comparable texts from the recent past. It certainly makes for a plausible means of relating such a fanciful though by no means contrived narrative, one whose basic premise of art triumphing over life has long been a potent operatic source.
While not overwritten as such, Morris’s libretto is extensive and often intricate in content, thereby placing a premium on the composer’s ability to convey dramatic meaning at the same time as sustaining a convincing theatrical continuity. This Hughes achieves admirably for the most part, whether in terms of maintaining a satisfactory balance between voices and instruments or of enriching the vocal lines with writing which sustains an intrinsic musical interest. Only occasionally is there a blurring of means or confusion of intent, while the composer’s constant resourcefulness is evident from the two interludes that are inserted roughly a third and two-thirds of the way through the score: the first of these solely for electronics (whose presence is discreetly pervasive across the work as a whole), and the second a brief though limpid passage for ensemble that points up the sensitivity of Hughes’s scoring. As with the music on that previous release, his idiom is broadly that of a post-war modernism which is personal enough to resonate with the listener.
The cast here is a persuasive one – dominated by Edward Grint’s emotive and increasingly self-regarding Poet, and the sensuous yet calculating appeal of Lucy Williams’s Princess. Julian Podger makes a vivid impression as Orpheus, whose unflinching honesty throws the Poet’s ostensible soul-searching into telling relief, while Emily Phillips is touching in the brief role of Eurydice. Andrew Radley seizes the moment in his climactic appearance as Raymond, the departed lover whose desired return is only fleetingly preordained. The dozen-strong New Music Players prove more than equal to their task, not least with Carlos del Cueto’s assured direction to guide it through the demands of Hughes’s score.
The present set comprises the same performance in both audio and visual incarnations. The sound for the former has an almost ideal balance between voices and ensemble so that the text is nearly always intelligible, while the latter is simply and unfussily rendered with minimal camerawork suitable for concert presentation-the provisos being that the ample ambience of Augustine Hall does rather affect the clarity of the sung component, and that the subtitles are far too small to be read at more than a few inches distance. The DVD does, however, include a brief though intriguing film by Sheryl Jenkins which draws on Hughes’s Chamber Concerto (featured on the previous Metier set) as the worthwhile bonus. The booklet includes the libretto with a detailed synopsis as well as readable essays on the significance of Cocteau and the Orpheus myth. Hopefully Hughes’s piece will soon secure a full staging: in the meantime, this release enables one to get to grips with one of the more arresting and distinctive chamber operas to have emerged in the UK over recent years. "
Richard Whitehouse, International Record Review1 March 2014
" Chaconne for Jonathan Harvey by Ed Hughes (University of York Music Press) is another London Festival of Contemporary Church Music commission. It's a welcome contribution... with Hughes's craftsmanship evident in every bar; the control of tension and release within the structure is particularly admirable. Rhythmic patterns here need careful work, and an efficient manual technique is absolutely essential, but players with a serious interest in contemporary music should explore this work. "
Stephen Farr, Choir & Organ1 January 2014 on Chaconne for Jonathan Harvey
" An intriguing Cocteau-esque opera "
Barry Forshaw, Classical CD Choice14 November 2013 on When the Flame Dies
" An absorbing piece and an exciting introduction to Ed Hughes' music "
Rick Jones, Words and Music14 November 2013 on When the Flame Dies CD/DVD release
" ...Orchids is a sequence of six pieces for solo piano which evolved between 1990 and 2002. In each movement the floral patterns of the title are reflected in gradual transformations in the music. The most delicate of the series, the fourth, is followed by a strenuous moto perpetuo and the set concludes with a sharply dissonant piece that resolves calmly. Considering each piece was written for, and dedicated to, a different pianist, Orchids makes a remarkably unified and coherent entity whose scope and diversity add up to one of the composer’s most ambitious achievements.
This selection of Hughes’s oeuvre concludes with arguably his most directly affecting work, the vocal piece A Buried Flame, commissioned by Bath Camerata. Scored for either solo voices or chorus, it sets texts drawn from a collection of poems written in extremis by detainees at Guantanamo Bay and extracts from Psalm 69; a reminder that suffering, oppression and imprisonment have been part of the human experience throughout the ages. The raw emotional power of the poems is matched by the intensity of Hughes’s motet-like treatment, and their characteristic polyphonic textures resonate and evolve to compelling effect in a passionately committed performance that makes a fitting conclusion to an inspiring, thoughtfully compiled programme.
Ed Hughes lays down considerable challenges to performers in each of his scores and they are met here with virtuosity and imagination by the New Music Players, the New Music Vocal Ensemble and pianist Richard Casey in ideal readings, polished and alert, which it is difficult to imagine being surpassed. Though the recordings cover a time span of more than a decade, such diversity in no way vitiates Metier’s consistently fine recorded sound. This is a valuable survey of a composer whose unorthodox and resourceful music deserves to be better known; his reputation has unquestionably been enhanced by this release. "
Paul Conway, Tempo1 August 2013 on Dark Formations CD [Metier msv28530]
" This is an original, audacious work, whose premiere I had the good fortune to attend. Its clear compositional and dramaturgical structure provides a strong framework for striking visuals, while the combination of impressive vocal and orchestral work, with electronic and pre-recorded found sounds, creates an appropriately haunting 'echo chamber' of music and visuals. Hughes has turned Cocteau's anguished requiem for Radiguet into a moving, inspiring creation. "
Sally Jane Norman, Professor of Performance Technologies, Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, 26 June 2013 on When the Flame Dies
" Ed Hughes’s Orchid No 5 received its world premiere (Clare Hammond, solo piano, Brighton Festival, 22 May 2013). Its melody has echoes of plainsong and its beautiful style recalls Debussy, though with more muscular rhythms. "
James Simister, The Argus 24 May 2013 on Orchid No. 5
" Norman’s ability to bring out the contrasting characters and voices of his instrument came through most clearly in Hughes’ Summer Light (2012), a collection of four short studies that moved between a contemplative space created by a steady, but not quite predictable, flow of arpeggiated major harmonies and an energetic, agitated soundworld with rapid blurs of notes rushing into thick, dissonant strumming. Norman makes the guitar sing out Hughes’ rich harmonic colours, and it is alternately bright and mellow, beckoning and undulating, shimmering and violent. [full concert review] "
Melissa Hok Cee Wong, bachtrack.com14 January 2013 on Summer Light
" Ed Hughes has been a diverting presence since the BBC broadcast of his orchestral piece Crimson Flames marked him out as a name to watch some two decades ago.
Since then he has assembled a sizeable as well as diverse body of work across the broad range of genres, one which reveals a notable awareness of the evolution of Western music not just over the last century but also over what might be termed the ‘humanist’ tradition stretching back to the Renaissance.
Although his music is not new to disc, the present release features a much greater range than has hitherto been available.
The first disc focuses on chamber and ensemble pieces as performed by the New Music Players, which Hughes founded (as the Cambridge NMP) in 1990. A judicious miscellany begins with the tensile compression of the Quartet (1997) and its intensive interplay of four highly distinct ideas, then to the Chamber Concerto (2010) whose four movements outline a nominally classical trajectory that is continually undercut by the deft superimposition of oblique harmonies and textures. Dark Formations (2010) introduces a major facet of Hughes’s composing in recent years: music written to be juxtaposed with a visual component, in this case photographs taken of Allied bombing raids in the summer of 1943, which doubtless determined its ominous and often menacing demeanour. Two other pieces emerged in relation to famous films from the silent era: Strike! (2006) is the study for a full-length score to Sergey Eisenstein’s 1925 agitprop and also a breviary of its febrile content, while Light Cuts Through Dark Skies (2001) accompanies Joris Iven’s 1929 naturalistic fantasy over six sections which unfold as a constantly changing interplay of duos and trios whose underlying tenor offers a productive contrast with Eisler’s more literal score. Placed between these, the Sextet (1999) is an inherently abstract statement, yet its three movements take in allusions to other music over their unpredictable and eventful course.
The second disc features notable cycles for solo piano and unaccompanied voices respectively. Evolving between 1990 and 2002, Orchids constitutes a sequence that, while written individually and with six different pianists in mind, affords a convincing overview of Hughes’s development – moving from contrapuntal lucidity, through harmonic astringency and lyrical polyphony, then inward speculation and combative energy, to quixotic evocation. This latter’s allusions to most of the earlier pieces underlines the cogency of the collection as a whole. Heard in these terms there have been few, if any, recent British piano works to compare with this in expressive scope, which is hardly less true in vocal terms of A Buried Flame (2010). This four-part sequence juxtaposes Psalm 69 with poems by former and ongoing detainees at Guantanamo Bay in powerful yet never histrionic investigation of physical incarceration and spiritual alienation. It is a measure, too, of Hughes’s sensitivity that the texts never draw attention to themselves outside of their musical context.
Throughout both of these discs, performances are as committed and attentive to the music’s frequently understated demands as might be expected from ensembles of the calibre of the New Music Players and New Music Vocal Ensemble. Special mention must be made of Richard Casey, who, besides writing most of the detailed and informative booklet notes, proves no less adept and sympathetic as a pianist. The recordings, though made over more than a decade, fully convey this music’s clarity and intricacy, making for a release that can be warmly recommended for its persuasive overview of a composer for whom a wider reputation ought not be long in coming. "
Richard Whitehouse, International Record Review1 January 2013 on Dark Formations CD [Metier msv28530]
" [Ed Hughes] is able to move seamlessly from what sounds completely atonal to triadic harmony that allows for accessible expression. This mobility is apparent in all of the pieces on the album, though perhaps mostly in Orchids for piano, the high point of the record, showing the composer’s abilities. Sensitive and sincere performances by Richard Casey, a long-time friend and collaborator, help to accentuate the sometimes subtle differences between each ‘orchid’, bringing the collected work to life. They are haunting, and yet somehow a certain optimism manages to shine through, full of organic complexity and natural beauty, like the flower of the title. The chamber concerto and sextet are purely instrumental works... Hughes also is able to put on display his strong orchestrational talents. The ensembles sound cohesive, which is owing to the fine performances by New Music Players as well as the composer’s skills. Hughes’s affinity for complex rhythmic textures can emerge further with chamber works, as there are more musicians involved than the two hands on a piano. The changing patterns give the music several distinct layers, which are constantly shifting, and that is both engaging and demanding for the listener... this two-disc set makes it easy to acquire a variety of music by a British composer from whom we can surely expect more high quality work to come. "
Adams, American Record Guide1 December 2012 on Dark Formations [CD]
" Working with Ed Hughes on the BFI’s ongoing Ozu Collection has been a fantastic experience. His scores are of a consistently high standard, making these rarely-seen silent works accessible to modern audiences and film scholars alike. Not only that, but his compositions are meeting with the approval of the Japanese licensors, thereby transcending cultural difference and functioning on an international stage. "
Sam Dunn, Head of Video Publishing, BFI, 1 November 2012 on scores for the Ozu Collection
" A student of Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr (while at Cambridge University) and Michael Finnissy (at Southampton University), Ed Hughes is a composer with an individual voice and a concise way of saying what he has to say. His music is compelling. Ed Hughes formed The New Music Players in 1990. They give a sterling account of the first piece, a quartet, for clarinet, cello, violin, and piano. The weeping descending lines, which descend like a sonic representation of raindrops on a windowpane, fall at different rates. As a technique it is not complex, but the result is mightily effective, and indeed the technique itself turns out to be a Hughes characteristic. The Chamber Concerto started out for 13 instruments before finally coalescing into a seven-player version, and it is this slimmed-down score we hear here. This is very different, with some jazzy, syncopated passages opening the music out to the possibility of lighter pastures. There are constants, though, especially the use of polyphonic layering (which the composer states is the rea¬son that there is no clear closure at the end of movements: strata co-exist, and then the music ends). Pianist Richard Casey (heard on the second disc as solo pianist) also contributes the eloquent book¬let notes. He is clearly immersed in Hughes's music, and has no problems making easy references to Hughes's film scores. The performance is remarkably assured. It is the idea of war that created the starting point of Dark Formations, a collaboration between the composer and David Chandler, professor of photography at the University of Plymouth. Indeed, one of the photos, that of a Lancaster bombing Hamburg in 1943, is reproduced on the booklet cover. Casey accurately describes Hughes's piece as "static and monumental," a fascinating study in shades of gray that is nevertheless somehow mutely scintillating. Oxymoron though that sounds, it remains fascinatingly true. The hushed performance of Dark Formations here is remarkable in its glowering intensity. The Dark Formations project is ongoing, incidentally. The piece titled Strike! (2006) was in fact a study for the scoring of Eisenstein's film of that name. Again scored for small ensemble, it inhabits a very different world from Dark Formations. Full of magical instrumentation, it includes some passages that can only be described as quirky and, like so much of the music on this release, it draws in those listeners of insatiably curious nature. The Sextet is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, marimba/vibraphone, and piano. The first movement is inspired by the alto line chant from John Taverner's Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas. Once one has grasped the reference, it adds a new dimension (the swirling overlapping descending lines will have become quite familiar by now). There is a fine compositional technique on display here. The use of Minimalism, albeit not in its purest form, comes as a small but pleasant surprise for the second movement (Minimalism is after all the logical extension of the overlapping, layering methodology), while it is the ground that inspires the finale. Over the slow-moving bass, a flute pipes most enthu¬siastically (the flutist here, Rowland Sutherland, plays stunningly).... The vocal piece A Buried Flame is for either solo voices (SSAATBarB) or chorus, drawing its texts from the Psalms (No. 69) and the poetry collection Guantanamo (University of Iowa Press, a collection of poems by former or current detainees at Guantanamo Bay)... It is difficult to put across the sheer devotion of this recording. It seems to convey all of the inner pain and, at base level, humanitarianism that the composer feels. It also demonstrates remarkably fine scoring. The performance is simply outstanding...it remains a powerful statement and one that reverberates long after the music finishes. From that standpoint, it is the perfect way to end a most stimulating release. I do urge you to hear this. "
Colin Clarke, Fanfare Magazine1 November 2012 on Dark Formations CD
" In Quartet, the use of the materials was so clear and simple - and made so fascinating by the rhythmic and of course modal diversions...I was very struck by the economy of the work, and its fascinating complexity - a delightful piece that should be played often. In the darkness and poetics of Dark Formations...I was drawn to the timbres, the ambiguities of the bass clarinet and piano writing; I was very impressed by the approach - a powerful meditation. "
Jonathan Harvey, composer, 1 August 2012 on Quartet and 'Dark Formations'
" This is modern music for listeners 'with two ears' who enjoy contrapuntal music from Purcell to Bach to late Beethoven. Ed Hughes (b. 1968) is a contemporary British contrapuntalist of unique originality and instrumental flair...it is all given with consummate security and audibility, with rhythms "simultaneously complex and simple, distinctive, original and yet approachable" [Richard Casey]...I find the ensemble music irresistible. "
Peter Grahame Woolf, Musical Pointers17 July 2012 on Dark Formations CD
" ...the best sounding film in this collection is the silent film Woman of Tokyo, because alongside the option to watch the film in total silence, you also have the choice of an accompanying film score composed by Ed Hughes and presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Having the advantage of being a contemporary recording, it unsurprisingly sounds very dynamic with solid bass and smooth treble. The score itself reminded me a little in places of the work of Thomas Newman...it’s a very welcome addition. "
Noel Megahey, The Digital Fix | Film [online publication]18 June 2012 on Woman of Tokyo in 'Three Melodramas' from the BFI's Ozu Collection
" The 16-minute concerto has contrasting fast and slow movements. The first, and longest, movement includes an occasional nod to Schoenberg with the doubling of lines...In the second there is a focus on the rhythmic process and the layering of the chromatic and diatonic, but with the harmony being quite static. The third and fourth movements reflect Hughes's love of the motet with isorhythmic repeating cycles in different instrumental groups... The fourth movement also harks back to 'strange eches of 19th century salon music and sonatas'. "
Susan Nickalls, Classical Music11 September 2010 on Chamber Concerto
" A fascinating juxtaposition of sound worlds and cultures, as well as a new work that has a particular relevance for the fractured times in which we find ourselves. "
David Wordsworth, Choir & Organ1 March 2010 on A Buried Flame
" I congratulate Ed on that score. "
Michael Nyman, De La Warr Pavilion, public panel7 March 2009 on Strike (original score to Eisenstein film)
" Hughes’s score is by far the highlight "
Sight & Sound1 November 2007 on Battleship Potemkin score
" A very effective score by Ed Hughes "
Sight & Sound1 November 2007 on Strike score
" In Hughes’s music...there is a perfect fit with the films, with incidental sounds such as the factory whistle in Strike skilfully incorporated into the musical line. Potemkin was first shown with Hughes’ music at an unforgettable performance in 2005 in the machine hall of the Brighton Engineerium, which provided a uniquely suitable site for it. A similarly happy match between film and music runs through these two superb scores "
Laura Marcus, Professor of English (Film), University of Edinburgh , 1 November 2007 on Strike & Battleship Potemkin scores
" The dynamic editing and epic drama of Sergei Eisenstein's silent films have long proved enticing for composers. The latest to take on the challenge is British musician Ed Hughes, whose scores for 'Battleship Potemkin' and 'Strike' appear on the new 'Sergei Eisenstein Vol. 1' DVD set from Tartan Video. It was the high value the director gave to music that first attracted Hughes, as he explains: 'Eisenstein's theoretical writings on music and film are extraordinary. I was interested in trying to realise what he calls 'the syncopation of accents between music and picture': the idea of contrasting moments when the two come together powerfully, and also stages of gradual intensification when the music and picture are counterpoints. Eisenstein saw that music could give the spatial qualities of his images the illusion of more depth, and it was exciting to use modern technology like surround sound to attempt to put his ideas into practice.' Hughes will present his score for 'Strike' live at a number of UK screenings this autumn. "
Sight & Sound1 October 2007 on Strike and Battleship Potemkin - new scores
[60th anniversary concert of the Bath Bach Choir conducted by Nigel Perrin] The opening Song for St Cecilia by Ed Hughes, to Dryden’s text, commissioned for this occasion, set the mood on its first outing. It is a vivid evocation of the transforming power of music with some striking orchestral effects, moving sometimes in blocks of sound, sometimes in staccato interpolations, with a particularly effective trumpet obbligato. The choir was kept on its toes, sustaining the rhythmic interest and one lovely glissando before the final resolution and ‘the diapason closing full in man’. It was an enlivening and well-crafted piece, certainly worth anohter hearing and the composer was there to take an enthusiastic ovation’
Peter Lloyd Williams, Bath Chronicle, 17 July 2007
" Pure magic...A rip-roaring vital spectacle...a show of terrific vitality and verve "
Independent1 July 2005 on The Birds
" truly emotional...an atmosphere of deeper resonances "
Robert Thicknesse, The Times1 July 2005 on The Birds
" A fine example of the hidden gems the Brighton Festival can produce "
Brighton Evening Argus12 May 2004 on Memory of Colour
" The New Music Players’s stylish late-night Guildhall (Bath Festival) concert incorporated two showings of Joris Ivens’s poetic 1929 film Rain, first with Hanns Eisler’s music, then with a new and fetching score by Ed Hughes "
Paul Driver, The Sunday Times10 June 2001 on Light Cuts Through Dark Skies
" In a rare joint airing of Eisler’s Fourteen Ways and Joris Ivens’s documentary film Regen (1929), Eisler’s clouded musical reflections on these watery images were atmospheric and ultimately moving. Ed Hughes’s no less artful new take Light Cuts Through Dark Skies accompanied the same black and white projections on our second outing to wet Amsterdam "
Lynne Walker, The Independent6 June 2001
" This setting, for mezzo and mixed ensemble, of eight short monologues for the visionary priestess of Apollo, is big and bold, responding to the scholar and poet Tom Lowenstein’s gritty and economical text with music unafraid of a direct emotional response... "
Keith Potter, The Independent23 May 2001 on The Sibyl of Cumae
" In Sextet, Hughes demonstrates a good ear for economical orchestration, drawing broad and dramatic textures from two strings, two woodwind, vibes and piano... Hughes’s Quartet is darker, more intense and episodic, for clarinet, piano, violin and cello. "
John L Walters, The Guardian13 October 2000
" complex...and benefits from its boldness of utterance, deploying sometimes familiar materials to dramatically telling ends "
Keith Potter, The Independent23 May 2000 on Sextet
" Sun New Moon and Women Shouting by Ed Hughes ...is a moving, quite unusual, virtuoso celebration by the Inuits of the rising sun after its winter sleep. "
Peter Davies, Newbury Weekly News20 May 1999 on Sun, New Moon and Women Shouting
" turbulent, scintillating lyricism "
John Allison, The Times18 May 1999
" a vivid expose of effects of light amid a continuous network of polyphony "
Jill Barlow, St Albans and District Observer7 November 1997
" A richly sonorous music "
Sunday Times 13 April 1997 on Chroma
" The best work, like Ed Hughes's 'Orchid' ... gave the sense of progression through material, of deepening analysis as it progressed. "
Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph22 February 1997 on Orchid 1
" [Aureola] has a rich, dense, polychromatic radiance "
Andrew Porter, The Observer14 May 1995 on Aureola
" The three 'Orchids' are dense, feverish with explorations: 'sections' of petals really do fold into one another to create overlapping whorls of sound. "
The Musical Times1 February 1995 on Orchids 1-3
" Stephen Gutman also introduced a highly distinctive festival commission, Hughes's 'Third Orchid', in which each section of a single movement folds into the next, like waves or petals, disturbing the work's cunningly crafted surface polyphony. "
Hilary Finch, The Times25 May 1994 on Third Orchid
" ...many pieces stayed in the memory. Elise Lorraine's recital, for instance, included... Hughes's technically complex, but directly evocative, beautifully conceived new cycle 'The Desolate Field' "
Stephen Pettitt, The Times23 May 1989 on The Desolate Field