A composer of highly poetic and beautifully crafted works, we are very pleased to present Paul Archbold with an initial selection of works, focusing mainly on chamber music. Always presented with elegant clarity, Archbold’s musical ideas have attracted some of the very finest musicians including the Arditti and Kreutzer string quartets, ensembles such as Gemini and Ensemble Exposé, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Nominated for a Gramophone Critic’s Choice, the Metier release of chamber music helped his music gain international recognition and festival programming.
Archbold says on joining Composers Edition:
I am delighted to join Composers Edition, a company that Dan and his great team have expanded to encompass a rich diversity of refreshing voices, young and old. My selection of nine scores includes recent work for the oboist Christopher Redgate and Arditti Quartet, and some earlier works recorded on the CD Wind Up: chamber music of Paul Archbold and Fabrice Fitch. At the moment, I am working on a cello duo for Neil Heyde and Rohan de Saram and a further quartet for Arditti Quartet.
We look forward to working with Paul, sharing the fruits of these collaborations with fine performers. The quality of Archbold’s writing is evident from a first glance of any of his scores, as is evident in the first works available now at Composers Edition.
…and the unseen eyebeam crossed…
for orchestra
A ‘composed act of perception’ taking its title from the first movement of
T.S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton in which the reader is led into a magical
garden of childhood innocence where the roses are subtly changed in the
presence of the onlooker.
Be not afeard
for children’s voices and piano
For the New London Children’s Choir on their twenty-fifth anniversary.
Études en mouvement (Volume 1)
for solo piano
Virtuoso studies in shaping the perceived flow of time, each given as gifts and dedicated to friends.
Impacts and Fractures
for string quartet
Written for the Kreutzer String Quartet, the musicians being treated as a homogenous ensemble from which the individual instruments attempt to escape.
Nine Memos
for string quartet
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s series of Harvard Lectures Six Memos for the Next Millennium, each of the nine sections explores a different musical metaphor: light, weight, arabesque, multiplicity, transparency, intensity, fire, stillness, velocity.
Of Crossed Destinies
for solo harp
Taking its title from Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies, the work consists of three ‘tales’ enclosed by a frame. All the tales share melodic figures and harmonic progressions, yet have different characters and directions. The whole work is constrained by a sombre mode.
Pas de deux
for viola and piano
In six movements, each exploring distinctive acoustic properties of the instruments in a dance of delicate sonorities.
Two Pieces
for oboe and piano
The first movement exploits the microtonal and lyrical capabilities of the Howarth-Redgate oboe surrounded by ethereal piano sonorities. With the second movement, the instruments pursue independent rhythmic paths racing towards some unseen goal.
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Tags: Arditti Quartet, Briget Carey, Christopher Redgate, Kreutzer Quartet, Paul Archbold
