Classical and Jazz: Preview - Percy Grainger seminar at the British Library on Sunday 20th February
Published: 17 February, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
AUSTRALIAN composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) and his extraordinary music are being celebrated at the Kings Place arts venue this weekend, ending with his famed arrangement of Ravel’s La vallee des cloches for 11 hands playing two pianos and a huge array of percussion.
“Whichever aspect of Grainger you look into, you’ll find a paradox,” says pianist Penelope Thwaites, in charge of the celebration.
“Here was a man who wanted a world where everybody could be a musician yet wrote music of the most astonishing difficulty and virtuosity.”
He was schooled in the 19th-century European tradition.
But, after hearing Chinese music as a child in Melbourne, became fascinated by other musical cultures.
Although a folk song collector, he used the newest technology to create mechanical and experimental electronic music.
“A proto Green, he made his own clothes and cycled or ran vast distances, arriving to perform almost breathless,” says Ms Thwaites.
“He was also a committed pacifist, who joined the US army as a bandsman and created some of the most imaginative music ever written in the band genre, notably the extraordinary Lincolnshire Posy.
“He felt passionately for the suffering of ordinary soldiers and the tragic waste of young lives.”
The Grainger Wind Band Spectacular being performed tomorrow (Friday), includes The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart written after his time in the US army.
On Saturday, there’s an opportunity to hear Grainger himself via his piano rolls played on a pianola; sing his music in a sing-a-long workshop; or listen to his compositions for the unearthly sounding theremin – “like the distant sound of howling wolves,” says Ms Thwaites.
• On Sunday, February 20, there is a Percy Grainger seminar at the British Library.