Métier Records Announces Album of New Works by Robert Saxton

British composer Robert Saxton will feature in a new album of his works to be released by Métier, the new-music label of the Divine Art Group, in the summer of 2022.

The four works on the recording were written between 2013 and 2019. They represent a continuing journey addressing a modal/harmonic goal-orientated narrative. The earliest, Time and the Seasons, for baritone and piano, commissioned by the Oxford Lieder Festival for Roderick Williams and Andrew West, is a song cycle to Saxton’s own texts relating to the Norfolk coast where he spent much of his childhood and, as the title implies, is both cyclic and progressive. Suite for violin and piano, first performed at the 2019 Three Choirs Festival by Madeleine Mitchell and Clare Hammond, charts a voyage across its five movements leading to a tentatively positive conclusion. Fantasy Pieces, commissioned by the Fidelio Trio, while not using material of Robert Schumann, has his Op. 88 as character pieces in mind, regarding both genre and variety of manner. A Hymn to the Thames for solo oboe and chamber orchestra was commissioned by James Turnbull, the St Paul’s Sinfonia and its Music Director Andrew Morley and, during the course of its four linked movements, sets the soloist as both wanderer and river spirit in conjunction with the ‘river’ of the orchestra from source to sea.

Robert Saxton was born in London in 1953. After early guidance from Benjamin Britten and study with Elisabeth Lutyens, he studied with Robin Holloway (Cambridge), with Robert Sherlaw Johnson (Oxford, as a postgraduate) and also with Luciano Berio. He was awarded first prize at the 1975 Gaudeamus International Music Week in Holland and spent 1985-6 at Princeton, USA, as Visiting Fulbright Arts Fellow.

Recent works include the opera The Wandering Jew; a song cycle for baritone Roderick Williams Time and the Seasons for the Oxford Lieder Festival; Hortus Musicae books 1 and 2, a piano cycle for pianist Clare Hammond; The Resurrection of the Soldiers commissioned jointly by George Vass for the 2016 Presteigne Festival and the English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods; Shakespeare Scenes, commissioned by the Orchestra of the Swan and trumpeter Simon Desbruslais; his fourth string quartet for the Kreutzer Quartet; Suite for Madeleine Mitchell and Clare Hammond, A Hymn to the Thames for oboist James Turnbull and the St Paul’s Sinfonia; and Fantasy Pieces for the Fidelio Trio.

Earlier commissions include works for the BBC (TV, Proms and Radio), LSO, LPO, ECO, London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble, Northern Sinfonia and David Blake (conductor), Antara, Arditti and Chilingirian String Quartets, St Paul Chamber Orchestra (USA), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival/Opera North, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, City of London, Three Choirs and Lichfield festivals, Stephen Darlington and the choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford, the choir of Merton College Oxford, Susan Milan, Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett, Simon Desbruslais, Clare Hammond, Edward Wickham and The Clerks’ Group, Teresa Cahill, Leon Fleisher, Tasmin Little, Steven Isserlis, Mstislav Rostropovich, John Wallace and the Raphael Wallfisch and John York duo.

Recordings have appeared on the Sony Classical, Hyperion, Metier, EMI, NMC, Divine Art, Métier, Toccata Classics and Signum labels.

Robert Saxton was Professor of Composition at Oxford University and tutorial fellow in music at Worcester College until his retirement in July 2021. He has been Composer-in-Association at the Purcell School for Young Musicians since 2013 and was appointed Hon Research Fellow (Composition) at the Royal Academy of Music in 2021. He is married to the soprano, Teresa Cahill.

Robert Saxton: Portrait (MSV 2864)

Works and Artists

A Hymn to the Thames — James Turnbull (oboe); St Paul’s Sinfonia; Andrew Morley (conductor)
Fantasy Pieces — Fidelio Trio
Suite for violin and piano — Madeleine Mitchell (violin); Clare Hammond (piano)
Time and the Seasons — Roderick Williams (baritone); Andrew West (piano)

Recording dates: 2014-2022

Release date: Summer 2022