Launch of William Howard’s new album ‘Sixteen Contemporary Love Songs’, featuring Robert Saxton’s work, ‘For Teresa’

On May 8th, at the Leighton House Museum in London, a recital by William Howard will be held to launch his new Orchid Classics album ‘Sixteen Contemporary Love Songs’, which features Robert Saxton’s work for solo piano For Teresa. This CD will be officially released on June 1st.

This new album from renowned British pianist William Howard features sixteen world premiere recordings from composers such as Judith Weir, Nico Muhly and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Entitled Sixteen Contemporary Love Songs, the album marks the next step in William’s two-year Love Songs project, which explores the theme of love in romantic and contemporary piano music.

William contacted leading composers around the world with a simple brief: to write a piece of music for solo piano that explores the theme of love. The resulting 'Sixteen Contemporary Love Songs' celebrate love in all its forms and provide a unique insight into the modern composer’s response to the love song genre.

Saxton’s work For Teresa was commissioned by Tim Suter for his wife, Helen, as part of Howard’s Love Songs Project and was first performed privately by William Howard for her 60th birthday in February 2017. He gave the public premiere at Hoxton Hall, London on 26th April 2017.

The music is based on the notes T E S (E flat) A of the Christian name of the composer’s wife, Teresa Cahill. The music works towards a quotation of the opening of Beethoven’s Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, Für Elise (which also uses letters from the name Therese, H being B natural in German nomenclature), a piece which, it is now thought, was originally titled Für Therese and possibly composed for Theresa Malfatti, to whom Beethoven unsuccessfully proposed marriage in 1810, but recent musicology has suggested other possible dedicatees.

Here at UYMP, we’d like to wish Howard and Saxton the very best of luck for this launch.