From Ariel....

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...

A celebration of the work of Doreen Carwithen, aka Mary Alwyn, whose archive is also held here at Cambridge University Library. Previously published on the University Library's Music Department blog at MusiCB3 ... Browsing through the  Doreen Carwithen  Archive  the other day, I came across a selection of popular magazines from the mid-’40s-’50s, all of which featured Doreen. As a young woman composing in what was then very largely a man’s world, she got a lot of attention from the press; though most journalists seemed to be less impressed by her work, than the fact that a woman was able to do it at all. The  Dundee Evening Telegraph  was fairly typical of the time in seeming more impressed that Doreen was pretty and curly haired, than that she had recently finished composing her first piano concerto aged just 24. Nevertheless, presumably deciding that any publicity was better than none, Doreen continued to occasionally feature in the popular press, part ...