Eleanor Alberga
This month, Eleanor Alberga is featured for her incredible Oboe and String Quartet work, Succubus Moon. Written in 2007, a recording of this was released in 2021 by Nicholas Daniel and Ensemble Arcadiana.
Succubus Moon (2007)
Instrumentation: Oboe and String Quartet
Duration: 14 mins
Premiere: Commissioned by the City of London Festival and premiered there in 2007 by Alexei Ogrintchouk and the Psophos Quartet
The romantic and the demonic lie side by side in this work. Over centuries, man has interpreted his fear of the dark and unknown as caused by beings and superstitions outside himself; one of these interpretations became Incubi and Succubi, evil presences doing harm to humans. The piece juxtaposes the ethereal, tranquil, and reflective moon against the impenetrable darkness of the night where the demonic and seductive Succubus reigns. The oboe is the main protagonist, leading the mood or taking over what the strings have set up. The strings have their own episodes, and sometimes join with the oboe in main material.
The music goes from sparse to more driven rhythmic sections, to dreamy moonstruck moments, and finally drifts away. Towards the end there is, unusually, a C major chord—a ray of hope as the moon shines out amidst the primal terror. Succubus Moon was commissioned by the City of London Festival.
© Eleanor Alberga
Succubus Moon features on a recording of Eleanor Alberga’s music called Wild Blue Yonder. More information about this recording featuring Nicholas Daniel and Ensemble Arcadiana can be found here.
To get more information about the sheet music for Succubus Moon please email scores@eleanoralberga.com
fleeting (2022)
Instrumentation: Oboe and Piano
Premiere: Composed for and premiered by Nicholas Daniel and Huw Watkins at Wigmore Hall on 22 April 2022
‘I’d already asked Eleanor to write a large work for oboe and string ensemble and was delighted when she agreed also to compose something for my birthday. Fleeting is exquisite, full of life and contrasts.’
© Nicholas Daniel
About Eleanor Alberga OBE
Eleanor Alberga is a highly-regarded mainstream British composer with commissions from the BBC Proms and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. With a substantial output ranging from solo instrumental works to full-scale symphonic works and operas, her music is performed all over the world.
Born 1949 in Kingston, Jamaica, Alberga decided at the age of five to be a concert pianist. Five years later, she was composing works for the piano.
In 1968 she won the biennial Royal Schools of Music Scholarship for the West Indies, which she took up in 1970 at the Royal Academy of Music in London studying piano and singing. A budding career as a solo pianist – she was one of 3 finalists in the International Piano Concerto Competition in Dudley, UK in 1974 – was soon augmented by composition with her arrival at The London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1978. Under the inspirational leadership of its Artistic Director Robert Cohan, she became one of the very few pianists with the deepest understanding of modern dance, and her company class improvisations became the stuff of legend. These in turn led to works commissioned and conceived for dance by the company, and Alberga later became the company’s Musical Director – conducting, composing and playing on LCDT’s many tours.
It was on leaving LCDT that Alberga was able to fully embark on her calling as a composer. Since then, interest in her music across all genres – orchestral, chamber, vocal, as well as works for stage and screen – has accelerated, while her output has continued to grow.
In 2015 her commissioned work ARISE, ATHENA! for the opening of the Last Night of the BBC Proms was seen and heard by millions, and cemented a reputation as a composer of huge originality and consummate skill.
Alberga has gathered a number of awards, most notably a NESTA fellowship in 2000 and a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2019. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.
At different times, Alberga was a member of the African Dance Company Fontomfrom, and played guitar and sang with the Jamaican Folk Singers. She was part of the duo Double Exposure with her husband the violinist Thomas Bowes, and more recently they have together founded and nurtured Arcadia, an original festival in the English countryside where they live.
Alberga was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021 for services to British Music.
