Headington Piano Concerto etc
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Christopher Headington
Label: ASV
Magazine Review Date: 9/1997
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 60
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDDCA969
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Concerto for Piano and Orchestra |
Christopher Headington, Composer
Britten Sinfonia Christopher Headington, Composer Gordon Fergus-Thompson, Piano Nicholas Cleobury, Conductor |
| (The) Healing Fountain (In Memoriam Benjamin Britt |
Christopher Headington, Composer
Andrew Carwood, Tenor Britten Sinfonia Christopher Headington, Composer Nicholas Cleobury, Conductor |
| Serenade for Cello and Orchestra |
Christopher Headington, Composer
Alexander Baillie, Cello Britten Sinfonia Christopher Headington, Composer Nicholas Cleobury, Conductor |
Author: Andrew Achenbach
The death last year of Gramophone contributor, Christopher Headington, robbed “British music of one of its most versatile and engaging talents of the post-war era” (to quote Terry Barfoot’s sympathetic annotation). Apart from his reviewing commitments, Headington successfully combined a career as a composer, pianist, author, broadcaster, examiner and lecturer. In 1982, he stood down from his post of Tutor in Music within Oxford University’s External Studies Department so that he could devote more time to performing and composition.
Readers who investigated Xue-Wei’s admirable ASV recording of the Violin Concerto of 1959 (12/91) will already be aware of the gentle, unassuming rewards to be found in Headington’s music. Certainly, the fastidious craft, lyrical restraint and pleasing proportions of the Piano Concerto (begun in 1979, but not completed until 1991) attest to lessons well learnt from Headington’s days as a composition student at the RAM under Sir Lennox Berkeley. As with the earlier Violin Concerto, the predominant influence is that of Britten (with whom Headington had briefly studied as a young man and whose music he admired enormously); indeed, the theme of the central “Passacaglia” (with its characteristic chains of thirds) consciously seems to echo the “Impromptu” of Britten’s own concerto for the same instrument. Not surprisingly, given Headington’s own considerable gifts as a pianist, the solo writing is always deft and idiomatic. The work as a whole exerts a ready appeal and never threatens to outstay its welcome.
Written in 1978 as a direct response to Britten’s death,The Healing Fountain (In Memoriam Benjamin Britten), for high voice and chamber orchestra, welds eight settings of poems by Siegfried Sassoon, W. H. Auden, John Masefield, Wilfred Owen, Thomas Moore and Shelley into a deeply felt, 26-minute sequence. Headington’s word-painting skills and compositional facility are not in doubt, though as one listens one can’t help but draw unflattering comparisons with Britten’s genius for this sort of thing – an impression which the work’s sprinkling of quotations from Peter Grimes, Death in Venice, Nocturne and A Midsummer Night’s Dream merely tends to reinforce. Commissioned by Julian Lloyd Webber and premiered by him in January 1995, the Serenade for cello and strings is cast in a single movement: not only is the writing civilized and resourceful, there’s a luminosity and variety of texture that is really most beguiling.
Performances and production-values are exemplary; the composer, who attended the March 1996 sessions at Henry Wood Hall (and who, a mere nine days later, was tragically killed in an accident on the Swiss ski-slopes) must have been delighted, I’m sure, by the commitment and wonderful expertise of all involved. A worthy memento of a fine musician and much-missed colleague.'
Readers who investigated Xue-Wei’s admirable ASV recording of the Violin Concerto of 1959 (12/91) will already be aware of the gentle, unassuming rewards to be found in Headington’s music. Certainly, the fastidious craft, lyrical restraint and pleasing proportions of the Piano Concerto (begun in 1979, but not completed until 1991) attest to lessons well learnt from Headington’s days as a composition student at the RAM under Sir Lennox Berkeley. As with the earlier Violin Concerto, the predominant influence is that of Britten (with whom Headington had briefly studied as a young man and whose music he admired enormously); indeed, the theme of the central “Passacaglia” (with its characteristic chains of thirds) consciously seems to echo the “Impromptu” of Britten’s own concerto for the same instrument. Not surprisingly, given Headington’s own considerable gifts as a pianist, the solo writing is always deft and idiomatic. The work as a whole exerts a ready appeal and never threatens to outstay its welcome.
Written in 1978 as a direct response to Britten’s death,
Performances and production-values are exemplary; the composer, who attended the March 1996 sessions at Henry Wood Hall (and who, a mere nine days later, was tragically killed in an accident on the Swiss ski-slopes) must have been delighted, I’m sure, by the commitment and wonderful expertise of all involved. A worthy memento of a fine musician and much-missed colleague.'
Headington Piano Concerto etc
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