Author Archive for David Hackbridge Johnson
Freda Swain: A Composer Unboxed
The composer David Hackbridge Johnson reacts with surprise to the piano music of the unknown Freda Swain (1902–85) – whose music, after her death, spent…
Too Many Symphonies? — Part two: Fridrich Bruk
Having traversed the symphonies of Robert Keeley in Part One of this brief survey (Too Many Symphonies – Part One – posted on 9 March…
Too Many Symphonies? – Part One: Rob Keeley
Sometime in the 1950s, when John Barbirolli famously said ‘there are too many symphonies this year, or any year’, he might have been weary after…
Elcock: From One Fifth To Another
Steve Elcock has mastered the fast introduction. A device favoured by Berlioz gets a new lease of life: both Elcock’s Third (2005–10) and this new…
An Infinity of Traces: Influence Without Anxiety
I often play a kind of party game with friends: each participant will offer a recording of a piece of music by a less-well-known composer,…
Recording my Tone Poems in Liepāja
The first thing I noticed was the trees. Once we were out of Riga airport, they soon crowded up to the edge of the road;…