Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
CDs and DVDs
The music of Alan Bush has always had trouble in securing a fixed place in the concert repertory, not because Bush was an inadequate composer (he received a number of positive reviews following the performances of many of his significant works), but rather because his music probably proved challenging to classify for the establishment and, therefore, for its audience as well. This is due to his intriguingly unique compositional voice that, to this point, has eluded comparison with any another British composer that either preceded him or was his contemporary.
Though influenced by sixteenth-century English music and, especially, the contrapuntal procedures of Palestrina,1Bush's music does not imitate the sound-world of his Renaissance predecessors; in fact, he juxtaposes sixteenth-century modal counterpoint with late- and post-romantic harmony. This compositional fingerprint had been codified by Bush even in his early works and, bar a brief episode in the 1930s when his music was influenced by newer compositional trends in Central Europe,2his compositional style changed rather little throughout his career. Appointed as Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in 1925, he proved to be an influential figure for the next two generations of composers from Great Britain and abroad, most notably for students such as Timothy Bowers, Hubert du Plessis (the late South African composer) and Michael Nyman.
The disc is framed by two world premiere recordings: Africa - Symphonic Movement for Piano and Orchestra, op. 73, and Fantasia on Soviet Themes, op. 24. Africa, which was completed in 1972, is the third of Bush's four concertante works for piano and orchestra.3This one-movement work, inspired by a United Nations resolution of the same year which 'condemned the...