Lusimus . THE RADLEY BROADSHEET Nicholas Salaman (1949) Book
In early March Nicholas Salaman launched his new book, The White Ship, at Daunt Books in the Fulham Road in
London. The actor Edward Fox who did his National Service with Nicholas, read an extract from the book.
Christopher Fauske (1976) Book drama as part of a biographical re-evaluation. Christopher Fauske places the poet’s relationship with Ireland, the Second World War, his father and the key women in his life at its centre, unravelling unprecedented considerations that challenge the critical foundations of this luminary of Irish writing.
This powerful new perspective on MacNeice’s life and work explores his poetry, prose and
Christopher J. Fauske is Professor of Communications at Salem State University and is the author of Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland (Irish Academic Press, 2002) amongst other publications on Irish literature and history.
Sir Nicholas Jackson (1948) Opera
Francis Bennett (1955) helped the author to find a suitable publisher.
London Concertante performed Sir Nicholas Jackson’s The Rose and the Ring in May at the Charterhouse in the 16th Century Great Chamber, Charterhouse Square, London.
The opera in two parts is based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s neglected masterpiece and incorporates orchestrations and adaptations of music by Domenico Scarlatti.
Robert King (1974) CD Mendelssohn famously revived Bach’s St Matthew Passion, but he was also fascinated by the music of Handel, having studied his music on a visit to London in 1829. In 1833 he revised, reorchestrated and semi-staged (with a series of tableaux vivants) Handel’s great Old Testament oratorio Israel in Egypt. It has now been reconstructed by Robert King, and the results are fascinating: burbling clarinets supply continuo, added solo recitatives fill out the sequence of choral movements, and a totally Mendelssohnian overture now kicks off the story. Handel’s masterly depictions of frogs,
plagues and other natural disasters in his choruses are enhanced (though with
German texts) in this feisty performance. The Observer
A stunning night was the RCS’s reward for a decade of support. All four pieces premiered on Tuesday reflected the musical, dramatic, theatrical and intellectual probity with which these young composers set about and achieved their aims. I was blown away by the fierce
emotional impact of Henry McPherson’s multi-media opera, Uhte, which was as pure in theatrical articulation as anything in Britten, and as raw as the most naked emotions in Maxwell Davies’ music theatre pieces; wonderfully performed on film by the BBC
SSO and Martyn Brabbins with an outstanding squad of RCS singers.
Henry McPherson (2008) From The Herald Scotland: Plug Festival review at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow. Who would have thought it a decade ago, when head of composition at the RCS,
Gordon McPherson, introduced the institution’s new music festival with the ungainly title of Plug that it would be celebrating its 10th anniversary with an opening night that drew a packed hall and the luminaries and leading composers of the Scottish music scene?
10
http://www.heraldscotland. com/arts_ents/14469901. Plug_festival_review__Red_ Note_Music_Lab_at_RCS__ Glasgow/?ref=rl&lp=1