Sunday 15^th December 2024

3.00 pm

Runtime: 120 minutes

Colyer-Fergusson Hall

The Gulbenkian Arts Centre

University of Kent

“LES ROIS MAGES”

“JOURNEY OF THE MAGI”

Alexander Rider, harp &

The Festive Chorale

director Grenville Hancox

 Biography

Alexander Rider is a visiting guest tutor at the Royal Academy of music. With interests encompassing period performance to the newest music, Alexander freelances with major ensembles across the UK. These include the BBC Concert, Philharmonic and Scottish Symphony Orchestras, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, London Chamber Orchestra, English Touring Opera, Brighton Philharmonic, Chroma and he appears with groups including the Gabrieli Consort and the Academy of Ancient Music.

Alexander is noted for his affinity with French music at the turn of the last century, and for his work on original instruments of the period. He has conducted extensive research into the music and players of the time, delving into rich and often hidden histories. Audiences have been delighted by Alexander’s erudition, wit and eye for fascinating detail. In this vein, and using a French Erard harp built in 1902, Alexander has given numerous lecture recitals to great acclaim, at the 2022 World Harp Congress in Cardiff, for the Franz Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest), at the Espace Camac (Paris), the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Harp on Wight Festival. Alexander is delighted to have recorded "Fresque Marine", a disc of rare French works for the harp, part of a new series for the Willowhayne label.

Alexander studied with Grenville Hancox at Canterbury Christ Church University, Gabriella Dall’Olio and Frances Kelly and was then a scholarship student of Imogen Barford at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. From there he graduated with distinction and was subsequently honoured with a Guildhall Artists’ fellowship.

Programme Notes
Music for solo harp

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 Paris -1921 Algiers)
Fantaisie op. 95
Saint-Saëns was a French composer, pianist and organist, playing the organ at the Madeleine for 20 years. A child prodigy, likened to Mozart, he lost his father to TB in infancy and moved with his mother to the country for some ten years to protect his health. At first, he only performed privately, giving his first public recital aged eleven at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. His piano teacher had insisted that his pupils rest their forearms on a bar in front of the keyboard so that the power came from the hands and fingers rather than the arms. It is believed Saint-Saëns approved of this.

Composed in 1893, the Fantaisie is a short piece consisting of two movements, Allegretto and Andantino. It was used as an examination piece (morceaux de concours) by the Conservatoire de Paris in 1893 to 1899.

Marcel Lucien Tournier (1879 -1951 Paris)
Au seuil du Temple (At the Threshold of the Temple)
From Images Suite No. 1
Tournier was a French harpist and composer who studied at the Conservatoire de Paris aged sixteen and ended up becoming a professor of harp at the institution in 1912 for 20 years, teaching many harpists from France and other countries. He was born into a musical family of seven children, all of whom were made to learn an instrument at their instrument maker father’s insistence. His compositions furthered the technical and harmonic possibilities of the harp and are often set as test pieces for competitions. In 1909 he was awarded the Second Grand Prize of the Prix de Rome. His wife, a harpist, was also a professor at the Paris Conservatoire.

Aram Khachaturian (1903 Tbilisi -1978 Moscow)
Danse Orientale
Khachaturian was an eminent Armenian composer who had intended to become a biologist but simultaneously studied the cello. He attended the Gnessin School of Music, part of the Moscow Academy of Music with an emphasis on music education. He held various state positions, mostly approved by the Soviet government. When in 1948 his 2nd symphony and his cello concerto met with disapproval, he switched to composing some 25 scores for films. His ballet Spartacus was praised as a masterpiece by Moscow critics. He was awarded his 2nd Stalin prize for the ballet Gayane, but he returned it, asking for the money to be used for a tank for the Red Army. His compositions draw on Armenian folk music tradition.

Philippe Hersant (b. 1948 Rome)
Bamyan
Following his musical studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Hersant was offered a bursary to study at the Casa de Velásquez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, from 1970 to 1972 and then at the Villa Medici from 1978 to 1980. He currently lives in Paris. He has composed music for solo instruments, choir, orchestra, chamber music, opera and ballet.

Hersant composed Bamyan in 2002 as a set piece for the International Lily Laskine Contest. It is described as a meditation on beauty and barbarism, intended to produce a sense of contemplation and mourning for the listener.

Marcel Samuel Rousseau (1882 - 1955 Paris)
Variations pastorales sur un vieux noël
French composer, organist and opera director Rousseau studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won the Prix de Rome in 1905. He was for many years professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatory and from 1941 to 1944 he directed the Opéra National de Paris. An expert in chromatic harmony with a strong sense of the dramatic, he is best remembered for his operas, though he also composed music for orchestra, piano, ballet and songs. He was highly influenced by Gabriel Fauré.

Dedicated to his friend Marcel Tournier Variations Pastorales Sur Un Vieux ‎Noël was composed in 1917. The variations begins with a calm theme before developing into eight contrasting variations and a conclusion.

— INTERVAL —

Lauren Scott (b.1971)
Flight of the angel (behind the mask)
Lauren Scott is an experienced solo, chamber and orchestral musician. She also composes and arranges for harps, provides expert tuition and workshops in person and online, and instigates and promotes harp projects. Her unique and dynamic style of composing was recently honoured with a PRS Foundation “Women Make Music” grant and her music has been broadcast on BBC3, Scala Radio and included on BBC Introducing and Apple Music playlists.

Flight of the angel (behind the mask) is a new piece by Lauren Scott for solo pedal harp commissioned and performed by Alex Rider at the Three Palaces Festival in Malta in November 2024.

Music for chorale and harp

Benjamin Britten (1913 Lowestoft -1976 Aldeburgh)
A Ceremony of Carols
Being born on St Cecilia’s day almost predestined Benjamin Britten to a life dedicated to music. One of Britain’s greatest composers, he was a pianist and conductor. His compositions include opera and song-cycles and reached a mass audience. In the tradition of Parry, Vaughan Williams and Holst he maintained a strong interest in the work of amateurs and children. You may remember a performance of Noye’s Fludde in Canterbury Cathedral in which many local children sang. Much admired throughout the world, he was a friend to many musicians including Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya, Dietrich Fischer-Diskau and Janet Baker, not to forget the tenor Peter Piers for whom he composed many of his vocal roles.

A Ceremony of Carols, op. 28 for voice and harp, was composed in 1942 on his return voyage by sea from the USA. A choral composition for Christmas, it consists of carols in eleven movements, scored for three-part treble chorus, solo voices and harp. The text is in Middle English, Modern English or Latin. The initial Procession and concluding Recession allow for the singers to enter and leave the venue. If not all the singers are in place on time the procession can be repeated canon-like. At the end the singers retreat while singing, so it is a mirror to the procession, with the voices fading into the distance. It was originally conceived as a series of unrelated songs and later unified into one, with the Prelude and Recession framing it.

A Ceremony of Carols
1.   Procession “Hodie Christus natus est"
2.   Wolcum Yole!
3.   There is no Rose
4.   That yongë child
5.   Balulalow
6.   As dew in Aprille
7.   This little Babe
8.   Interlude - This instrumental movement is a harp solo, creating a sense of angelic bliss with its slow       tempo, shifting rhythm, and progressively soft nature!
9.   In freezing winter night
10. Spring Carol
11. Deo Gracias!
12. Recession “Hodie Christus natus est"