Robin Hill's 'Eclectic City' Episode 30

From 'Worktown' to a French jazz rhapsody to Manuel de Falla's 'Ritual Fire Dance' to 'Here, There & Everywhere'..

Transcript

Robin Hill’s ‘Eclectic City’ Episode 30         7th April 2021

MUSIC: ‘Worktown’ by Robin Hill with the Maples String Quartet

Hello, this is Robin Hill, and welcome to Episode 30 of ‘Eclectic City’. The music you just heard was my piece for string quartet, ‘Worktown’ inspired by the mass observation project in 1937 in Bolton, Lancashire. One of the important founders of this project was an anthropologist named, Tom Harrison, who had previously studied cannibals in the New Hebrides in the South Pacific. From cannibalism to the citizens of Bolton!

My  piece aims to describe the mechanical regularity, the drudgery and the monotony of life in the Lancashire cotton mills during the Industrial Revolution.

I later arranged the piece for guitar ensemble as one of three pieces entitled ‘Three Resolutions’….all these pieces are available, as downloadable sheet music, from my website robin-hill.co.uk and from SheetMusic Plus.

I have always loved the string quartet since I attended the International Chamber Concerts in the Lecture Theatre of the Central Library in Bolton. I heard some of the best string quartets in the world playing some of the finest music in the world. 

Quartets by Bartok, Mozart, Haydn, Janacek and Schubert. What a fantastic education that was….there was a Steinway piano in the hall also used by many fine players in the midday concert series. Nowadays, sadly, the Steinway is gone and you are lucky if you get a Status Quo tribute band playing in the town!

Talking of this lecture theatre and Steinway piano in Bolton. That is where I recorded my first version of Claude Bolling’s wonderful ‘Concerto for Classic Guitar & Jazz Piano Trio’, with Stephen Wood playing the Steinway and Maurice Cheetham on drums and Dave Lynane on double bass. Here is the 5th movement, ‘Rhapsodic’ – there are 7 movements in all..

MUSIC: ‘Rhapsodic’ by Claude Bolling played by the Robin Hill Quartet

That was Rhapsodic by Claude Bolling performed by myself and etc..

The next piece was originally composed for chamber orchestra and comes from the ballet, ‘El Amor Brujo’ by Manuel de Falla. It was composed in 1917.

This is my arrangement of , ‘The Ritual Fire Dance’ from the ballet. I remember being on tour with Peter Wiltschinsky in America and doing an interview, and playing live, in a radio station in St. Louis.

We played the Ritual Fire Dance first having done the interview…to our surprise the radio presenter announced after we had played the Falla piece…’What are we goin’ to do, folks…are we gonna pump it or dump it??

‘Dumped’ being effectively pulled from the mics by a giant hook and ‘pumped’ resulting in playing another piece!!

Luckily for us, the audience elected to ‘pump it’ and we played another piece. We were given absolutely NO warning that this was to happen!!

Here is the Ritual Fire Dance performed by myself and PW.

MUSIC: Ritual Fire Dance by Manuel de Falla.

That was the Ritual Fire Dance by Manuel de Falla performed by myself and Peter Wiltschinsky, recorded at the Berlin studios of Teldec.

I thought it was appropriate that we might finish with ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, as we’ve been here, there and everywhere in this episode. We’ver been to Bolton, Lancashire, to France with Claude Bolling, to Spain with Manuel de Falla, to St. Louis, Missouri with the Hill/Wiltschinsky duo and, finally, to Liverpool with Lennon/McCartney. Here is my arrangement of ‘Here, There & Everywhere’. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next week…

MUSIC: ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ by Lennon/McCartney performed by Robin Hill & Peter Wiltschinsky.