Peter Phillips

Easy listening | 11 February 2012

issue 11 February 2012

There is only one place these days where the music of Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) sends its hearers into reliable ecstasy, and that is in choirs and places where they sing. Otherwise he is something of a bust. Despite having written seven symphonies, nine operas, 11 concertos (including three piano, two violin, a cello and a clarinet), eight string quartets and countless songs, piano pieces and other chamber works, he is now celebrated for a tiny fraction of his output.

Stanford himself thought that to be renowned as a composer of Anglican Church music was not enough. He wanted to be measured alongside international (i.e., German) stars, and so went to Berlin to study with the leading teachers of the day, and in particular to meet Brahms. His respect for Brahms’s take on the romantic orchestral tradition never wavered, and he was responsible for several first performances in the UK of some of the master’s most important works.

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