London, Temple Church and Cheltenham, Pittville Pump Room: Wood's ‘Cantilena and Fugue’ and ‘Tribute to Michael Berkeley’.

Extract

It has been three years since the last Hugh Wood première (his Fifth String Quartet), and in that time his music has disgracefully become an endangered species – practically extinct – in concert programmes. Therefore, his Cantilena and Fugue op. 47, given its first performance on 7 July as part of the City of London Festival, was doubly welcome. And, as if to compensate for the wait, a second new work followed just two days later, with the première of Wood's Tribute to Michael Berkeley, one of 20 short works commissioned to mark Berkeley's final year as artistic director of the Cheltenham Festival.