Hugh Wood

Solid Wood

Though he began his life as a man who studies history, British composer Hugh Wood has instead made history with his music -- regarded as some of England's finest contemporary compositions.

Many of the world's leading conductors and musicians have hailed him as one of Britain's finest composers, but Hugh Wood remains modest about his achievements.

Born in 1932 in Parbold, England, he initially went to Oxford to read history. But there was no sign early in his life that he would take this path -- his mother was a pianist and music had been an active force in his life from early on.

"It just so happened I got a history scholarship to New College Oxford and that rather determined what I studied," he says. "The comic thing is that I reacted so much against history that I went out and sold all my history books that I have spent the rest of my life buying back.”

Changing tracks

After switching to music, Wood studied composition with a number of teachers, including Anthony Milner, Iain Hamilton and Matyas Seiber. Wood himself has also given back to a younger generation -- teaching music regularly at London's Royal Academy of Music, at the universities of Glasgow and Liverpool and at Cambridge, where he is a fellow at Churchill College. Though music became the dominant force in his life, history has continued to influence his work.

"It gives you standards to live by,” he says. "I depend a lot on what people have done in the past and I have an unusual respect for it, particularly the German-Austrian tradition."

Wood believes composers of earlier periods were more technically proficient than many today.

"In the past, they just composed and there wasn't this intense self-consciousness and that must be good for everyone,” he reflects. "There was not this sort of split sensibility and this feeling of having to be in touch with or react against the times, which is a danger for many people.”

Music for strings and brass

As a composer, Wood has tended to prefer chamber music genres. One of his early string quartet was performed at the Cheltenham Festival in 1959. He recently completed his fifth composition for the Lindsay String Quartet.

An invaluable influence on his work, he says, has been composing for specific ensembles and working with certain musicians in mind. "It is nice if there is somebody there to say, 'I shouldn't do that if I were you.'” "My fourth quartet was dedicated to the Chilingarian Quartet. I wrote for them because they have been such good friends to my music and to me over so many years.”

His three concerti were conceived for three specific musicians. ”My cello concerto was written for Jacqueline Du Pré. I was one of so many who were completely stunned by the musical personality of this musician," Wood confides. ”I had hoped that she might play it one day, but this never came about.” Sarah Nelsen premiered the concerto and her performance, says Wood, was just as if it had been written for her.
Wood consciously designed his piano concerto for Joanna Macgregor, one of Britain's leading pianists. Composing for Macgregor, he admits, presented certain challenges. "I tried to work in particular interests of hers like jazz piano” he says " I also tried to make it difficult enough for her, which is a great problem to really give soloists something for them to get their teeth into.”

There is obvious satisfaction in hearing a performance by musicians with whom one has worked closely while creating the work, but many other performances have been surprisingly satisfying for Wood, too.

"When somebody who has studied the piece, perhaps in isolation away from oneself, then comes up with a performance which is perhaps not what one conceived at all but is a very valid alternative way of doing it, this can be very gratifying. It is very much a question of tempos. If they get it quite right, but just perform it differently, I absolutely welcome that.”

He goes on to stress the importance of this aspect of music making. "That's why we have performed music and we don't listen entirely to recorded music -- because each performance is slightly different,” says Wood, before adding: "It is not written down in stone, and one who believes that is a fool ... they might be a genius, but they're a fool.”