From Ariel....

On Thursday 3rd October, William Alwyn's opera Miss Julie , is to get its London concert premiere at the Barbican. It was one of Alwyn's favourite works, but has had a long and difficult history. August Strindberg. Portrait by Richard Bergh, 1905. As early as the 1930s, Alwyn had become interested in Strindberg 's play, and thought about turning it into an opera. At the time, he had recently finished his first opera, a very different work, an Irish confection,  The Fairy Fiddler , which had rather more in common with Brigadoon, than the red-blooded Miss Julie . Alwyn's career as a film composer was just taking off, he had a young family, and a steady and busy job at the Royal Academy of Music. So perhaps it's not surprising that early thoughts of adapting Miss Julie were put to one side. In 1954, the idea surfaced again, and Alwyn contacted Christopher Hassall , well known as a lyricist, who had worked closely with Ivor Novello . Hassall had recently moved...

Recently I was on holiday near Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, and saw a sign for the whimsically named village, Heath and Reach. Having spent far too long rootling through the William Alwyn Archives , I immediately thought "William's mother!", for Ada Tompkins was born in rural Buckinghamshire at Heath and Reach, the daughter of farm workers. The village of Heath and Reach, Bucks. The home of William's maternal grandparents. Life on the land was tough, and William's grandfather gave up farm work looking for employment in industrial Northampton. William's father's family were also incomers to Northampton having moved there from London, probably hoping to make money in the shoe business. The Tompkins family bought a grocer's shop in the town, but they had difficulty making ends meet, and by the time Ada met Alwyn's father - William Smith (William's full name was William Alwyn Smith, he dropped the Smith at an early stage of his career)...

Following on from an earlier blog post , I asked Philip Lane, well known for his reconstructions of film scores, what it was like to work on Alwyn's scores... How did you first become involved with the film scores of William Alwyn? And what can you remember about working with them? PL: The first Alwyn films I worked on were The Crimson Pirate and A night to remember for which I had no material other than the soundtrack. As with all projects the first job is to extract which passages of the film score are strong enough musically to stand up meaningfully without the pictures.  In the case of  Crimson Pirate , the record company concerned, Silva Screen, chose the extracts they wanted and put them on a cassette for me. The result, recorded in Prague, I played to Mary Alwyn (aka composer, Doreen Carwithen) at her home in Blythburgh.  The garden at William and Mary's home in Blythburgh. Painted by William Alwyn. She was suitably pleased and encouraging in ...

A snippet from a film score sketch by William Alwyn. When I tell relatives, friends or colleagues that I have been reconstructing old film scores, a polite if somewhat blank expression usually passes over their faces. I am sure they are conjuring up images of scissors and sellotape, and although I do use such things occasionally, they are not pivotal to my endeavours. What I do requires much more than pencil and rubber and a cassette machine, since what I am involved in is a series of extended aural tests. Since the first question tends to be "Why?", I'll start there. When music was recorded for film no-one, not even the composer thought it would be required again, so the material was usually collected up and binned. There were obviously exceptions. Composers from the concert tradition, as opposed to those primarily involved in commercial music, sometimes saw their film music as just another composition and saved evidence of their work in terms of sketches, shor...

Over the weekend I spent some time at the English Music Festival. It's a delightful festival that has been running for the last thirteen years in the Oxfordshire Countryside. William Alwyn's works are often a feature of the Festival, and this year there were two opportunities to hear his music with a selection from his Fantasy Waltzes on Sunday, and a love scene from his film score for The Fallen Idol during the final concert. The Fantasy Waltzes featured in a programme that concentrated primarily on piano duets, with some other great names involved including Sir Arthur Bliss' own arrangement for one piano, four hands, of his orchestral work, Rout , Francis Routh's stirring Roumanian Dance, and Tovey's decadent Balliol Waltzes . It was an excellent programme from pianists, Lynn Arnold and Charles Matthews , who gave some fascinating insights into their own thoughts about the works. When introducing the Alwyn, Lynn mentioned that as far as she knew there wer...

It's that time of year again - exam season. Schools and universities across the country are busy as young people get ready for those all important exams. In the world of music it's a busy time too, as instrumental examinations take place. In the United Kingdom these usually take place three times a year, with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) and Trinity College being the "big two". There are now plenty of other instrumental options available including the London College of Music, which has been particularly good at opening up the field of popular music, Victoria College of Music and Drama, with an inclusive approach that covers a wide range of instruments, and the more recent Rockschool, with its emphasis on contemporary music, to name just a few. Many children (including myself) first came across William Alwyn when one of his works popped up in the syllabus for their grade exam. In my case it was the short piano work The sea is angry for...