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"Music, of all the arts, is the one that is the most difficult to make completely original."
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Hugh Wood |
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Vital Stats: Born at Parbold, England, on June 27, 1932, to a pianist mother. Studies history at Oxford before taking up musical study fulltime with Anthony Milner, Iain Hamilton and Matyas Seiber.
Selected Recordings: Three concerti, four string quartets, "The Kingdom of God" (a choral work composed for St Paul's Cathedral Choir first performed during the City of London Festival, in July 1994. Most recently completes Horn Trio.
Achievements: Hugh Wood has taught music at the Royal Academy of Music (1962-1975), Glasgow (1966-1970) and Liverpool (1971-1975) universities and Cambridge, where he is a fellow at Churchill College. Performs an early string quartet at the Cheltenham Festival in 1959. Goes on to write additional quartets and trios -- for strings, pianos, flutes and horn trio composed in response to a Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award he receives in 1985. Composes a chamber concerto for the London Sinfonietta and a brass quintet for the 1992 Three Choirs Festival. In addition, he has written Songs to poems by Laurie Lee, Robert Graves, Ted Hughes, Pablo Neruda, a setting of T.S. Eliot's "Marina" and, most recently, a cantata to words by D.H. Lawrence
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Hugh Wood
Hugh Wood's work covers a wide range including a piano trio, a flute trio (with viola and piano), a quintet for clarinet, a horn and piano trio, a chamber concerto commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and a brass quintet commissioned by the 1992 Three Choirs Festival — Funeral Music. His orchestral writing includes concerti for cello, violin and piano; the symphonic cantata "Scenes from Comus” (1962-1965) based on Milton's "Masque" and a symphony.
His fondness for poetry has been the inspiration for many of Wood's songs. He has set to music a number of poems by Robert Graves, Laurie Lee, Ted Hughes, Pablo Neruda and T.S. Eliot (Marina) and even wrote a cantata to the words of D.H. Lawrence.
Many of Wood's works have been recorded, among them all three concerti, four of his string quartets, "The Kingdom of God” (a choral work composed for St Paul's Cathedral Choir, first performed by them in St Paul's Cathedral during the City of London Festival in July 1994) and most recently his horn trio. His "Variations for the BBC Symphony Orchestra” was performed at the last night of the Proms in 1998.
Sentimental fantasies
When he reflects on his long career, Wood is adamant that no matter which direction he might have taken, music would have played a central role. He believes little in the divisions between popular and so-called serious music. There is, he says, simply good music and bad music.
"It's pure sentimental fantasy,” confides Wood, ”but I must say I would have loved to have spent my life conducting a small theater orchestra for musical shows and doing arrangements night after night and living in that side of the world, which is so much more genuine than the highbrow music world.”
Indeed, Wood did manage to smuggle a few seconds of "that other world” into the slow movement of his piano concerto, "as a nostalgia for the life I have never had,” he confesses before hastily adding, "I am afraid it is fantasy ... I don't think I could stand the pace really.”
A critic once described Wood as "a craftsman who painstakingly polishes his works," and this might explain Wood's secrecy regarding what he is presently working on. "I don't ever tell,” he says, adding mischievously, ”you can ask me again in a few years time and I still won't have finished it."
Breandáin O'Shea
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