Change of Heart

My new work has taken me longer than expected, as I had a change of heart regarding the overall style of the piece.  The draft I had been working on felt too similar to my other orchestral works, and I thought to make the most out of this project I really ought to explore some other possibilities.  So while my new new work retains my initial overall structure, its soundworld is somewhat different.  My music is often highly lyrical and delicate with fairly transparent instrumental texture, but since I felt I have already demonstrated my ability in writing such music in the past, I concentrated instead on trying to bring out the raw energy available from a symphony orchestra in this piece.

(You may sample my previous works here.)

Challenges

I think we’d all agree that the LSO Panufnik scheme is a truly amazing opportunity – to be one of just six composers chosen to write a piece for one of the best orchestras in the world does sound rather mind-blowing. And of course it is! But they don’t like to make it too easy for us . . . as I imagine nearly every other blogger in this forum will have remarked, this ‘commission’ has been made exceedingly tricky to handle, not necessarily due to the complex nature of the orchestral palette we’re dealing with, or even the balancing act many of us are undertaking (between this and the various other simultaneous commissions). No, the Devil, for us, appears in the apparently benign form of the number 3. Or perhaps, more accurately, that obscenely small time limit of just 3 minutes long! This might be an irritatingly recurrent theme throughout the Panufnik blogs (and I apologise for bringing it up yet again), but really, it is such a tricky problem to address. Full-length piece with beginning, middle and end, or short, exploratory study? “Show ‘em what you can do”, maverick-style, or aim for a strong, cohesive piece of stand-alone music? Or both?

I’ve foolishly plumped for the latter. My first draft score was submitted yesterday to Colin Matthews, and I wait with trepidation to see if he thinks I’ve succeeded – I shall, no doubt, post all ensuing criticism here very soon!

Gone in 180 Seconds

The main challenge of this project for me is to produce a valid orchestral work of such short duration (~3 minutes), as my music often has an unhurried nature.  In the case of my last major orchestral work, it doesn’t “get going” until the eighth minute into the 23-minutes piece.  In fact, there are very few larger ensemble works of <4 minutes duration by other composers that I feel are musically satisfying on their own.  Off the top of my head, I can think of John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine and either of Oliver Knussen’s Two Organa.

I like to construct my music using limited amount of raw materials.  For this short piece I am concentrating on two simple ideas, a zigzag melodic shape and an accelerating rhythmic motif.  The overall structure  is straight forward:  one main build-up with a short coda.

Introducing…

Since this is my first post here, I shall introduce myself briefly.  My biography can be found at my website www.funglam.com, but here is some extra info…

I started playing the piano at the age of six while I was in Hong Kong, but cello has been my major instrument since I took it up at 10.  While I wasn’t especially interested in contemporary classical music in general at the beginning, I was very keen to explore the cello repertoire, old and new, especially those which have been premiered or performed by either Yo-Yo Ma or Mstislav Rostropovich, two of my favourites.  Soon I found myself ordering random CDs and scores of composers I had never heard of!  Fittingly, I shall mention that it included the Andrzej Panufnik’s Cello Concerto recorded by the LSO and Rostropovich, which remains one of my favourite contemporary cello concertos, alongside other ones by composers such as HK Gruber, Stephan Albert and Gavin Bryars.  My interest in contemporary music just grew from there, and eventually started composing slightly more seriously after my undergraduate studies in music.

Welcoming the 2009 composers!

The 2009 composers commenced their participation on the Panufnik Young Composers Scheme with a Reality Weekend in January. This included meeting Colin Matthews (Composition Director), Camilla Panufnik (Project Champion), Lucy O’Rorke (Helen Hamlyn Trust) and Raymond Yiu (2008 Panufnik composer), as well as meeting LSO players (David Alberman, Patrick Harrild, Neil Percy and Bryn Lewis), to explore their instruments. The composers also had practical sessions on presentation and communication skills.

The composers are now in the process of writing their pieces and will be meeting on 14 May to have a Gamelan session and to catch up on progress. They are attending LSO rehearsals and concerts as well as regular tutorials with Colin Matthews.

 The new pieces will be rehearsed in a public workshop on Monday 5 October 2009.

In addition to the six composers writing a 3 minute piece, Andrew McCormack, a participant on the 2008 scheme, is working on a 10 minute commission for the LSO which will also be rehearsed on Monday 5 October before it is premiered with Francois-Xavier Roth and the LSO on Thursday 10 December 2009.

Afterlife

The Panufnik Young Composers Scheme 2008 is a thing of the past – the workshop took place over three months ago, and I have already met the six Panufnik Young Composers of 2009 (Francisco Coll Garcia, Edmund Finnis, Fung Lam, Vlad Maistorovici, Max de Wardener and Toby Young) last weekend, shared my experience on the scheme and gave (hopefully) useful tips. An impressive brunch, and apparently for the time since PYCS started an all-male selection. Their new pieces will be something one looks forward to.

 

PYCS has been a wonderful experience, as well as having my first orchestral piece played by the London Symphony Orchestra, the best thing for me was to meet the five wonderful fellow composers – Andrew McCormack, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Joshua Penduck, Matthew Sergeant and Sasha Siem; each one of them with has an individual voice, and I would be delighted to share platform with all of them sometime in the future.

 

Out of the six of us, Andrew received a commission to write a 10-minute piece for the LSO, which is to be premiered later on this year. And I have the honour to receive a commission to write a piece for the Chinese pianist Lang Lang and the London based Silk String Quartet. It is a piano quintet with a difference as the four members of the quartet play not violin, viola or any familiar Western instruments; instead, the quartet is made up of four Chinese string instruments – erhu (二胡), pipa (琵琶), yangqin (揚琴) and guzheng (古箏). An interesting combination, and a challenging piece to write. I hope the end result, Maomao Yü, is going to turn out alright.

Hommage à Brahms

I met the writer Nicola Christe on a conducting course at the Morley College this year. When she mentioned a project (co-ordinated and presented by her) involving composers ‘rewriting’ the classics featured at this year’s Proms, I agreed to take part as soon as she mentioned Brahms’ Third Symphony. Black Wings is the result.

Life in Transit

After completing three pieces in the space of one month – Faerie Tales, Xocolatl and Black Wings – I feel a bit restless. This is not helped by the fact that I was made redundant from my day job, and therefore have loads of spare time on my hands before I work out what my next job will be – hopefully it will not be another boring office job. In the meantime, I have agreed to write a few articles on neglected/lesser-known British composers for the British Music Information Centre. The first composer to be featured is Elizabeth Maconchy.

I recalled attending a lunchtime chamber music concert at Imperial College when I was a student there which featured three 20th century string quartets – Britten’s 3rd, one of Shostakovich’s and Maconchy’s 4th. I did not care much about the Shostakovich’s (at least at the time), and thought the Britten’s was rather mild compared to the Maconchy’s. It was the first time I heard Maconchy’s music and I had not ceased to be amazed by her music ever since. I managed to get hold of the scores of some of the string quartets – 13 in all, and the recordings of the complete set is still available on CD. I have just spent a few days listening to pieces by her which are unknown to me. As a result, I am even more puzzled than before by the neglect her music has received. Maybe it is time to make changes.

I also discovered that one of my older pieces, Calendar of Tolerable Inventions from Around the World for wind quintet, is going to be broardcast on BBC Radio 3 this Saturday. If you are interested, tune in.

Faerie Tales

Amid the composition of Xocolatl, I took some time off to complete a song cycle which was long overdue – after two years of complete silence, I found myself finding my way around the music just the way I was when I first started composing – exciting, uncertain and very frustrating at times.

 

The idea of Faerie Tales, scored for counter-tenor, tenor and piano, came to me when I discovered one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s lesser known writings. Deaths in the family as a result of the First World War, most notably those of his son Kingsley and his brother Innes, drove Arthur Conan Doyle into depression. He found solace in spiritualism – although his interest in it went as far back as the 1880s – and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave. The Coming of the Fairies (1922), his book-length account of the Cottingley fairy pictures, is one such efforts.

 

No actual text from the book is used in the song cycle; instead, one of Conan Doyle’s late poems titled Fate (in parts describing things heard and seen during a séance) is interwoven with poems/writings by Wilfred Owen, Rudyard and John Kipling, Shakespeare, John Keats and J. M. Barrie to conceive a meditation on grief and make-believe.

 

At first glance, this collection of writers might seem a bit odd. But after reading the last letter John Kipling wrote to his father before he was killed (or believed to be, as his body was never found) in action at the battle of Loos in September 1915 and Rudyard Kipling’s grief-drenched poems written after this event, most noticeably My Boy Jack and Epitaphs of the War. I felt the dynamic between the Kiplings was not dissimilar to the Conan Doyles, and in turn, something I can relate to.

 

As for the Owen, I chose his The Parable of the Young Man and the Old for two reasons – one, his death and Kingsley Conan Doyle are less than a month apart, two, since the premiere of Faerie Tales is paired with Britten’s splendid Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, which serves as the prototype to his setting of the same Owen poem in the War Requiem. Intimidating it may be, but I saw no better choice of text.

 

And Shakespeare, John Keats and J. M. Barrie? Well, a song cycle titled Faerie Tales with no mention of fairies can easily be considered as mis-selling, don’t you agree?

Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence

As one of the readers of this blog pointed out after I published my Hammershøi and Dreyer entry, the Royal Academy of Arts is holding the first Vilhelm Hammershøi retrospective in Great Britain. Do not miss it.

There is a good article in the Daily Telegraph. You can also have a sneak preview on The Guardian website too.