Bayan Northcott – Horn Concerto
Press Reviews
London Sinfonietta, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 5 April 2000
Bayan Northcott's Horn Concerto was a paragon of sense and refined taste. The dense thematic argument of Northcott's music was always clear, nowhere more so than in the subtle interlockings of different tempi in the first movement. But there was poetry here, too, as in the horn's reflective shadowing of the second movement in an evocative epilogue, which Michael Thompson conveyed powerfully.
Tom Service, The Guardian, 10 April 2000
Bayan Northcott's Concerto for Horn and Ensemble was some eight years in the making, but is a substantial, 22-minute score. A writer as well as a composer, Northcott is his own fiercest critic, but his comment, in interview, that the piece lacks originality seems unjust. Not withstanding echoes of Schoenberg, as meditated by Alexander Goehr, the soundworld crystallised in complementary string and woodwind groups is imaginatively conceived.
Barry Millington, The Times, 10 April 2000
Music of Today, Royal Festival Hall, London, 4 October 2004
The Concerto for Horn and Ensemble was begun 12 years after the [oboe] sonata and completed a further eight years later. It is only Op 8. The concerto was written as a reaction against the tide of minimalism, of which the composer offered this roguish definition in his prefatory remarks: 'Endless accompaniment to tunes that never arrive.'
The piece ranges stylistically between quasi-tonality and a densely chromatic expressionism, especially in the intense, Bergian motifs of the opening movement. In the unashamedly emotional central largo, the soloist's initial lament is soothed by remote string invocations, and the ensuing scuttling scherzo builds to a climactic return of the lament, now faint and disembodied.
A set of variations over a ground bass launches the finale, but the soloist chivvies the ensemble on to a quicker tempo. A grand restatement by the soloist of the ground bass and bell-led exaltations are rounded off by a resounding long-held unison C. The Philharmonia, especially the principal horn Laurence Davies, aided by the sure-footed direction of Christopher Austin, had the measure of this singular work.
The influence of Alexander Goehr, an early mentor, is discernible in the theme-and-variations format of the concerto's finale and the fantasia-like episode in the sonata's central movement, as well as in the fusion and juxtaposition of diverse material in both works. The vivid horn-writing and use of ground bass in the concerto evoke Britten. However, the musical personality behind the music is defiantly individual.
Paul Conway, The Independent
Review, 6 October 2004
... his Horn Concerto, performed by Laurence Davies with 10 players
from the Philharmonia, under Christopher Austin. After another protracted
genesis (it took Northcott eight years to compose) the concerto was
a substantial 25-minute work. It was another piece crammed with motivic
ingenuity and well-crafted invention, and there were moments of striking
drama, like the eruptive coda to the first movement, the torrent of
fast music in the second, and the strange hornpipes of the last.
However, even in the vigorous performance that Austin inspired from the players, the piece sounded emotionally contained, as if the material had been overworked, removing any sense of real novelty.
Tom Service, The Guardian, 4 October 2004