Colour & Light: 20th-Century British Piano Music

Featuring

Nathan Williamson
William Alwyn
Peter Dickinson
Frederick Delius
Elisabeth Lutyens
Anthony Herschel Hill

Did you know?

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Composer's Artistic Vision

The Times newspaper famously opined in 1929 that Frederick Delius "belongs to no school, follows no tradition and is like no other composer in the form, content or style of his music."

Composer Biography

Elisabeth Lutyens was the first British composer to seriously explore and exploit serialism, a compositional technique generally attributed to Schoenberg, though she claimed to have discovered it independently.

Album & Artwork

The album title, "Colour and Light," reflects the diverse yet balanced program of 20th-century British piano works, loosely based on composers' responses to tradition versus progress.

Performer Biography

Nathan Williamson, the pianist on this album, leads an individual career as a pianist, composer, and artistic director, performing at venues like Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall.

Composition History

Delius's one-act opera Margot la Rouge, written in 1902 for a competition and later lost, was re-orchestrated by Eric Fenby from Ravel's vocal score and premiered in 1983.

Composer Biography

William Alwyn, who taught composition at the Royal Academy of Music for 30 years, wrote nearly 200 film scores and was the first composer elected as a fellow of the British Film Academy in 1951.

Composer Biography

Frederick Delius, born in 1862, was largely self-taught due to his family's resistance to his musical ambitions, with Edvard Grieg's advocacy eventually persuading his father.