Peter Gregson PATINA

 

PATINA

 

GARETH MALONE Music for Healing

“After many years conducting choirs under extraordinary circumstances, I felt that I had neglected my first love: writing music. So I bought a new piano in 2016, began to

practice in earnest and to compose. Around that time I worked on the INVICTUS games choir, an incredible experience but an emotional one. I moved from that to work with

friends of the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire: another life changing and life affirming project.

Before beginning my next challenge I took some time out. My wife had our third child and I was able to be at home, play the piano and write music for myself and my family

as she recuperated. This has been a very important and healing time.

The music is a personal journey through the year and is inspired by my own feelings about each month: birthdays of loved ones, marriages, funerals are all in this music.

I wanted to include the sound of a beautiful piano in a natural acoustic with the warmth of a choir and the energy of a string quartet. This music helped me to heal.”

Anna Dennis / William Towers / Nicholas Daniel ELENA LANGER Landscape With Three People

A selection of chamber works by Elena Langer (b.1974, Moscow), notable for their playful counterpoint and delicate textures. The London-based composer delights in exploring the endless soundworlds of voices and instruments. 'Landscape With Three People' dates from 2013, with texts by poet Lee Harwood. 

Elena moved to London to complete her degrees first at the Royal College of Music and then at the Royal Academy of Music. She has studied with Julian Anderson, Simon Bainbridge, Gerard McBurney and taken lessons with Sofia Gubaidulina (Centre Acanthes, France), Dmitri Smirnov, Jo Kondo and Jonathan Harvey. In 2002 and 2003 Elena was the first ever composer-in-residence at the Almeida Theatre, London. 

She has received commissions and performances from organisations such as The Royal Opera House's ROH2, Zurich Opera, Carnegie Hall, The Britten and Strauss Festival in Aldeburgh, Park Lane Group, St. Petersburg's Music Spring, Chamber Music Series "XX/XXI" of the Bayerische Staatsoper (Germany). 

This recording project was generously funded by Blyth Valley Chamber Music, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust and a large number of individuals. The new CD will be launched in parallel with the first public performances in Cardiff of the composer’s 'Figaro Gets A Divorce', a new opera for Welsh National Opera under David Pountney. 

“An enticing sonic tapestry, pitched midway between the expressive avant-garde tumult of Berio and the rough-and-tumble of folk music.” THE TIMES