PATRIC STANDFORD (b. 1939)

Patric Standford's musical activities have always reflected a broad field of interest.  He has a facility for creating music of energy or lyrical sensitivity, appropriate whatever the occasion and in an idiom that may challenge but remains accessible.  He takes a pride in the structural skills he learned as a pupil of Edmund Rubbra whilst at the Guildhall School of Music in London, and later with Gianfrancesco Malipiero with whom he studied in Venice on the proceeds of the Mendelssohn Scholarship award.  He is a craftsman who values the craftsmanship.    

It is with the art of orchestration that he has found most pleasure, and his orchestral works have received many international awards.  His first Symphony The Seasons, written in 1972, gained for him his first major prize, the Premio Cittá di Trieste, and that was followed by the Oscar Espla Prize in Spain for his Symphony No 2;  the Yugoslavian Government's 1974 award for his oratorio Christus Requiem, and in 1983 the Ernst Ansermet Prize of the City of Geneva in 1983 for his choral symphony Toward Paradise. 

Most recently he has been awarded the first prize in the 1997 International Composers' Competition in Budapest for a choral and orchestral 'masque in four scenes', The Prayer of Saint Francis.   His 5th Symphony was commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and a 6th Symphony is currently in the making along with his haunting opera about the 15th century poet Francois Villon.   Whilst Standford's symphonic output has received such wide international recognition, he has also devoted much time and care to the production of lighter music, both as composer, orchestral conductor and arranger.   

His practical skill in orchestration was largely acquired in the field of rapidly produced commercial arrangements for West End shows and television during the 1960s and 1970s.  He worked for a time with the instrumental rock group Continuum for whom he wrote an album recorded by RCA in 1972, and he was even employed as a 'ghost writer' of music for symphonic recordings and films - one such piece was the Rod McKuen Cello Concerto, written and recorded in just ten days!    

All this, together with a constant curiosity for old music and the musical folklore of Eastern Europe and Asia, combine to make a unique musical personality who is able to call upon the widest variety of sources with confident understanding, and turn them to serve the magical world from which he draws his own fascinating musical ideas and creations.   

Standford is well known in Britain as a university lecturer and teacher with eloquence, energy and great insight.  He has been an occasional lecturer at universities and colleges in Europe and USA, where he has also supervised composition workshops for students.   He has served on many international juries, especially for choral festivals in Hungary, France and Estonia.  And in addition to his work as a composer, he is an active music journalist, writer, critic and broadcaster.

'Rhythmically exhilarating, harmonically exciting . . .'

1.  Prayer of St. Francis
Hungarian Radio Orchestra & Chorus
cond. Tamás Vásáry
CD BR0156 (from the Kodály Institute, Budapest)