Wilson - A Child's London

Richard Wilson A Child’s London Narrated Suite for Piano

1. London Bus .......................................... 2 2. Primrose Hill Park ................................. 4 3. On Regent’s Canal ............................... 6 4. Mrs. Orang-outang ............................... 8 5. Costumes at the Victoria and Albert ..... 9 6. Tact and Diplomacy ............................ 10 7. Roundabout ........................................ 12

A Child's London was composed in London in 1984 for my daughter Katherine, then aged 8, who was having piano lessons with our neighbor Ricci Horenstein. It was at Ms. Horenstein's suggestion that I wrote a group of pieces Katherine could play depicting the London she knew. At a later point, upon orchestrating the music, I devised a whimsical narration connecting the movements. This entailed adding "Tact and Diplomacy" to the original piano suite.

—Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson was born in Cleveland, where he studied piano with Leonard Shure and cello with Ernst Silberstein. Much of his early musical study, including composition, took place at the Cleveland Music School Settlement. Upon graduation from Harvard, he received the Frank Huntington Beebe Award, which afforded him the opportunity to study piano in Munich with Friedrich Wührer and composition in Rome with Robert Moevs, his composition professor at Harvard.

Wilson has composed over one hundred works, ranging from solo tuba to full orchestra, which have been played in major halls around the world. Among those who have performed his music are Dawn Upshaw; Amy Burton; Jan Opalach; Mary Nessinger; Rolf Schulte; Sophie Shao; Blanca Uribe; Ursula Oppens; Fred Sherry; Walter Trampler; the Chicago Quartet; the Muir Quartet; the Delmé Quartet; the Composers Quartet; the San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt; the Residentie Orkest of the Hague under Gerald Ostkamp; the London Philharmonic, the Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Sau Paulo Symphony, and the American Symphony all under Leon Botstein; and the Orquesta Sinfonica de Colombia under Luis Biava.

Wilson has received numerous awards, including the Walter Hinrichsen Award and an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Creative Arts Award in Music from the City of Cleveland, the Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a Guggenheim Fellowship under which he composed his opera Æthelred the Unready. He is composer-in-residence with the American Symphony. From 1966 to 2016, he taught at Vassar College, where he was Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Music.

for Katherine

A CHILD'S LONDON

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Little Katherine was lost. She found London very confusing. Left in the lurch by her absent-minded father, she stumbled along a crowded road when a great, red double-decker bus appeared and stopped. Katherine reached into her pocket and pulled out some coins. She decided to take the plunge. She boarded the bus.

1. London Bus

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As the bus advanced along Prince Albert Road there was suddenly a loud report. A tire had exploded.

The bus tipped precariously to one side. Poor Katherine. She jumped off and hurried down the road, which ran along Primrose Hill.

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What Katherine had always wanted was to ride one of the paddle boats on Regent's Canal. Was this to be her great chance? She summoned all her courage and spoke to the boatman. “Even though I am only eight, I am precocious and intrepid. May I ride a boat all by myself?” The boatman was dubious—but he agreed.

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8 Katherine piloted the paddle boat with a wonderful sureness of touch. It glided gently along the canal, safely clear of the other boats. As she came along side the London Zoo, she felt a great desire to stop and visit the Orang-outang cage. She had once met Mrs. Orang-outang through a mutual friend of her father's. She thought it would be fun to see her again and catch up on the family.

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Mrs. Orang-outang was vexed. An exhibit of costumes at the Victoria and Albert Museum, recently put on display, had falsely represented certain of her relatives as apes and gorillas. She was considering taking legal action. Katherine advised quiet negotiations. She would visit the exhibition herself and see what could be done. She then hailed a taxi and rode to South Kensington.

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The museum director was initially cranky and intractable. But Katherine applied her wizardly charm and he became unexpectedly amenable.

6. Tact and Diplomacy

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He agreed to alter the exhibition to suit Mrs. Orang-outang's wishes. Feeling that her diplomacy had paid off, Katherine rewarded herself with a visit to Battersea Amusement Park where she whiled away the evening riding the Merry-Go-Round.

7. Roundabout

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