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| Richard Barnard, Richard Gowers, Roxanna Panufnik, Matilda Lloyd, Deborah Pritchard, Owain Park at St George’s Hanover Square for the launch of Fantasia (Photo: Dominik Zaczek) |
In July, I met up with trumpeter Matilda Lloyd for a chat about her new disc with organist Richard Gowers, Fantasia on Chandos Records [see my interview, ‘New challenge and new repertoire’]. The disc is released next week (19 September) with two singles from the album already available.
On Monday 8 September 2025, there was a launch event for the disc at St George’s Hanover Square (where Richard Gowers is the music director). At the event, Matilda Lloyd and Richard Gowers were joined by the four composers whose works are premiered on the disc, Roxanna Panufnik, Richard Barnard, Deborah Pritchard and Owain Park. It was a terrific opportunity to hear these pieces live and hear from the composers.
Lloyd and Gowers began with the intriguing sound world of trumpet and organ in the toccata from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue BWV 565, the work which first gave Lloyd the idea for performing Baroque music with trumpet and organ back when she was at Junior Guildhall.
Richard Barnard explained that his piece, At the Borders of Sleep arose because he associated the word fantasia with fantasy which led him to the idea of falling asleep and the mind wandering to exotic places. And he commented that at his age (!) napping was important and the initial tune of the piece came to him like that. The initial melody was surprisingly jazzy, and Barnard then put it through its paces using a variety of different mutes (throughout the concert Matilda Lloyd used a selection of instruments and mutes), leading to a climax and then the music evaporating.
Deborah Pritchard has been inspired by light recently. Her piece The light thereof was written for Matilda Lloyd and the Gesualdo Six for their 2024 disc Radiant Dawn on Hyperion (which also has a piece by Richard Barnard on it).
For Matilda Lloyd’s Fantasia album, Pritchard wrote Light Enkindled. taking the idea of fantasia towards improvisation. The opening saw the trumpet supported by spare sustained notes in the organ, something that Pritchard described as akin to using a piano sustaining pedal. When the organ did join the trumpet, the two had increasingly florid parts, some dazzling writing leading to a climax before evaporating.
Roxanna Panufnik’s Echo uses both trumpet and its big brother, the flugelhorn. Panufnik explained that when writing instrumental music she liked to use a text or an image for inspiration. Here she used Christina Rosetti’s poem Echo – ‘Come to me in the silence of the night’, with the piece written very like a song. The solo line contrasted the mellow flugelhorn with the higher, brighter trumpet, accompanied by an organ part that had a slightly exotic feel to it.
Matilda Lloyd has been collaborating with Owain Park and the Gesualdo Six since 2018, though she and Park go back as far as their university days. For his piece, Warm, hazy rain, Park explained that he wanted to capture an image, what it would feel and sound like – ‘a person in transit during the summer months, perhaps gazing out of a train window or reminiscing about a leisurely bicycle ride through warm, misty country lanes’. Using the flugelhorn to create a gently lyrical solo which contrasted with the steady forward motion of the rather neo-Baroque organ writing.
We ended with more Baroque music, the bravura flourishes of Giovanni Battista Martini’s Toccata.
Fantasia is available to order from a variety of music services – see http://lnk.to/CHAN20345
