Ed Hughes: Music for the South Downs
Judith Weir, CBE, composer and, Master of the Queen’s Music, writes: “Ed Hughes’ refreshing, cultured, lovingly patterned music is built around a thoroughly contemporary theme; our present-day contemplation of landscape, and how we give it the attention and respect it deserves. Via music, the composer suggests, which works like the weather on a hilly walk in the South Downs. Our perceptions constantly change and re-energise as we encounter familiar objects while colours, shadings and vegetation are in a constant flow of development. The same can be certainly said of all the works in this rich collection, which surge forward with textural warmth and harmonic continuity.”
Ed Hughes’ music has been recognised for its outstanding craft and originality; operas, silent film, chamber, orchestral and piano works have been premiered around the world and recorded for Métier with commissions from Mahogany Opera Group, Brighton Festival, Glyndebourne, London Sinfonietta, I Faglioni and other leading ensembles.
The South Downs is a range of chalk hills extending about 260 square miles across the South East of England. Ed Hughes’s music has special qualities which, like the area that inspired it, have universal appeal.
Track Listing
- Flint - Movement 1 (4:15)
- Flint - Movement 2 (4:13)
- Flint - Movement 3 (5:18)
- Nonet - Movement 1 Con moto (5:31)
- Nonet - Movement 2 Tranquil (5:54)
- Nonet - Movement 3 Flowing (5:49)
- Lunar 1 (6:07)
- Lunar 2 (8:43)
- Chroma (10:04)
- The Woods so Wild - Movement 1 (5:31)
- The Woods so Wild - Movement 2 (2:29)
- The Woods so Wild - Movement 3 (4:38)
Ed Hughes:
Reviews
“The music embraces the rolling landscape and its endless natural variety. We can be in open fields and wooded valleys, beside fresh bright streams and rolling waves. The music is both evocative and grounded in this verdant environment. Listening to Flint Movement 2 on a dull and rainy afternoon, I was transported to a forest watching the sunbeams dance through the leaves – and then in the next movement I am on the bank of a fast-flowing stream. Such is the magical power of Ed Hughes’ music.
” —Richard Dove
“For modern music, this mostly sounds traditional. An enjoyable and interesting album with plenty of variation and not so modern that it will frighten easily-startled listeners.
” —Jeremy Condliffe
“The music of Ed Hughes rarely fails to impress; this is a superb disc. More proof, if proof were needed, of Hughes’s stature as a composer, all held in fine performances. Beauty and affection are present in bucketloads here. Hughes’s musical vocabulary is wide, and [he] very much has his own voice.
” —Colin Clarke
“Hughes has been an enriching presence on the UK new music scene since the BBC marked him out as a name to watch over three decades ago. Hughes’s music has an understated virtuosity such as adds greatly to the attraction of those pieces featured here. The performances are audibly attuned to this music. Warmly recommended.
” —Richard Whitehouse
“There are strong performances throughout here, and Hughes’ music is always stimulating and full of contrast. He never gets stuck in creating a single pastoral atmosphere – there is a constant sense of life, movement and vibrant change here.
” —Nick Boston
““Hughes’ pieces come to seem like musical distillations of the sites’ sights, sounds, and smells. That the material is so vivid is easy to explain when his output includes operas and original live scores to classic silent films in addition to chamber, orchestral, and piano works. For anyone coming to the composer’s music for the first time, Music for the South Downs serves as a great place to start, given the evocativeness of its writing and its picturesque qualities.
” —Ron Schepper
“Ed Hughes’ compositional style is unique and thoroughly personal. Much ‘new’ music has close connections with the idea of place, and this is certainly true with Hughes’ music. Elements of folk music, the merest touch of jazz in some of the rhythms, and melody lines on the outer fringes of tonality pervade Hughes’ musical style. With Hughes, every time you listen, you discover something new, surely a treasure-house of musical inspiration.
” —Alan Cooper
“Witchery from complexity: lyricism and ecstasy; pell-mell power and centred peacefulness, most skilfully played. The booklet is most beautifully composed and executed with colour photographs of the South Downs and extended insights by the composer into the witchery of his music.
” —Rob Barnett
“An Impressionistic visit and tribute to the 260 square miles of chalk hills in England’s southeast. Audiences already familiar with the area may find a number of touchstones here with which to identify [and] pleasant enough material for those who do not know the geography. Certainly all the performers treat the music with respect and play it with care and understanding.
” —Mark J. Estren
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