School of Music

A new CD of orchestral compositions by Judith Weir has just been issued by NMC (NMC D137). The artists are Ailish Tynan (soprano), the BBC Singers, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The CD comes at the conclusion of the BBC's highly successful weekend of concerts devoted to Judith Weir's music - Judith Weir: Telling the Tale - in which these performers also played a major role.

The CD features works written between 1992 and 2001 and contains works that demonstrate Weir's fascination with the world of nature and Far Eastern literature: Natural History (1998) sets Chinese texts in movements entitled 'Horse', 'Singer', 'Swimmer' and 'Fish/Bird' while Moon and Star (1995) sets Emily Dickinson's poem 'Ah, Moon - and Star!' using the choral voices as an integral part of the orchestra.

There are three purely orchestral works on the CD. Heroic Strokes of the Bow (1992) is Weir's response to a painting by Paul Klee - Heroische Bogenstriche (1938) - at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The title of Forest (1995) was not initially descriptive of nature but rather of the organic process in which Weir's original melody developed, though by the end "a different, more distinct world is occasionally glimpsed. Perhaps this is the forest of folklore and prehistory ...'. The most recent work is The Welcome Arrival of Rain (2001) which, as the piece took shape, reminded Weir of the life-giving blessing of the monsoon in India; the score quotes a passage from the epic Hindu text Bhagavata Purana.