MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


ARTICLE

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


JUDITH WEIR

by

Julie Williams

 

After the Christmas festivities have subsided, a British music lover’s thoughts may well turn to the BBC Composer Weekend held annually in January at the Barbican Centre in London. (Jan 18-20 2008 Barbican) This year’s event is a very promising weekend, devoted to the Scottish composer Judith Weir. Its title is ‘Telling the Tale’, which links to the composer’s strongly narrative work and her interest in a wide range of mythology and folklore.

Born in 1954, from a Scottish family, Judith Weir grew up in Buckinghamshire in the Home Counties. Whilst still at school, she took lessons from John Tavener - who was based not far away. She also played the oboe in the National Youth Orchestra. Her musical education then continued at Cambridge University.

Judith Weir’s Celtic origins have been a strong influence on her work and are one of the sources of the material she has drawn on. However, the piece which first brought her to prominence was entitled ‘A Night at the Chinese Opera’ (1987) - to be revived in Scottish Opera’s 2008 season. For this she wrote not only the music but also the libretto. This had been preceded by two other musical dramas ‘The Consolation of Scholarship’ (1985), also with a theme from Chinese mythology, and ‘King Harald’s Saga’ (1979), occasionally known irreverently as ‘1066 in 10 minutes’!

Her writing for the voice is clear and direct, with a simplicity reminiscent occasionally of plainchant. Its style is ideally suited to the setting of poetry, such as in the song-cycle ‘woman.life.song’, a kind of modern-day version of Schubert’s similarly themed work, where the texts are by Maya Angelou, Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Tony Morrison. It also works well in opera and musical drama, where a clear narrative accompanied by occasional dramatic orchestral moments is particularly effective. Her work has been widely praised for its accessible style, which has also found favour in community and educational projects.

In the following year, 1988, another musical drama followed, ‘Missa del Cid’ which uses the format of the Mass but is based on the bloodthirsty legend of El Cid. Weir’s considerable talent for this form has been expressed in two more full-length operas, both inspired by folk tales: ‘The Vanishing Bridegroom’, based on three tales from her native Scotland, and ‘Blonde Eckbert’, which has German sources.

Her compositional talents extend beyond this form. During the 1990s, she was appointed Resident Composer with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This produced ‘We Are Shadows’ and ‘Forest’. Commissions were also placed with her by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (‘Music Untangled’ and ‘Natural History’ – a Taoist bestiary); the Minnesota Orchestra (‘The Welcome Arrival of Rain’) and Carnegie Hall (the song-cycle ‘woman.life.song’ for Jessye Norman, also performed at the 2000 Proms).

She has also composed purely instrumental pieces for various combinations of chamber players. A good survey of these is collected on the NMC disc D090. The first disc concentrates on piano music – a small scale concerto (a particularly enjoyable piece); a piano trio; a piano quartet and a piece for violin and piano entitled ‘Music for 247 Strings’ - reflecting a more even balance between the instruments than the classic violin sonata with piano accompaniment. Material from folk-song is used effectively, ‘The Sweet Primroses’ in the second movement of the piano concerto, and ‘Blanche comme la Neige’ in the Piano Quartet.

The second disc offers earlier works (1988–1993) in recordings released previously on Collins Classics. In this selection piano music remains prominent, but there is a String Trio as well as pieces for both piano and strings. The works are predominantly thematic rather than abstract. A wide variety of material inspires them – Scottish, Croatian, the work of Couperin, the work of Schubert. It concludes with a Sephardic theme, set both for string ensemble and then for piano. Perhaps the best known of them is ‘I Broke off a Golden Branch’, which shares the instrumentation of Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet.

Judith Weir writes of her chamber pieces: ‘Nearly all the music on this disc was written for personal friends of mine. Out of all the pieces I have written, these are the ones I like to listen to the most’. Again this has echoes of Schubert’s chamber music and its origins.

Judith Weir’s writing for the voice includes solo as well as larger works, and a well-received collection of her songs has also been recorded.

If there is one word I would use to sum up Judith Weir’s music, it has to be ‘enjoyable’. It is pleasant, likeable and accessible but never banal. It has a simple, clean sound which is modern without ever being difficult or obscure.

Julie Williams

Judith Weir on MusicWeb



 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.