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- BBC Music Magazine – Piano Concerto, Sea-Change and Tenebrae
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- BIS Records CD of Piano Concerto Sea Change Tenebrae Classica
- Guardian review String Quartets Nos 1 and 5
- Classical Lost and Found review string quartets nos 1 and 5
- International Record Review String Quartets Nos 1 and 5
- Toccata New Chamber Music, Volume 2.
- BBC Review Toccata Classics Chamber Music Volume Two
- Musical Opinion – an overview of The Symphonies of John Pickard
- In concert – Bristol University SO / John Pickard – The Vision of Cleopatra
- Reviews of String Quartet No.4
- Chamber Music and Tenebrae reviewed in German
- String Quartet No.5 – Brodowski Quartet at Purcell Room
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Wildfire John Pickard (b.1963)
Wildfire was commissioned by the National Youth Brass Band of Wales, who gave the first performance in 1991, conducted by Bramwell Tovey. It was my first composition for brass band and eventually formed the second part of my Gaia Symphony – an hour-long four part work that takes the four classical elements as its starting point, the constituent movements all performable as separate pieces.
The immediate stimulus for Wildfire came from reading a report in a local newspaper about a forest fire that had apparently begun in two separate areas, the walls of flame then moving towards each other.
The piece is a scherzo of great collective virtuosity, whose fast tempo is established at the outset and never relents for a single bar. It begins with just a flicker of activity and moves through a series of climaxes. Half way through, the music restarts but then progresses in quite a different direction, culminating (I hope!) in a raging furnace.
John Pickard