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Serge Prokofiev
Prokofiev and Shostakovich The course examined how two Russian composers came to terms with the constraints of living and working under the Soviet regime. Unlike their contemporaries, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, both Prokofiev and Shostakovich found ways to express their artistic integrity within the strict confines of Soviet Russia. They were both censored at times but…
Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes
Diaghilev This was a chronological examination of the great impresario’s touring opera and ballet company, particularly concentrating on the many works he commissioned from Stravinsky, Ravel, Satie, Prokofiev, De Falla, Poulenc, Milhaud and others. No one has done more to advance the development of music who was not themselves a composer or performer than the…
String Quartet No. 3
I have always enjoyed chamber music and this is the latest of my string quartets written between 1987 and 1994. First movement – Allegro This movement was influenced by Schubert, a favourite composer of my piano teacher, Eleanor Purce, a pupil of Alfred Cortot. String Quartet No. 3 1st movement Second movement – Adagio This…
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Finale This was a detailed examination of Mozart’s last 12 months in which he wrote some of his greatest works (including the Clarinet Concerto, the Magic Flute, La Clemenza di Tito, Ave Verum Corpus, the Requiem, the last Piano Concerto and the last two String Quintets) but struggled financially and professionally. I ran this…
Felix Mendelssohn
Mendelssohn and Mendelssohn Fanny and Felix had a closer bond than probably any two other musicians but had very different careers due to their difference in gender. In his youth, Felix was described as the Mozart of the C19th but some considered his sister Fanny to be even more talented. She was destined by convention…
Gustav Holst
Vaughan Williams and Holst Two great friends who pioneered a new English style with varying success. Not just the composers of Greensleeves and the Planets, Vaughan Williams and Holst followed Elgar’s lead as two of the standard bearers of the English Musical Renaissance. Both were from Gloucestershire but they met as students at the Royal…
