Rian Evans, 11 December 2002, Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon
The dark brooding of Julian Philips's new piece, given its premiere here.
Dance Fragment is the first of a series and marks a change of direction apparently influenced by working on a ballet with the choreographer Michael Korder. This was a dance of the imagination: slow, highly chromatic, tortuous and anguished, with the successive attempts of three solo instruments to break out of the music's oppressive grip doomed to failure.
Christopher Morley, 9 December 2002, Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon
Julian Philips, composer-in-association with the orchestra, introduced the premiere of his specially-commissioned Dance Fragment no 1, a sombre, eloquent laying-on of textures for 12 solo strings, its tortuous melody unfolding in a Bartokian manner. David Curtis takes this haunting piece to Finland next month.
Ivan Hewitt, 4 June 2004, Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon
The evening got into its stride with a suite of dances called Divertissement, which composer Julian Philips extracted from his ballet score Les Liaison Dangereuses. Philips was inspired by the mysterious and ravishing dance music of the French Baroque composer Rameau, and this suite is a mélange of those dances, or rather memories of them, refracted through Philips's own language. There were also sly echoes of Stravinsky's Agon - a witty double-bluff, because Stravinsky's ballet is itself based on French Baroque music.
Philips's orchestral colours were as sharply exotic as Rameau's own, and the aftertaste of one particularly delicious combination of saxophone, two violas and marimba still haunts my ear. The piece was a brilliant display of compositional virtuosity and it received a brilliant performance to match.
Christopher Morley, 11 May 2005, Civic Hall, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Julian Philips' Swift Partitions for baritone and ensemble sets Emily Dickinson poems of the sea with an almost cartoon-like wit, vivid allusive writing referring the listener so congenially to the composer's well-marshalled aural imagery. Its premiere was a huge success both in terms of performance and of audience reception.
Christopher Morley, 7 August 2006, Three Choirs Festival ****
The Three Choirs Festival is not just about preserving tradition in aspic. One of its glories down the centuries has been the platform it has offered to new music and Monday afternoon's concert at the charming venue of Wyastone Leys near Monmouth as past of the current Hereford Festival continued this laudable thread.
A refreshing programme from the Stratford-based Orchestra of the Swan, its earliest offerings here mid-20th century, featured the premiere of Julian Philips' Masque for Caliban, a substantial 22 minute work in several connected movements which revisits Shakespeare's The Tempest in the words of the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite.
Caliban rails against the invasion of the old order by new forces from across the seas and baritone David Stout gave an emotionally gripping account of the taxing, searching solo part. Theatrical in concept (Caliban begins with wordless lamentation at the back of the orchestra, moves front-stage and eventually resumes his lamenting at the back of the auditorium), the piece demands total commitment of communication from the soloist - which it received - as well as from its compact kaleidoscope of players, attentively well-marshalled under the enthusiastic and well-prepared David Curtis. |
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Julian Philips
Born in Wales in 1969 and brought up in Warwickshire, Julian Philips studied music at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After a period working for a music agency in London, he dedicated his time to writing music and teaching at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and at Cambridge University.
His professional breakthrough as a composer came in 1992 when his song-cycle, now I lay me down to dream of spring, was performed by the baritone Martyn Hill and recorded for BBC Radio 3. He has enjoyed a particular affinity with music for the voice and his settings of e.e.cummings, Dylan Thomas, Dickinson and Rimbaud have been championed by artists such as Gerald Finley, Sir Thomas Allen, and Sarah Walker. Fern Hill was featured in Dawn Upshaw's 1997 Wigmore masterclass then released on CD (Sain), An Amherst Bestiary was performed at Banff Centre for the Arts in 2002, while There is a morn by men unseen, premiered by Gerald Finley and Julius Drake, was commissioned for the Director's Festival Gala Concert at Wigmore Hall in May 2003.
Julian's music has been performed widely in the UK, Finland, France and Canada. Strange Seas, a major orchestral work commissioned and performed by the Britten Sinfonia, was subsequently taken up by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in 1999 and by the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in 2000 and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The symphonic poem, Out of Light, was his first BBC Proms commission, performed by the BBC NOW in 2001 and was the subject of a BBC Wales TV arts programme Double Yellow.
In 2002, his anthem for the Musicians' Benevolent Fund annual Festival of St Cecilia, Song's Eternity, was premiered by the combined choirs of Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and St Paul's Cathedral in November 2002. Other choral works include The Moving Image (Highgate Choral Society/New London Orchestra), Vertue, Two Carols and a Curse (New London Childrens' choir) and Reaching for Andromeda, a birthday tribute to Sir Michael Tippett, premiered by the Finzi Singers at the Wigmore Hall in 1995.
Julian Philips has enjoyed a particularly fruitful artistic partnership with theatre director Michael Grandage, with whom he has collaborated on productions including The Tempest starring Sir Derek Jacobi (Old Vic, London), Richard III with Kenneth Branagh (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield) and Edward II starring Joseph Fiennes. Their production of As You Like It (Lyric Hammersmith/Crucible Theatre) went on to win the South Bank Theatre Award (2001).
At Wigmore Hall, Julian's work as lecturer and project leader of its adult music education programme, Wigmore Study Group, moves into its fifth year with projects focussing on a diverse range of repertoire from Mahler songs, Tippett chamber music, to the music of Szymanowski. For Orchestra of the Swan he devised an ambitious education project celebrating Sir Michael Tippett's legacy.
In 2003 Julian was awarded the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship in Musical Composition which allowed him to spend several months in the United States, working with composers and performers in Boston, Harvard, Tanglewood and New York.
Recent commissions include a new work for the Coull String Quartet, Masque for Caliban for baritone and ensemble, for Orchestra of the Swan a songcycle for the baritone Gerald Finley and the Vertavo Quartet, commissioned by the Wigmore Hall and his first full-length ballet, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, commissioned by English National Ballet with choreography by Michael Corder.
Commissions and Performances
Dance Fragment 1 - 2002
2002: Civic Hall, Stratford - upon-Avon
2002: Mikkeli, Finland
17 October 2003: Civic Hall, Bedworth
Divertissement - 2003
2003: Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon
2003: Oakengates Theatre, Telford
Swift Partitions -1998/2005
9 May 2005: Civic Hall, Stratford - upon-Avon
10 May 2005: Pittville Pump Rooms, Cheltenham
Masque for Caliban - 2006
7 August 2006: Three Choirs Festival
Divertissement 2004
General Dance
Overture
Air Tendre
Air Gai
Tambourins 1 & 2
Lovers' meeting
Dance of Triumph
Danceny
A dancing lesson
Dance of Triumph (reprise)
Work on my new full length score for acclaimed choreographer Michael Corder's ballet on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, commissioned by the English National Ballet, has taken up the best part of the past year; Divertissement is the first extracted concert suite, made specially for David Curtis and the Orchestra of the Swan.
Choderlos de Laclos' famous novel needs little introduction, in part due to Christopher Hampson's successful theatrical version and a host of popular cinematic transformations. Michael Corder's ballet is a brilliant transformation of this complex novel of letters, that explores the extraordinary stratagems of the Marquise de Merteuil, her rakish soul mate the Vicomte de Valmont, and their many unfortunate victims: the young and innocent Cécile de Volanges, the handsome Chevalier Danceny and the noble Madame de Tourvel.
Divertissement deals mainly with the music from Scenes 2 and 3 of the ballet and incorporates five Rameau dances, absorbed into the score to evoke the sophisticated world in which Laclos' novel is set. The Divertissement itself (numbers 2-5) is a ballet-within-a-ballet in which we first meet Danceny, premier danseur at the Paris Opera, framed by a courtly introduction and sparkling lovers' meeting. The Dance of Triumph presents the Marquise de Merteuil glorying in her seductive power over the opposite sex. Absorbed in the centre of this dance are two numbers from Scene 3 - a solo for Danceny and a dancing lesson in which he teaches the young Cécile her first tentative dance steps.
While this Divertissement has been created closely on Corder's scenario, the music can be enjoyed as a succession of shifting moods, colours and gestures. As it incorporates the bulk of the score's Rameau based dances, it also stands as a homage to this giant of the French baroque - each transformation of rhythm, harmony and orchestration a tribute to Rameau's exquisite musical style.
Julian Philips
Swift Partitions for baritone and ensemble
An Everywhere of Silver
I started Early - took my Dog
Though the great Waters sleep
The waters chased him as he fled
Water makes many Beds
Three times - we parted - Breath - and I -
Fortitude incarnate
My River runs to thee -
Swift Partitions is a song cycle built from a sequence of eight short poems by Emily Dickinson, each dealing with the subject of the sea. The work is not narrative, but instead alternates philosophical meditations on the sea (Songs 1, 3, 5 & 8) with more immediate "encounters": a surreal walk with the sea, (Song 2), two near drownings (Songs 4 & 5) and a river's almost erotic desire to join the ocean (Song 8). These encounters are predominantly fast and restless in character and set in relief by the slower meditations, which deploy a more fragmented and rhetorical musical style. The work's title is taken from Song 7 - a fitting image for a cycle whose songs are essentially short and elusive in character.
The work was commissioned in 1998 by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and originally conceived for voice and piano. This instrumental version was begun in 2000 and completed this year for baritone David Stout and the Orchestra of the Swan.
Julian Philips
Masque for Caliban
Scored for baritone and small ensemble, my Masque for Caliban is a centenary tribute to Sir Michael Tippett, via Shakespeare's The Tempest. If Tippett gave Ariel music voice in his famous Songs for Ariel, my Masque focuses on Caliban through the eyes of the Barbadian poet, Kamau Brathwaite, whose poem Caliban provides the poetic framework. Brathwaite redefines Shakespeare's creation as a powerful symbol not only of enslavement and oppression but also the rape of the natural world.
And i caliban
Blind and i caliban
tortured and i caliban
twisted and bent
Brathwaite's text is set in a declamatory and theatrical style and the work has been conceived not only for the extraordinary soloists inside the Orchestra of the Swan but also the young charismatic baritone, David Stout.
Julian Philips
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