Kenneth Hesketh
(b.1968) www.kennethhesketh.co.uk
was born in Liverpool, England and began composing whilst a chorister at
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, completing his first work for orchestra at the
age of thirteen. He studied at the Royal College of Music, London with Edwin
Roxburgh, Joseph Horovitz and Simon Bainbridge and attended Tanglewood in 1995
as the Leonard Bernstein Fellow where he studied with Henri Dutilleux. After
completing a Master's degree in Composition at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, USA, a series of awards followed, the Shakespeare Prize scholarship from
the Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, an award from the Liverpool Foundation for
Sport and the Arts and the Constant and Kit Lambert Fellowship at the Royal
College of Music.
From 2003 to 2005 he was New Music Fellow at Kettle's Yard
and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he curated a series of new music
chamber concerts. The Fondation André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud prize was
awarded to Hesketh at the 2004 Concours International de Piano d'Orléans after
a performance of his Three Japanese
Miniatures by pianist Daniel Becker. In 2007, Hesketh took up the position
of Composer in the House with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for
two years.
Hesketh’s compositions range across opera, dance, orchestral,
chamber, choral, vocal and solo as well as music for wind and brass bands. He has
worked with leading ensembles and orchestras in Europe, the USA, and the Far
East and has received commissions from the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the BBC
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the
Göttinger Symphonie Orchester and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He has
worked with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Vasilly Sinaisky, Vasily
Petrenko, Susanna Malkki, Ludovic Morlot, Pascal Rophé and Oliver Knussen and
soloists such as Nicholas Daniel, Sarah Leonard, Rodney Clarke, Christopher
Redgate, Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Clare Hammond.
Kenneth Hesketh is professor of composition and
orchestration at the Royal College of Music, honorary professor at Liverpool
University and active as a guest lecturer and visiting professor.
Pianist, Clare Hammond http://clarehammond.com
, who has just won the RPS Young Artist
Award, which celebrates outstanding achievement in 2015, has recorded a
number of Kenneth Hesketh’s piano works for a new disc just released by BIS
Records www.bis.se
 |
| SACD BIS 2193 |
The title of Through
Magic Casements (2008) refers to Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale. Indeed it
opens with ripples and chirrups, iridescent phrases seen through dissonance
harmonies, falling and building through some wonderful passages occasionally reminiscent
of Scriabin in their harmonies and development. Later staccato phrases bring a
new development of the theme before easing to allow the rippling phrases to be
heard, soon finding a quiet, slowly picked out passage and a final little
chirrup in the hushed coda.
The major work on this disc, Horae (Pro Clara) (Breviary for Clare) (2011/12), was written for
Clare Hammond and premiered at the Cheltenham Festival in 2013. It is a series
of twelve miniatures that form a breviary or book of hours. None of the
movements are titled but do have specific performance directions. The first
movement is marked Transparente
(diaphanous) and has a gentle opening to which Clare Hammond brings a
terrific clarity and delicacy. The theme is built through some wonderfully
constructed passages, finding quite lovely harmonies, textures and colours.
Velocissima assai (as
fleet as the tiniest humming bird) achieves a similar transparency of sound,
with a jewel like brilliance and clarity. As it develops with hints of
Messiaen, this pianist provides the most fluent and finely coloured phrases.
Hesketh develops the most exquisite moments from the simplest of ideas in Semplice. Hammond’s phrasing is wonderful,
creating just the right feel, building in strength before finding a hushed coda.
Agilmente (maniaco ed
instabile - with never-ceasing energy) bursts forth in a torrent of
rippling phrases, again with a terrific brilliance and clarity, this pianist revealing
a fine structure as the music develops through rhythmically varying passages of
great forward thrust. Diretto, ancora
fluido (like the splash and suspension of water droplets) opens with sudden
phrases underpinned by a low chord before the music ripples gently ahead. There
are more sudden dynamic outbursts with Hammond providing a terrific fluidity
and power in this wonderfully descriptive music.
Nervoso, ma dolce
(flessibile) has a gentle opening with some lovely restrained harmonies.
The constant yet subtly shifting tempi perfectly caught here by this pianist.
This is music of the utmost delicacy and sensibility. Capriccioso brings firm chords in the lower register overlaid by
bright phrases that soon vary in tempo and rhythm before a quieter trickling
passage that leads to the coda. Ritmico
(giusto) (like intertwining chime clocks) / Flessibile gently meanders
forward with rippling phrases, bringing a fine delicacy, subtly developing and
gaining in strength. Clare Hammond sets out wonderfully the overlaid musical
ideas with subtle textures from the strings of the piano.
Capriccioso (impishly
sardonic) leaps in rhythmically and playfully, jumping around full of
unexpected intervals, rhythms and tempi. Scorrevole
(ma meccanico) (like an ‘evening full of the linnet's wings’) rippling
phrases flow forward, subtly shifting in harmonies that bring a lightness and
freedom. Indolente (...lapping, with low
sounds) opens slowly with lovely little chords that slowly increase in
weight, rising and retreating with moments of delicate fluidity. The music
develops more intensity, yet falls away to a quiet coda.
A motif very slowly develops in the opening of Molto misterioso, desolate (‘for now we see
through a glass, darkly’). There are sudden little rhythmic skips before finding
a more powerful emotion. The music returns to a quieter, gentle and thoughtful passage
creating a withdrawn feeling. Hammond explores all the little delicate details
before suddenly taking off in a faster passage that has sudden changes of tempi
and dynamics before easing back to allow for a long dying phrase to fade.
A formidable achievement by Clare Hammond in music that has
by turns delicacy, brilliance, power and freedom.
Notte Oscura (2002) was
written as a piano transcription of the first interlude of Hesketh’s opera The Overcoat, with some additional
material form the first scene of Act 1. Here the composer takes Gogol’s
description of St. Petersburg’s most powerful foe – the Northern cold. Slow,
low chords open, broadening into lighter phrases with little trills in the
right hand as the music slowly develops. Hesketh brings a withdrawn chill to
this music that develops more florid moments through a more flowing passage.
Hammond shows brilliant fluency and sense of structure, building through some
terrific passages of falling and rising phrases, always with a sense of
underlying tension before finding a calmer coda.
Three Japanese
Miniatures (2002) are fragments and paraphrases on material from a work by
Hesketh for chamber orchestra, itself from a puppet ballet based on Japanese
folk tales. Temple Music opens with broad
chords before leaping into crashing chords and fast moving phrases. There is nothing
pastiche here; Hesketh brings his own individual descriptive style. There are sudden
little trills and a series of repeated chords that become increasingly strong before
finding a quieter use of the opening chords before a delicate, unresolved end. Ripping
chords open The Cradle Rocks gently and
quietly, this pianist finding some lovely gentle, delicate phrases. Again it is
her sensitivity to the music’s delicate phrases and harmonies that is
impressive. The music later finds a slightly more flowing nature, still with
hesitant phrases before building in strength only to find a gentle, delicate
coda. Little Bumbuku opens with a sudden
brittle, staccato idea, developed through some remarkable passages of ever
changing ideas, this pianist bringing the most terrific phrasing dynamics
before falling to a wonderfully conceived, quiet and gentle coda.
Clare Hammond gives stunning performances that bring out all
the poetry, delicacy, power, fluency, rhythmic buoyancy and sheer virtuosity contained
in these striking works.
She receives a first rate SACD recording that provides both
tremendous clarity and a fine piano tone and there are excellent booklet notes
from the pianist.
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