John Foulds - Revival

Revival

Foulds became a footnote to English music after his death, but from 1974 Malcolm MacDonald, editor of the music journal Tempo under the alias Calum MacDonald, conducted an often lonely campaign for Foulds after he came across the Foulds scores deposited in the British Library. MacDonald tracked down Foulds' daughter, who took him to a garage and showed him two coffin-sized boxes full of sketches and manuscripts she had been left by her mother. Unfortunately, many of the manuscripts were damaged: apparently, rats and ants had got at them while they were in India, where Foulds' wife stayed after his death.

An acclaimed recording of Foulds' string quartet music, including the previously unperformed Quartetto Intimo, by the Endellion Quartet in the early 1980s, began to reawaken interest in him, and this was sustained in the early 1990s by Lyrita Recorded Edition's decision to issue some of Foulds' works including Three Mantras and Dynamic Triptych on CD. A Proms performance of Three Mantras in 1998 was well received, and soon after the Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo began to champion Foulds' work in concerts with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), to huge critical acclaim. In November 2005, the CBSO, with Peter Donohoe, gave the first live performance for more than 70 years of Foulds' piano concerto, the Dynamic Triptych (1927–1929). The orchestra has issued two well-received CDs of Foulds' music. On Armistice Night, 11 November 2007, the Royal Albert Hall staged the first performance for 81 years of the World Requiem under the auspices of the BBC, with the Trinity Boys Choir and Leon Botstein as conductor. The performance was recorded live and released in Super Audio CD format by Chandos Records in January 2008.

Foulds' Keltic Lament has once again become popular due to its regular playing on Classic FM, and BBC Radio 3 plans to revive a tradition of performing A World Requiem on Armistice Day.