Music
 
 
Events
 
 
Repertoire
 
 
Resources
 
 
Reviews
 
 
Links
 
 
Contact
 
About Peter Fribbins

The music of Peter Fribbins combines a gift for melody, drama and passion, with a directness and uncompromising clarity:

‘...The composer’s distinction from many of his contemporaries rests principally on his willingness and ability to communicate: his music has clarity of expression and a post-Beethovenian resonance, often giving an illusion of Romanticism. Unusual chords characterise the music and beguile the listener; rarely are they detached altogether from some tonal source, yet this tonality is frustrated at most turns...
“As one of the group of English composers primarily striving to develop the compositional line pursued by Britten and Tippett, he has the matchless gift of melodic invention and a sense of dramatic agitation ... His compositions create the impression of straightforward communicativeness and are extremely popular and sought-after.” – Programme note by Dr Christopher Dromey, 2011
 
     
 
Frequently performed throughout the UK, Europe and beyond, Fribbins’s music appeals both to audiences and musicians who enjoy playing his work. As the Czech musicologist and critic Miloš Pokora wrote following a performance by the Rosamunde Piano Frequently performed throughout the UK, Europe and beyond, Fribbins’s music appeals both to audiences and musicians who enjoy playing his work. As the Czech musicologist and critic Miloš Pokora wrote following a performance by the Rosamunde Piano Trio in Prague:
Peter Fribbins was born in London in 1969, winning a composition scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 17 and subsequently studying at Royal Holloway and Nottingham universities. Studies with the German composer Hans Werner Henze led to the staging of his collaborative opera ‘Anna Bella’ in Italy when still only 20.

One of the key aspects of his musical voice, and to its satisfying resonance and richness, is the way his music relates to and builds upon the great music of the past, essentially from the English and European tradition. This is not limited to music, since many of his works draw upon literary or poetic inspirations: indeed, this has become a distinctive feature of his music. Examples include the early Wind Quintet 'In Xanadu' (after Coleridge) runner-up in the 1991 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize; 'Porphyria’s Lover' for flute and piano (after Browning); '...That Which Echoes in Eternity' (after lines from Dante’s Divine Comedy and which exists in versions for clarinet, or violin, or cello, all with piano); the first string quartet 'I Have the Serpent Brought' (based upon an early seventeenth-century poem ‘Twicknam Garden’ by John Donne); the single movement piano trio 'Softly, in the Dusk...'(commissioned by the Rosamunde Trio for their 2007 Wigmore Hall debut, and based on a short and haunting poem by D.H. Lawrence).
 
     
 
Recent recordings

'I Have the Serpent Brought
'
was the title for the 2010 Guild CD of Fribbins’s chamber music for strings, which included, as well as the Allegri Quartet String Quartet’s readings of Quartet No.1 and the Clarinet Quintet, the Cello Sonata recorded by Raphael Wallfisch and John York and the Piano Trio (originally commissioned by the Austrian Government and premiered in Vienna in 2004):

‘…an immensely rewarding collection of chamber music... I sincerely feel Fribbins is a confident, young voice in composition, respectful of past chamber-music style and secure and inventive with tonality. Just the caliber of the artists participating on this recording proves I am not alone in wishing these works gain wider currency… This is an elegantly performed collection of music that can be alternately wistful, savage, respectful of tradition, and yet also playful. If Fribbins is not the most cutting-edge of new composers, then he is certainly the best-informed and one of the bravest to toe the tonal line. A winner, I hope.’ - Barnaby Rayfield: ‘ “Fanfare” Magazine for Serious Record Collectors', 2011
 
     
 
May 2012 heralded a new CD release, including the recent Piano Concerto (premièred to a packed Cadogan Hall in 2011, with Diana Brekalo, Robertas Šervenikas and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), String Quartet No.2 ‘After Cromer’, recorded by the Chilingirian Quartet (who commissioned the work in 2005) and the Fantasias for Viola & Piano (performed by the eminent duo Sarah-Jane Bradley and Anthony Hewitt).

In 2008, Fribbins was invited to be one of a number of composers to contribute a piece to the Primrose Piano Quartet's project 'Variations on a Burns Air', to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth. This was performed by the Quartet through England and Scotland and released on the Meridian label together with the new Piano Quartet by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
 
     
 
Recent and Current projects
The dual commemoration of Haydn's bicentenary and John McCabe's 70th birthday in 2009, led to the writing of 'A Haydn Prelude' for piano, premièred at the Presteigne Festival by Huw Watkins as part of ‘Haydn Fantasies’, a set of pieces composed by seven notable British composers. It was favourably reviewed in the Daily Telegraph and his particular piece widely disseminated in the International Piano Magazine in 2010.
 
     
 
 
 

Behind Huw Watkins and John McCabe,
from left: Peter Fribbins, George Vass (Festival Director), John Hawkins,
David Matthews, Matthew Taylor, Hugh Wood, Alan Mills, James Francis Brown
 
     
 
2010 also marked the première of ‘Dances & Laments’, a violin and cello duo commissioned by Philippe Graffin for the Consonances Festival in France, and performed in the remarkable venue of the abandoned Second World War German submarine base in St Nazaire.
 
UK premiere: Kings Place London, January 2012
 
     
 
   
As well as the Piano Concerto, other notable premières in 2011 included the ‘The Zong Affair’, a septet commissioned by the new 'Turner Ensemble' (formed mostly by principals of the Royal Opera House Orchestra at Covent Garden) and based on the painting ‘Slaveship’ by J.W. Turner.
 
     
 
In 2012, a new ‘Aquarelle’ for solo piano to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Claude Debussy was premiered in April by Clare Hammond (alongside ‘Aquarelles’ by four other British composers) at the ‘Two Rivers Festival’ on the Wirral, Liverpool and at also at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.
 
     
 
L to R: Composers Robin Walker, Peter Fribbins, David Matthews, pianist Clare Hammond,
composers James Francis Brown, Alan Mills and Debussy Festival Director Peter Davison.
 
 
 
 
In May, the US premiere of the Cello Sonata was given by Dave Eggar and Olga Vinokur in the ‘Bargemusic’ series in New York, a renowned concert series given on an old river boat moored in the Hudson River.
 
     
 

Other premieres for 2012 include a setting of a Wordsworth poem, to be premiered by Gillian Keith (soprano) & Simon Lepper (piano) at the Presteigne Festival on the Welsh borders in August.

Since his creative work is very much about reaching audiences through dramatic expression and communication, a natural extension comes in his parallel roles as Director of Music at Middlesex University, and Artistic Director of the celebrated and long-established series of Sunday London Chamber Music Society Concerts, resident in the splendid new Kings Place concert hall since 2008.

 
     
 
 
     

 

 

cheap nike huarache, cheap air max 90 black,cheap skechers, cheap air max 95,cheap foamposites, cheap air max 95,cheap air max cheap air max 90,fake ray bans