| Endymion | |
|---|---|
| Chamber music ensemble for contemporary music | |
 Endymion 1989 CD cover, Fazer Records / Finlandia | |
| Former name | Endymion Ensemble |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Website | www |
Endymion, formerly Endymion Ensemble, is an English chamber music ensemble, founded in 1979 and dedicated to contemporary classical music.
One of the founding members was John Whitfield who often conducted the group. Players have included pianist Michael Dussek, oboists Melinda Maxwell and Quentin Poole, clarinetist Mark van de Wiel, hornist Stephen Stirling and double bass player Chi-chi Nwanoku. [1]
Whitfield conducted the ensemble in recordings dedicated to works by specific composers, including in 1988 Dumbarton Oaks, works by Igor Stravinsky, [2] in 1989 Lichtbogen by Kaija Saariaho and other works by Finnish composers, [3] and in 1995 Phaedra/Les Illuminations, music by Benjamin Britten. [4]
In a series at the Southbank named Composer Choice, they have performed concerts dedicated to contemporary composers such as Michael Berkeley, Harrison Birtwistle, Gavin Bryars, Peter Maxwell Davies, Oliver Knussen, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir and John Woolrich. [1] Composer Jonathan Dove chose Mozart's Serenade for winds, K. 375. Stravinsky's Pastorale in the version for soprano and wind quartet, and his own Figures in the Garden, among others. [5]
In 2004, Endymion recorded works for wind ensemble by Graham Waterhouse, including Mouvements d'Harmonie , on a CD Portrait featuring also chamber music for strings played by the English Chamber Orchestra. A review noted "All these pieces are superbly played by all concerned". [6] In 2011, players performed at the Mahler Centenary Conference chamber music, including Mahler's Piano Quartet in the context of the Menuetto from his Third Symphony, Erich Korngold's Piano Trio, Op. 1, Shostakovitch's Piano Trio No. 1 and Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quartet (after Mahler). [1]
The ensemble often performs with the BBC Singers, conducted by David Hill. In 2013, they recorded for example Steve Reich's The Desert Music at Milton Court, London. [7] They performed the work again at the Royal Albert Hall on 13 August 2014 at the Proms. [8] Tim Ashley wrote in The Guardian: "The work requires vast resources of accuracy and stamina from its performers, all of whom rose superbly to its challenges." [9]
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is an English composer of classical music.
Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer and conductor.
Frank Bridge was an English composer, violist and conductor.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
David Matthews is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works.
John Whitfield was a British musician and conductor from Darlington, England.
Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
Anthony Edward Payne was an English composer, music critic and musicologist. He is best known for his acclaimed completion of Edward Elgar's third symphony, which subsequently gained wide acceptance into Elgar's oeuvre. Apart from opera, his own works include representatives of most traditional genres, and although he made substantial contributions to orchestral and choral repertoire, he is particularly noted for his chamber music. Many of these chamber works were written for his wife, the soprano Jane Manning, and the new music ensemble Jane's Minstrels, which he founded with Manning in 1988. Initially an unrelenting proponent of modernist music, by the 1980s his compositions had embraced aspects of the late romanticism of England, described by his colleague Susan Bradshaw as "modernized nostalgia". His mature style is thus characterised by a highly individualised combination of modernism and English romanticism, as well as numerology, wide spaced harmonies, specific intervallic characterisations, and the frequent alternation between strict and fluid rhythmic frameworks.
Brian Elias is a British composer.
William Waterhouse was a distinguished English bassoonist and musicologist. He played with notable orchestras, was a member of the Melos Ensemble, professor at the Royal Northern College of Music, author of the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guide "Bassoon", of The New Langwill Index, and contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read Music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music.
The Melos Ensemble is a group of musicians who started in 1950 in London to play chamber music in mixed instrumentation of string instruments, wind instruments and others. Benjamin Britten composed the chamber music for his War Requiem for the Melos Ensemble and conducted the group in the first performance in Coventry.
Raymond Yiu, born 1973; is a composer, conductor, jazz pianist and music writer.
Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and cellist, focused on chamber music. For his own instrument, he composed a cello concerto, Three Pieces for Solo Cello and Variations for Cello Solo. He has written string quartets and compositions which juxtapose a quartet with a solo instrument, including Piccolo Quintet, Bassoon Quintet and Rhapsodie Macabre. He has set poetry for speaking voice and cello, such as Der Handschuh, and has written song cycles. His compositions reflect the individual capacity and character of players and instruments, from piccolo to contrabassoon.
Graeme Peter Crump, known professionally as Peter Graeme and as 'Timmy' Crump to friends and family, was an English oboist and academic teacher. He was best known as the principal oboist of the Melos Ensemble.
Julie Price is an English bassoonist. She is bassoonist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, a chamber music recitalist and an academic teacher.
Charlotte Bray is a British composer. She was championed by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been performed by many notable conductors such as: Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Daniel Harding, and Jac van Steen.
Michael Dussek is an English pianist specialising in chamber music and song accompaniment.
Joseph Phibbs is an English composer of orchestral, choral and chamber music. He has also composed for theatre, both in the UK and Japan. Since 1998 he has written regularly to commissions for Festivals, for private sponsors, and for the BBC, which has broadcast premieres of his orchestral and chamber works from the Proms and elsewhere. His works have been given premieres in Europe, the United States and the Far East, and he has received prestigious awards, including most recently a British Composer Award, and a Library of Congress Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award. Many of his works have been premiered by leading international musicians, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, and the Belcea Quartet.
