Terrific writing: beautiful performance and recording, too - thank you!

Written in 1994, this is a rare survival from my non-referential atonal manner, many of the earlier examples I wrote in this style are destroyed. See the score at https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/sites/default/files/Pattern%20Sonata-%20re-engraved.pdf

Performed here by the ensemble Double Image, with the wonderful pianist, the late David Carhart, at the piano. I post this here as my tribute to him. Recorded at Goldsmiths' College, London

For piano, flute, clarinet, violin & Cello

Pattern Sonata for piano quintet - by Peter McAleer

Disembodied								
Disembodied was inspired by Lee Krasner’s series of paintings:  Prophecy: Birth, Embrace, Three in Two, in which disembodied eyes seem to stare out between contorted limbs.

The cello’s lowest string has been tuned a fourth lower than its usual pitch, and its utterances seem to be isolated from the other three instruments.  Its music has been uprooted from the body of the whole string quartet.

The piece is in two broad sections in which the second half uses material almost the same as the first half but in reverse order and where the cello gradually moves into its normal range and is absorbed back into the body of the string quartet.

Deborah Edwards - Disembodied - Ardenti String Quartet

Live performance at St. George's Bloomsbury, Nov. 2022
Movement 1: 0'00", movement 2: 1'38", movement 3: 3'12", movement 4: 5'17"

Derek Foster - Miniature String Quartet - Ardenti String Quartet 1

Song cycle for mezzo-soprano and string quartet.
Performed by Karen Fodor, mezzo-soprano and Fourth Dimension String Quartet (Sophie Langdon, violin, Anna Bradley, violin, Matthew Quenby, viola, Miriam Lowbury, cello.).
Lyrics by Marjorie Lazaro.

Butterfly

This is the first piece of Recollections Book IV (2017) following the same scheme as the previous three books.  No. 1 is a ‘mechanism’ piece, no.2 a landscape evocation, no.3 a light-fingered scherzo, no.4 a tribute to a favourite composer, no.5 a dramatic and turbulent conflict between irreconcilable elements, and no.6 a piece with a literary inspiration.

No.1 (Cathedral) is short and chordal, with both the durations of the chords, the harmonic direction and the relationship between the tempi of the two sections governed by the well known ‘golden ratio’.  I had Salisbury in mind, but the listener could just as well imagine any suitably ancient and venerable cathedral.

Recollections Book IV no 1 (Cathedral)

No. 2 (Woolbury Ring) evokes one of my favourite places in the Hampshire countryside.  Woolbury ring is the site of an iron age hillfort lying just south of the A30 and east of Stockbridge, which commands spectacular views.  The piece tries to suggest something of this and of my many excursions to the site during the time I lived in the county.

Recollections Book IV no.2 (Woolbury Ring)

Performed by Anthony Green 2 July 2022, Finsbury Park, London N4


RECOLLECTIONS Book V for piano

Dedicated to my wife, Karen

These six pieces follow the same scheme as the previous books. No.1 is a ‘mechanism’ piece, no.2 is a landscape evocation, no.3 a light-fingered scherzo, no.4 a tribute to a favourite composer, no.5 a dramatic and aggressive conflict between irreconcilable elements, and no.6 a ‘programme’ piece with a direct literary inspiration.

No. 1 (The Aftermath) recalls the day after the ‘hurricane’ of 1987 (when I was still a teenager and living in Rainham, Kent).  The wind speed dropped during the morning but was still quite vigorous and small white cumulus clouds were chasing across a clear blue sky in a north easterly direction at a constant speed.  

In no.2 (View near Aish, looking towards Galmpton, December 2016) is a locality piece inspired by a walk I took in the area one wintry evening.

No.3 (Cirrus Clouds, Mudeford Quay) evokes the wispy and insubstantial ‘signatures’ left in the upper atmosphere which seemed to be a feature of many August evenings in 2018.

No.4 (A Charles Ives Collage) pays homage to a composer whose music preoccupied me almost to the point of obsession when I was a student.  It employs four themes, each from one of his symphonies, and combines them in a manner reminiscent of the second of the Three Places in New England.  For good measure, What a Friend We Have in Jesus (one of the hymns frequently quoted by Ives in similar pieces of his) appears in various guises. 

No.5 has no title.  A gentle lyrical theme struggles to maintain itself above a disturbing undercurrent in the lower registers whose relentless downward tread persists until the end.  This piece is short but introduces some ideas that are more fully developed in the next piece.

No. 6 (The Cone) is programmatic and based on the harrowing short story by H G Wells in which the ironmaster Horrocks conducts his supposed friend Raut on a tour of his foundry.  The dialogue and atmosphere crackles with tension as Horrocks is aware of Raut’s affair with his wife.  The piece attempts to portray Raut’s nervousness and his guide’s sudden spasms of rage that his strained civility only partly conceals.  On reaching the highest point, a sudden moment of madness seizes Horrocks and he pushes Raut over the rail and onto the cone of the blast furnace.  Horrocks is then overcome with remorse at watching his adversary struggle in the inferno as Raut’s ‘human likeness depart[s] from him’.    
Nick Ray
February 2020

Recollections Book V no. 1 (The Aftermath)

A Lost Landscape Found Op 110 by Frank Bayford

Sonata for 'cello and piano.   Dedicated to my friend Rod Rumble.  Sequenced performance (again) - would like to hope one day for a live recording to replace!

Derek Foster - Miniature String Quartet - Ardenti String Quartet 1

DerekFoster

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