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| Libby Croad (Picture: Alexander Barnes) |
On Sunday 22 June 2025, Brighton Competition Refrain and Metropolis of London Sinfonia be part of forces at Cadogan Corridor beneath the baton on James Morgan for a live performance that options Duruflé’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending (with violinist Alexandra Wooden) and Fantasia on Greensleeves, plus the UK premiere of British composer Libby Croad‘s The Brontë Suite.
Libby wrote The Brontë Suite in January 2024, she was on sabbatical and as she beloved the Brontë sisters’ poems the concept of a chunk based mostly on them had been at the back of her head and the time appeared proper. She successfully had free reign as there was no fee and he or she wrote it for choir and string quartet, figuring that was a properly financial line-up.
The piece makes use of three poems, Emily’s Spellbound, Anne’s A Memory and Charlotte’s Life. The three poems usually are not technically meant to be collectively however Libby feels that their themes of life, love and loss work nicely.
The truth is, choirs requested her a couple of string orchestra model and it was this model which was used on the work’s premiere by the Willoughby Symphony Choir in Sydney, Australia in March 2025 and will likely be used on 22 June. Sarcastically, the unique model for choir and string quartet has but to get an outing.
After I ask about her musical fashion, she feedback that somebody in one other choir she was working with mentioned that her music sounds very English. She admits that she likes a superb melody, which isn’t wildly trendy for the time being. She begins with the textual content, then melody and he or she loves scrunchy harmonies, utilizing various modes. She skilled as a violinist and feels which you could inform this together with her string writing, she likes one thing juicy which you could get your enamel into.
Her first examine on the Royal Academy of Music was violin, with composition as second examine. On leaving school, she centered on the violin however felt that one thing was lacking. In 2016 she rekindled her writing and although she loves the violin and nonetheless performs, composition is the dream. However she feels that the 2 strands of her musical life assist every. She feedback that she has simply completed taking part in the music for the Royal Shakespeare Firm’s manufacturing of Hamlet while on the similar time writing a brand new work of her personal, and the influences feed into one another. She loves the best way the 2 can work together, and says that she couldn’t be a composer in an ivory tower.
She is happy that her composing has actually taken off and he or she now has a ready checklist.
Unsurprisingly, her inspirations embody RVW and Elgar, but in addition Rachmaninov whose Symphony No. 2 she has fond reminiscences of taking part in within the youth orchestra. In school, her trainer was Gareth Wilson (who’s now at Girton School). He was an incredible encouragement to her writing, he commissioned her first choral piece for his choir in Chelsea when she was nonetheless in school. She realised that she beloved writing music and he helped her develop her writing.
The day earlier than the London live performance she has a premiere in Nottingham, The Nightingale for choir and strings, setting Walter de la Mare’s poem King David. That is for the charity, Music for Everybody, with whom Libby has labored earlier than and this new piece is in regards to the therapeutic energy of music which will likely be carried out by Nottingham Chamber Singers and Nottingham Chamber Gamers at a live performance celebrating the choir’s fortieth birthday, additional particulars.
She has simply completed music for a play, the primary time she has written for the theatre and it was a tremendous expertise. The play is Chronically Hopeful, a multi-disciplinary piece about unseen incapacity being developed by Musici Eire. A workshop efficiency of the piece happened in Bray, Eire a couple of days after I chatted to Libby with an enormous efficiency deliberate for the Autumn.
Subsequent up, she is beginning a brand new fee for the Dionysus Ensemble, for string quartet, flute and harp. The theme of the work is river security and it is going to be a part of a mission the ensemble is doing with native youngsters.
Libby Croad: The Brontë Suite
Duruflé: Requiem
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves
Alexandra Wooden (violin)
Brighton Competition Refrain
Metropolis of London Sinfonia
James Morgan (conductor)
22 June 2025
Full particulars from the Cadogan Corridor web site.
