Christopher Wright

Summary

‘The purpose of composing isn't necessarily to please anyone, and it really shouldn't be.’

The first conversation in this book was with a composer who's firmly established as a leading figure in contemporary British music. This final one is with a composer whose name will be unknown to most readers unless they’ve read about the recordings of his music. Few, probably, will have heard those recordings and even fewer will have heard any of his music performed live. They may therefore wonder why I wanted to interview him for this book.

Apart from what I believe to be the quality of his music, there was the fact that his relative lack of success raises questions about the definition of a composer. Is this someone who makes money, if not necessarily a living, from writing music? Christopher Wright has received very few commissions, and during his professional life composing has effectively been his hobby – albeit one that he has taken very seriously. So is a composer simply someone whose music is performed in public? Wright's has had very few performances, and until the concert premiere of his Violin Concerto in 2012 most of these were of his smaller-scale, chamber or vocal works.

The Concerto is perhaps his biggest success to date, and its studio recording in 2011 was reviewed positively by BBC Music Magazine, International Record Review and The Strad. But recordings of contemporary music, and indeed of classical music from most periods, are no longer made unless the majority of the cost is met by sponsorship, often from the composer himself (or from his estate). So Wright isn't unusual in having to fund recordings of his own work. Where he differs from his contemporaries is that without these recordings he would never have heard most of his music.

‘In August 2009, Christopher Wright lost his wife Ruth to cancer’, Elis Pehkonen wrote in the booklet note for the Dutton recording of the Violin Concerto. ‘His close friends were fearful that this loss would shatter his musical confidence.’ It didn’t, and he wrote the Concerto, subtitled And then there was silence, within a short space of time the following year. But Ruth still seemed present by her absence from his home when I interviewed him there in March 2012.