John McLeod Recordings
‘Music with colour and energy, both imaginative and idiomatic’ – The Times
Scottish born John McLeod’s increasingly acclaimed music bears all the hallmarks of exuberant colour and precisely imagined fantasy that his earlier associations with Sir Lennox Berkeley (with whom he studied at the Royal Academy of Music) and Witold Lutoslawski (who later became his mentor) would lead one to expect. He is now one of Scotland’s foremost composers and amongst the UK’s busiest and most prolific.
McLeod has won many awards for his work including a Fellowship from the RAM, the Gold Badge of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) and in June 2016 was appointed CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
His first success was in 1979 when he won the Guinness Prize for British composers with the symphonic song-cycle ‘Lieder der Jugend’ which was premiered by tenor Raimund Gilvan and the RSNO and subsequently featured by many orchestras in the UK and in Europe.
Since then works have been commissioned, performed and recorded by orchestras including the Philharmonia, Hallé, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland as well as orchestras in Poland, Germany and the USA and by many international ensembles and soloists including Colin Currie, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Peter Donohoe and Murray McLachlan.
In the past few years McLeod’s output has increased dramatically and has included major performances at the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, Edinburgh International Festival and the City of London Festival, as well new works for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the pianist Murray McLachlan who performed his new Piano Sonata No.5 over 40 times throughout the world in 2014. A critically acclaimed recording of John’s chamber music, by the outstanding Red Note Ensemble, was released in 2015 by the award-winning label Delphian and a new recording of four orchestral works, featuring the RSNO and Dame Evelyn Glennie, will be released in 2018 along with this present album of his entire music for solo piano performed by Murray McLachlan.
Recent commissions have included a new percussion work for Dame Evelyn Glennie’s 50th birthday, a choral work for Heriot-Watt University, a song-cycle for Live Music Now and ‘Out of the Silence’ for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. A new Viola Concerto for the SCO and Jane Atkins is to be premiered in the autumn of 2018.
