Robert Saxton

[CRCulver]

Anyone hear this English composer's music? I've only today come across his name for the first time, seeing an EMI disc from 2000. What might I expect?

[Dundonnell]

Saxton followed Edmund Rubbra as Fellow and Lecturer in Music at Worcester College, Oxford and admires Rubbra's music(he wrote the booklet notes for the Chandos cycle of Rubbra symphonies). On my very limited acquaintance however Saxton's music sounds nothing at all like Rubbra's.

The only Saxton I know is on a Signum cd coupled by music by Elizabeth Lutyens(one of Saxton's teachers'; he also studied with Berio), John McCabe and Malcolm Williamson. Unfortunately, although there appear to be two different pieces on the cd(Birthday Piece for Richard Rodney Bennett and 'Elijah's Violin') the notes say absolutely nothing about the much longer and more substantial second piece. I can say that it is 21 minutes long, scored for chamber orchestra and (to my ears) complex and demanding music of a decidedly intellectual and modern hue. There are Schoenbergian influences clearly discernible but it is by no means as arid as I find the music of Elizabeth Lutyens to be. Saxton's music does have a greater richness which is-in my opinion-much to its benefit.

This interview will tell you more about Saxton-

http://www.compositiontoday.com/interviews/robert_saxton.asp