3 Sonatas for Piano - new publication

“… a sonata by Tom Ingoldsby, inspired by a Rodin sculpture and condensing the fast-slow-fast format into a fluid single movement whose timbral finesse and rhythmic vitality echo other pieces by this distinctive and increasingly significant composer.”

“When recording companies are snuffling around film soundtracks and issuing them as “classical”, they could raise their eyes a lot higher and come upon the music of Tom Ingoldsby. With a language which combines generous approachability with genuine seriousness of purpose, the output of this rock-turned-classical musician is fearlessly cast in forms used for centuries.  His latest premier, for example, was of a concert overture, They Once Were ….  Given its first hearing at Friday’s concert climaxing Birmingham Conservatoire’s “Music Xtra” Festival, this rumination on the story behind a Rodin Sculpture proved a convincing dovetailing of incident and texture, with at the heart of its structure an extended “frozen” interlude contrasting with all the often irascible energy which teemed from its colourful scoring. “

“ … the undoubted highlight of the concert – Tom Ingoldsby's Wave Etchings. In essence a three-movement piano concerto of outwardly classical design, it displays an engaging awareness of the 'dissonant counterpoint' that flourished in North American music among composers as diverse as Ruggles, Sessions and, on occasion, Copland. Yet there is a Bergian richness and luminosity to Ingoldsby's orchestral writing, ideally complementing the Bartókian drive and, in the central movement, intimacy of the piano part – despatched with assurance by Rolf Hind. The opening movement contrasted expressive restraint with driving energy, its successor teased out finely-shaped melodic lines from nocturnal harmonies, while the finale combined soloist and orchestra in an energetic toccata that kept up momentum through to the close.  Apparently the work received a standing ovation at its Spanish première last year. It was certainly well received by those present at Maida Vale, orchestra as well as audience, and confirmed that Ingoldsby's is a name to watch out for.”

(Richard Whitehouse, www.classicalsource.com)

“… a most powerful work, with a very big and exciting orchestration … well-received by the public because of the immediacy of its high contemporary musical language.” 

“a bubbling array of rhythmic figures that got form and content just about in balance. Too many of the pieces in the programmes really didn’t manage that at all.”

“Which left Tom Ingoldsby’s After the Eulogy, an involving and sustained discourse in which vestiges of a four-movement layout were subsumed into the broad cumulative flow.  As in his impressive piano concerto, heard at Maida Vale last year, Ingoldsby’s in an idiom in which style is never allowed to override substance - making his music as involving to listen to as it must be gratifying to play.”

(Richard Whitehouse, www.classicalsource.com)

“Friday’s premiere, flanked by the senior partners of Beethoven and Brahms, was the Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, by the exciting young composer Tom Ingoldsby, elegantly crafted in homage to the shades of Debussy and Ravel, and imaginatively coloured and textured. Much is made of the juxtaposition of high and low registers, particularly with stark spacing of piano chords. A lengthy duet at the beginning of the second, final movement between bass-clarinet and cello is the fulcrum for this expressive resource.”

“Shorter in terms of overall length, Tom Ingoldsby’s recent [piano] sonata feels more expansive as it grows gradually and cumulatively from its opening harmonic cell.  As with his piano concerto Wave Etchings and violin sonata After the Eulogy, both reviewed on this site, there’s a real sense of ‘classical’ tonal relations being thoughtfully re-imagined for the present.”

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