Unfoldings – Barry Mills – Vol. 10 – CC6054

Description

STRING QUARTET (2023)

This piece was composed for my wife Amelia. She was very ill in 2023 and had to spend a long time in hospital. The music expresses my joy when she was able to come home, as well as memories of my sadness during her illness. There are birdsong-like patterns and music suggesting the play of light in woodland and cloud movements to celebrate Amelia being able to go outside and immerse herself in nature once more.

STRING QUARTET (2011)

This quartet is in four movements. The first movement opens with a depiction of a seascape. A sustained note on violin 1, rising and falling in volume; a note played pizzicato on violin 2, alternately loud and soft; and a pitchless, wind-like sound on the cello played repeatedly tremolo and then non tremolo provide a backdrop to a melodic line in the viola which rises and falls rather like a slow-motion wave. A similar backdrop is then created by violin 2, viola and cello and here violin 1 has the long rising and falling line. A middle section follows, evoking many sea surface patterns, and the movement ends with a recapitulation of the opening material.

The second movement is fast, and the musicians are directed to play so that the music is “always moving and changing”. The third movement is marked to be played “with much feeling”. The fourth movement opens with an arrangement of the Irish folk song An Droighnean Donn (The Blackthorn). A fantasia on this melody closes the movement.

VIOLA QUARTET – composed in 2022

My viola quartet was composed for The Barefaced Violas. It is in one movement and has a number of short episodes, each with a different character. For example, at the beginning the musicians play over the bridge, which produces a rather eerie sound, and later there is a section where they tap the strings with the back of the bow, creating a sound like rainfall.

STRING QUARTET (2017): Mountain Ash

This piece was composed for the Herschel Quartet for a fund-raising concert in Mountain Ash, a village in South Wales. The parents of the quartet’s cellist Siriol Hugh Jones live here and the income from the concert was given to their church. I visited Mountain Ash with Siriol and learned something of its history.

From 1942 to 1990 there was a plant which made smokeless fuel there. Emissions from the plant blackened the landscape and caused illness among those who worked there, so it was closed down and a hospital was built nearby in a beautiful setting. The quartet has four parts:

Part 1: Arcadian Prelude depicts morning in the hills above the village before the plant was built. Fragments of the Welsh folksong Dacw ’Nghariad (There is my Beloved) are scattered throughout this morning music. An arrangement of the folksong is then played by the whole quartet.

Part 2: Music portraying the Phurnacite coking plant gradually builds up over a brief reference to the Welsh hymn “All Through the Night” in the viola and cello. This dissonant, violent music then dissolves into:

Part 3, a fantasia on “All through the Night” which I use to describe the Cwm Cynon Hospital and its beautiful surroundings, expressing a source of pollution being replaced by a place of healing and peace.

Part 4, Arcadian Postlude, continues the theme of healing with a repeat of the folksong played pizzicato and a reprise of the morning music, celebrating the healing of the landscape.

STRING QUINTET – composed in 2023

My string quintet is in three movements and was composed for Ensemble Reza. The first movement is entitled Wakehurst Place. Wakehurst Place is a branch of Kew Gardens in the Sussex countryside. I always have a great sense of awe and wellbeing whenever I visit here, and I have attempted to capture this in the music.

The second movement, An Unquiet Night in Gaza – Lament, expresses my sadness and horror at seeing television newsreels of the devastation caused by the first Israeli missile attacks and bombings of Gaza in response to the attack upon Israel by Hamas. The latter was also shocking but it was the scale of destruction in Gaza which was so upsetting. The movement begins with nocturnal music which is interrupted by music expressing apprehension. Explosions are then evoked by loud, dissonant music. The nocturnal music then returns, and is followed by a low note on the cello which gradually increases in volume, representing the arrival of morning. The Lament expresses my deep sadness at the devastation revealed by the morning light.

The third movement, Children Meeting, is an arrangement of the first piece in my piano suite Three Pieces for Michiko. There is a nursery in Queen’s Park, Brighton and one day when I was walking nearby three parents each with a child were walking towards the nursery entrance. The parent/child pairs were black, Asian and white. As soon as the children saw each other they ran to the nursery and laughed and embraced when they arrived there. Clearly skin colour was not an issue for them. Witnessing this capacity for joy and acceptance so richly present in these children moved me deeply.

STRING QUARTET (2007)

This quartet has four movements. The first movement is a seascape, and has a similar shape to the first movement of my 2011 String Quartet. The second movement is fast, and the musicians are directed to create “a sense of constant movement”. In contrast, the third movement is slow and is marked to be played “with much expression”. The fourth movement quotes from the first and second movements, opening with passages of trills alternating with music derived from the second movement. Two “constellations” of birdsong-like motifs then lead into a melodic line from the first movement, unfolding over a sustained chord. Overlapping seagull calls act as a transition to a passage of more music from the first movement to conclude this piece.

STRING QUARTET (1979)

This piece is in two movements. The first movement, Unfoldings, took me over a year to compose and was the first composition I decided not to discard. It has a number of episodes with different characteristics and the whole-tone interval is frequently featured. The second movement, Across Water, has overlapping glissandi in violin 2, viola and cello evoking the surface of a lake. Violin 1 dances on the surface of this musical lake. A central section follows, and a reprise of the glissandi section ends the movement.

BARRY MILLS

Barry Mills was born in 1949 in Plymouth and is for the most part self-taught as a composer. He obtained a degree in Biochemistry from Sussex University in 1971, returning there in 1976-1977 to pursue an MA in Music, studying analysis with David Osmond-Smith and David Roberts and composition with Colin Matthews and Ann Boyd.

Thalia Myers commissioned the piano piece “Clouds” from him for the Spectrum 2 collection, published by the Associated Board and recorded by her on the NMC double CD Spectrum. “Clouds” was issued as a grade 3 set piece in August 2002. His orchestral piece “Tartano” was premiered by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Jiri Mikula, in 1997 in Oloumouc, in the Czech Republic and recorded by them for the Vienna Modern Masters label. His music has been performed and broadcast in England and Switzerland and has featured in recitals in many London venues including the Wigmore Hall, Purcell room, St. Martin in the Fields, St. John’s Smith Square, the Almeida Theatre and the Warehouse. Performances have also taken place in Wales, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, Greece and the USA. His music will be performed in Iceland in 2025.

Barry Mills has collaborated with Jerry Laurence (VPM Design) in producing 48 filmed performances of his music. These can be accessed via the Filmed

Performances icon on his website www.barrymillscomposer.net. He now divides his time between composing and organising concerts in Brighton.

Unfoldings is the tenth CD of his music to be issued by Claudio Records.

ENSEMBLE REZA

All the music on this CD has been recorded by Ensemble Reza except the Viola Quartet which has been recorded by The Barefaced Violas. Ensemble Reza is a Sussex-based group of string players committed to making music accessible to everyone. They have created a unique programme of work across the south-east including evening and free lunchtime concerts in many community settings, multi-generational community workshops, a community orchestra for all abilities and an extended education programme. Individually the musicians have performed with globally renowned orchestras and theatre groups.

THE BAREFACED VIOLAS

The Barefaced Violas was formed in 2022 and comprises four like-minded female musicians and friends based in Sussex. Anna, Ellie, Ros and Victoria play a mixture of music from classical to jazz, including several new compositions written especially for them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sarah Carvalho-Dubost organised schedules for rehearsals and recording sessions. This was a huge task which she patiently accomplished and I am enormously grateful to her for this. My thanks to Colin Attwell for his patience and thoughtfulness throughout the making of this CD, and to his son Alex who has created beautiful art work and set out the sleeve notes with great care. I am enormously grateful to my friend Geoff Hands who created the cover painting especially for this CD. A big thank you to Kay Sharp who proof-read my sleeve notes, and to my wife Amelia who helped me prepare them. Finally thank you to all my dear musician friends for these beautiful recordings.

© 2025 Barry Mills

**Composers Website

MUSICAL OPINION Review

Winter Images Winter Images [Michiko Shimanuki, piano]/Cello Duo [Sarah Carvahlo-Dubost, Pavlos Carvahlo, cellists]/ Evening and Night [Imogen Whitehead, trumpet; Jennifer Walsh, piano]/Lute Sketches [Sam Brown, lute]/Three Pieces for Michiko [Michiko Shimanuki, piano]/Falling Leaves [Jon Rattenbury, Brian Ashworth, guitars]/Three Places in Costa Rica [Oliver Nelson, violin; Vasileios Rakitzis, piano]/Duo for Violin and Viola [Ellie Blackshaw, violin; Ros Hanson-Laurent, viola]/ The Calm Lake [Nancy Cooley, piano] ***** Claudio CC6052-2

This is the ninth (out of a projected series of ten) release of the music of the contemporary English composer Barry Mills, whose music naturally stems from what might be termed the British Pastoral School. Not that there is anything that might be construed as a revisitation of the music of John Ireland or the simpler folk-application of Vaughan Williams, though in the nature of things those masters are occasionally invoked – but here is a genuine voice that speaks naturally in a language that is both appealing, well expressed and fully understood by all sympathetic listeners.

One of the most compelling of Mills’s characteristics is the varied instrumental timbres through which his music is expressed, and as may be gleaned from the above heading, it is the combination of instrumental colour, in all its forms, that adds such an attractive and welcome timbre to his natural civilised expression. Here is a genuine musical voice, an experienced creator in sound, whose works betoken both a directness of utterance and ease of communication that many fellow-composers would envy.

The performances, all given under the direction of the composer, and with almost all by the musicians for whom the individual works were originally composed, are invariably first-rate, and the recording quality is truly state-of-the-art in Colin Attwell’s experienced hands.

It is good to realise that music of this natural English style can still stir and move listeners.

© 2023 John Alexander.

CD Reviews

CLAUDIO Contemporary CC6052-2

Here on this CD are eight vibrant chamber works by Barry Mills (b. 1949). Several contain multiple movements – 22 pieces in total. The word Images in the title is significant. Mills paints pictures with his music. Actually, these are not just still pictures, they are motion pictures. Movement is so very crucial to his music.

Many of the 13 performers on this CD have worked for Mills before. There are four pianists, two of them soloists, a cello duo, two violinists, one of whom plays in a duo with a viola player. There is a lutenist and a guitar duo. Taken together they are surely a company of the finest musicians from the South of England across a wide range of instruments.

Winter Images is the title of the opening work. Three solo piano movements are played eloquently by Michiko Shimanuki. Stillness across a gleaming snow-covered landscape shines forth from the piano in Snowscape, then with Swirling Snowflakes the piano drives a blizzard. A series of single notes describe drops of water from the trees in Melting Snow. All three movements are wonderfully graphic.

This is equally true of Cello Duo especially The Searing Wind. Then warm harmonies suggest a peaceful sunset in Evening Thoughts.

Evening and Night is a real performance hight point. Trumpet player Imogen Whitehead is teamed with pianist Jennifer Walsh. Different trumpet mutes are used, first to create a city scape with a suggestion of jazz, then a darker vision of Night Sea. Questioning the Stars is a fine anti-war piece.

Lute Sketches performed by Sam Brown is more like pure abstract music especially Variations. Mills can do that too. In his Three Pieces for Michiko, the first is more thoughtful, dealing with the innocence of young children who do not even understand racism. However, with The Storm and Autumnal Atmosphere the music is once again radiantly pictorial.

Falling Leaves for guitar duo is amazing. It opens with the instruments used in percussion style, graphic in a most imaginative way. Three Places in Costa Rica takes us on a colourful pictorial journey. The Duo for Violin and Viola is a serious work with four movements dealing with memories of the Covid Pandemic. The final work The Calm Lake is for piano solo. Here Nancy Cooley restores happier feelings to close the recital.

© 2023 Alan Cooper.