Alan Rawsthorne - Light Music (Catalan Tunes) for Strings (1938)

Alan Rawsthorne (2 May 1905 – 24 July 1971) was a British composer. He was born in Haslingden, Lancashire, and is buried in Thaxted churchyard in Essex.

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Light Music for String Orchestra based on Catalan Tunes (1938)
Dedication: For the Workers Music Association

Northern Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones

LIGHT MUSIC FOR STRINGS was written in 1938 for the Workers Music Association who first performed and published it. Originally called Three Catalan Tunes, indicating the composer’s sympathies for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War, the three short movements were written with amateur players in mind. The present name was suggested by Rawsthorne’s publisher Alan Frank when Oxford University Press republished the work in 1958.

Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971) studied architecture and dentistry before entering the Royal Manchester College of Music to study piano, cello and composition. After graduating in 1929 he went abroad for further piano studies with Egon Petri. Like his near contemporary and fellow Lancastrian William Walton, Rawsthorne showed his own distinctive voice from the earliest of his published compositions. His music is marked by clarity of expression, craftsmanship, concision and where fitting, a laconic wit. He came to international attention with his Theme and Variations for Two Violins (1937) and his orchestral Symphonic Studies (1938). Rawsthorne published some seventy works in most of the established forms. Though widely performed during his lifetime he is now remembered mainly for Symphonic Studies, Street Corner Overture, and the two Piano Concertos and his setting for speaker and orchestra of six of T.S.Eliot’s Practical Cats. He wrote 27 film scores including The Captive Heart and The Cruel Sea. Most of the orchestral and chamber music has been recorded by Naxos, the film music by Chandos and Practical Cats by Classics for Pleasure and Dutton.

(Program note © 2012 Tony Pickard)