Jacob - Piano Concerto No.1 (I)

Iris Loveridge, piano/ BBC SSO/ Ian Whyte Gordon Jacob - 1895-1984 Jacob was one of the most musically conservative of his generation of composers. Though he studied with Vaughan Williams and Stanford at the Royal College, Jacob preferred the more austere Baroque and Classical models to the Romanticism of his peers, and stuck to this aesthetic even in the face of the trends toward atonality and serialism. This conservatism later caused his works to fall out of fashion when the 1960s establishment favoured the avant-garde. Jacob held the movement in little regard, saying "I personally feel repelled by the intellectual snobbery of some progressive artists... the day that melody is discarded altogether, you may as well pack up music...". Not all contemporary listeners found his music too conservative or melodic: "Foul music by Gordon Jacob just over, in which the pianist stamped on, kicked, butted, thumped and finally threw out of the window the long-suffering piano." [2] He was a skilful writer for winds, and a good deal of his present-day reputation is because he embraced the wind band, which had begun coming into its own as a concert ensemble. Additionally, he published solo and chamber literature at various levels of difficulty for nearly all the wind instruments, many of which are now standard items in the pedagogical and performing repertoires. Jacob was prolific, publishing over 400 pieces of music in addition to his four books and numerous essays on music.