British composer Gavin Higgins (b. 1983) credits his youth in the Forest of Dean for his unique sound of music, combining nature and music. The Forest of Dean occupies the borderland between Wales and England, so as much as the forest was his source of nature, Welsh brass bands were the start of his musical interests. His degree work at the Royal Northern College of Music on the orchestral French horn broadened his brass background. He completed his work at the Royal College of Music.

Gavin Higgins

With his brass band background (he started as a cornet player in his grandfather’s band), his orchestral training and his interest in opera, Higgins’ writing is surprisingly complex. A new recording of three major works: his Horn Concerto, Fanfare; Air and Flourishes, a work for solo horn; and a work for mezzo-soprano, baritone, chorus, and orchestra, entitled The Faerie Bride, which is based on a story in the 14th century Red Book of Hergest. The Red Book is one of the most important medieval manuscripts written in Welsh.

The Forest of Dean

The Faerie Bride is the legend of the Lady of the Lake who marries an earthly man, but with the proviso that if he strikes her three times, she will return to her lake, taking all her possessions with her. The ‘strikes’ do not have to be physical – the first blow comes from the scoldings he gives her as he laughs at her predictions for the future. Each scolding counts, and everything she brings to the marriage is forfeit, including a veritable ‘Noah’s Ark of cows, horses, pigs, sheep’.

The Forest of Dean and Lake (photo by Steve Gaskin)

The oratorio starts with the man having lost his wife, and he returns to the lake to plead with her for her return. He then tells the story of his Faerie Bride: she wooed him with her siren’s song (the traditional Welsh air Dacw ‘Ngharad), then he brings her presents that she first rejects (the first bread he brings her is too hard, the next too raw, but the last just right). When, in the end, she leaves him, she takes all she brought – her animals and the products made from them, including those who have already been slaughtered, who ‘jump down from their meat hooks’ to follow her.

The woman’s part is sung by Marta Fontanals-Simmons, mezzo-soprano, and the man by Roderick Williams, baritone. The Three Choirs Festival Chorus takes the part of the suspicious neighbours who don’t trust this outsider.

The Prologue, which sets up the story, opens with Higgins’ dark sound – submerged in the wood, submerged in the dark lake – as the man tells the story of what happened. The woman joins with her siren’s song, and as she sings, the music changes: it emerges from the lake and seems to shimmer in the air.

Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride, Part 1: Prologue

Even from this sample, we can hear the world Higgins is creating – mysterious and beckoning, familiar but dangerous – and also inviting us to step deeper into its shadows.

The Horn Concerto also has a forest theme: the three movements are Understorey, i.e., the ground under the trees and the bushes and animals that live there and those that hunt them; Overstorey, the space above the tree tops; and it closes with the Mycelium Rondo, mycelium being the underground fungal network that connects trees in the forest, aka, with tongue in cheek, the Wood Wide Web.

The work for horn solo, Fanfare, Air, and Flourishes was written during the COVID lockdown. The first movement was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music, who invited 200 composers to write pieces for the instruments taught at the Academy. Fanfare, as expected, is the ‘bold and brassy’ side of the horn, as the marking at the beginning of the work says. Air is the instrument’s expressive side, similar to many a solo heard in a brass band. Flourishes was a commission from BBC Radio 3 and, as it was written at the same time as The Faerie Bride, is used in the oratorio to mark the movements where the seasons change.

The collection of works really provides a deep insight into one of Britain’s most interesting composers. His music is deep and meaningful, with the ability to cast a picture unmatched by his contemporaries.

Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride, Horn Concerto, Fanfare, Air & Flourishes

Marta Fontanals-Simmons, mezzo-soprano
Roderick Williams, baritone
Three Choirs Festival Chorus
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Martyn Brabbins, conductor
Ben Goldscheider, horn
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Jaime Martín, conductor

Lyrita SRCD.440

Official Website

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