Peter Fribbins


Peter Fribbins is a British composer. He studied music at the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Holloway and Nottingham universities, and composition with Hans Werner Henze in London and Italy.

Work

A number of his key works are literary-inspired, and much of his music is for strings, notable exceptions being the early wind quintet 'In Xanadu' from 1992, 'Porphyria's Lover' for flute and piano, and the clarinet and piano '...That Which Echoes in Eternity'. Of his two string quartets, the first is subtitled 'I Have the Serpent Brought' after lines by John Donne from his poem 'Twicknam Garden', and the second commissioned by the Chilingirian Quartet, subtitled 'After Cromer' since much of the thematic material is derived from the English hymn of the same name. Other chamber works for strings include two piano trios – the first, more substantial one premiered in Vienna in 2004, and the latter, an evocative single-movement piece entitled 'Softly, in the Dusk...' after the poem 'Piano' by D. H. Lawrence – a Cello Sonata commissioned by Raphael Wallfisch and John York and the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. Larger scale works include the Piano Concerto, which is subtitled 'The Moving Finger Writes'; a quotation from FitzGerald's translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and the Violin Concerto commissioned by the French violinist Philippe Graffin. There are also songs and various smaller instrumental works.
Peter Fribbins is also Director of Music at Middlesex University, London and Artistic Director of the long-established series of Sunday London Chamber Music Society Concerts, formerly at Conway Hall and resident at Kings Place since 2008.
His concert work is often linked with a group of British composers called 'Music Haven', not a school as such, but a collection of composers, mostly London-based and with broadly similar interests and aesthetic outlook, reflecting sympathies for British masters such as Britten and Tippett and the music of the First Viennese School, especially Haydn and Beethoven, as well as the Scandinavian influences of Sibelius and Nielsen. The group includes James Francis Brown, Northern Irish-born Alan Mills, Matthew Taylor, John Hawkins, Geoff Palmer, and more peripherally two older British composers, David Matthews and by association, John McCabe CBE. The set of piano pieces 'Seven Haydn Fantasies for John McCabe' – each composed by a different composer and published in 2009 on the occasion of the latter's 70th birthday – is in many ways typical of the group's work.

Recordings

Sources:

Notable works

Orchestral

  • Cappriccio for Orchestra
  • Piano Concerto
  • Violin Concerto
  • Soliloquies for Trumpet & Strings
  • Cello Concerto

Chamber

  • Quintet for Clarinet and Strings
  • String Quartet No. 1 – I Have the Serpent Brought
  • Concertino for Seven That which echoes in eternity for violin and piano; also version for 'cello and piano
  • Piano Trio
  • Sonata for Cello and Piano
  • String Quartet No. 2 After Cromer Softly, in the Dusk for Piano Trio Dances & Laments for Violin and Cello
  • Fantasias for Viola and Piano Variation on a Burns Air for piano quartet The Zong Affair for Septet
  • Sonata for solo Violin

Wind / vocal

Inferno for Clarinet and Piano In Xanadu for Wind Quintet
  • Three Songs for Soprano and Piano Porphyria's Lover for Flute and Piano I Travelled Among Unknown Men for Soprano and Piano
  • Brass Quintet

Piano / keyboard