This piece, for flute, cello and piano, was written in September 1997 for a performance at the Go West Festival in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It lasts about ten minutes and is in four sections. The opening section (Recitative) is an extended "tussle" between the piano and the other two instruments. It forms an upbeat to a second faster section that, after a climax, gives way to a slow saraband. The piece concludes with a reprise of the faster section, heard earlier, before returning to the music with which the piece began. The title is taken from 83rd Psalm. This is a recording of the premiere given by Nancy Ruffer, Tim Gill & Andrew Ball at Queens Hall, Narberth, 27.9.97

Hold not thy peace and be not still

This piece started life one afternoon during a profoundly dull conference in mid-Wales. Before the afternoon session, I visited an exhibition of rather subversive etchings based on traditional nursery rhymes by the Portuguese artist, Paula Rego. A particularly striking version of Old King Cole stuck in my mind and, whilst one speaker after another droned on, the present piece took its first tentative shape. 

Rego's etching shows an old man swathed in darkness in a bleak hall at night (was he such a merry old soul?). Three doleful creatures enter carrying stringed instruments ("he called for his fiddlers three") and slowly trace a dismal ritual around the hall before leaving the old man to his reverie.

The first two thirds of the piece gradually build to a climax and are followed by a slow meditative final section. The material is drawn from the four descending notes which open the traditional nursery rhyme (C, B, A, G) around which are woven a set of chorale variations. Old King Cole was written during October and November 1994 and first performed by PM Ensemble at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, in December 1994. 

This is a recording of a performance  by PM Music Ensemble conducted by the composer at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff on 8 June 1996

Old King Cole

This is the first movement of a Suite for solo cello in four movements - a slow barcarole. The Suite was completed in September 2000 and was commissioned by Cardiff University Centre for Lifelong Learning with funds provided by the Arts Council of Wales. Its first performance was given by Alice Neary at a concert of the Rhymney Valley Music Club in Ystrad Mynach in November 2000.

Suite for Cello - Movement 1

This Suite for solo cello is in four movements: The finale is a moto perpetuo arising out of a restless ghostly passage played on the instrument's C string. The Suite was completed in September 2000 and was commissioned by Cardiff University Centre for Lifelong Learning with funds provided by the Arts Council of Wales. It first performance was given by Alice Neary at a concert of the Rhymney Valley Music Club in Ystrad Mynach in November 2000.

Cello Suite, Movement 4

This short set of double variations, for solo guitar, was written during the closing days of 2008 for Michael McCartney, who gave its first performance in the following year. Its title is taken from Heather and Robin Tanner’s classic record of rural life, Wiltshire Village (1939): “Sometimes there is hoar frost, when trees are transformed to coral and cobwebs to lace”. This performance was recorded by Michael Hughes in September 2014


Sometimes There Is A Hoar Frost

Canons for the Longest Day (2010)

Listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's shortest opera, The Sands of Time was composed by Peter Reynolds to a libretto by Simon Rees in 1993 and first performed in the centre of Cardiff, UK, by soprano Rhian Owen and baritone Dominic Burns with members of the (then) Welsh College of Music and Drama. This is a recording of that performance which set a world record of 4.09'. A subsequent performance by the BBC set a new record of 3.34'.

The Sand of Time: an opera in four minutes

LATEST NEWS
Peter Reynolds is currently working on a  Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales award. He is currently engaged on a short film based around a deserted chapel at Cippyn near Cardigan in collaboration with the Faculty of Creative Industries at ATRiuM (Course Leader, Bilingual Media Production) at the University of South Wales. An interim version of the film was presented as an installation at ATRiuM on 4 March. 
The Mavron Quartet have record the string quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows following a run of eight performances between 2012-14. 

Beiliheulog was performed four times last year including performances at St Hugh's College Oxford, Fishguard Festival and Partrishow Church.

The Sands of Time wasl be given by Intimate Opera, Indianopolis, on 6 & 7 June (see .www.intimateopera.org/IntimateOpera/).

Peter Reynolds's cantata, Adieu to all alluring toys has just been issued by Meridian on CDE 84614 performed by Paul Carey Jones and Ian Ryan. See 
http://www.meridian-records.co.uk/acatalog/CDE84614_Songs_Now.html for more details and to hear an extract

PETER REYNOLDS was born in Cardiff where he studied and now lives and works. During the 1980s he received several bursaries to attend the Dartington Summer School where he attended composition classes by Morton Feldman, Peter Maxwell Davies and Gordon Crosse. He was awarded the Michael Tippett Award for Composition in 1986. His first large-scale commission, a work for chamber orchestra, was completed in 1987 for the Dartington Summer School. 

His music has been has been broadcast on Radio 3, BBC Wales and BBC Television and performed in Britain, Europe and the USA at venues and festivals including Bangor New Music Festival, Brighton Festival, Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, Chapter, Cardiff, Cheltenham Town Hall, Dartington International Summer School, Go West Festival, Lincoln Cathedral; Late Music Festival, York, Lower Machen Festival, Monmouth Festival, Purcell Room (Southbank Centre), St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Symphony Hall (Birmingham), Vale of Glamorgan Festival, Wales Millennium Centre, Waterford New Music Week, Ireland, & Welsh Week (Brussels).

In 1993 his opera, The Sands of Time was recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as a world record for the world's shortest opera at 3 minutes and 34 seconds. He joined the academic staff of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff in 1994 and has also been a tutor of composition there since 2002.

In addition to his work as a composer, Peter Reynolds was Artistic Director of both the Cardiff-based PM Music Ensemble and the Lower Machen Festival (1997-2009). He is also a writer on music and published a history of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in 2009. 

His music is characterised by stillness, simplicity, an occasional playfulness and a tendency to set unusual and quixotic texts. His music avoids large-scale rhetorical forms and is often fashioned on a small-scale and revised over many years before reaching its final shape. 

Peter.Reynolds

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