Brian Elias's recent music

Extract

In the past ten years a remarkable change has come over Brian Elias. He has turned from being a miniaturist to being a composer on a symphonic scale and with symphonic aspirations. Not that he has written any work with so self-conscious a title as ‘symphony’ – at least, not yet. But in these few years he has given us two extended cycles for voice and symphony orchestra, a large-scale single-movement orchestral work that must certainly be called symphonic, a set of 49 Variations for piano inspired by Beethoven's set of 32 in C minor, and now an orchestral ballet in progress for Kenneth Macmillan and the Royal Ballet. All these, and some impressive chamber works too, have come from a composer whose earlier reputation was based on a tiny scattering of compositions including a rarified solo soprano piece (based on a particularly obscure bit of Browning), a piece for solo violin, and the microscopic Five Piano Pieces for right hand alone.