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British Music Society

The first of three works by Ed Hughes on the CD is ‘Cuckmere: A Portrait’ composed to accompany a film by Cesca Eaton for the Brighton Festival on 5 May 2018.

Cuckmere is a grassland on the South Downs. The film uses aerial and land-based filming across all four seasons. The music score by Hughes opens with a clear, transparent Prelude leading into autumn. Each of the other seasons, winter, spring and summer in that order is preceded by a short interlude.

The overall skeleton of the music could be described as ‘post-minimalist’. This refers to the repetitive rhythmic pulsing in which the piano, as a percussion instrument, plays a crucial role.

Above that rhythmic pulse, which occurs in contrasting blocs, the other instruments disport in complex arpeggiated swirls and twists. All this is performed with considerable clarity by the Orchestra of Sound and Light, an 18 member chamber orchestra.

Ed Hughes gives each of the seasons a different musical flavouring, I particularly enjoyed ‘Spring’. Overall, the music is firmly tonal and with the film it is expressively colourful.

You can see this work at edhughescomposer.com

‘Media Vita’ (1991) also composed for the Brighton Festival, is performed by the New Music Players Piano Trio. Based on an extensive work of that title by John Sheppard (1515 – 1558) it takes parts of his melody and harmony and especially his counterpoint, rebuilding it in strongly modernist style.

The New Music Players, a 17 member chamber orchestra, are the performers in the final work on the CD, the six movement ‘Sinfonia’ (2018). The first five movements are each based on works by early English composers, although the composer of the first movement ‘Agincourt’ is probably unknown. The others include Dunstaple (or ‘Dunstable’), Tallis and Orlando Gibbons.

As in ‘Media Vita’ Hughes deconstructs the originals and reassembles them in his own individual modernist style. ‘Agincourt’ in particular is very violent since this, after all, refers to war.

I particularly enjoyed the fourth movement which is more closely based on Tallis with some attractive string playing, and the imaginative finale ‘In Nomine’ which is more loosely based on Christopher Tye, but even including the song ‘The Muffin Man’. This is very much the composer’s own music.
Alan Cooper