Steve Elcock - Wreck
19th-23rd January 2025


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Programme

Steve Elcock  Wreck (1999 rev 2017)

Filmed LIVE at Worcester Cathedral as part of the 2024 Elgar Festival

Festival composer Steve Elcock’s epic tone poem, Wreck, has been described as “some of the best orchestral music by a British composer in the last fifty years.”

Artists

English Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Soloists: April Fredrick (Soprano)
Composer Steve Elcock owes a degree of his late-in-life success as a composer to a midi mock-up made in 2014 of his epic tone poem, Wreck, which the English Symphony Orchestra finally premiered in Malvern Theatres in 2022. When critic Martin Anderson, owner of Toccata Classics, heard the work for the first time he called it, simply “”some of the best orchestral music by a British composer in the last fifty years.”
 
Steve Elcock (b. 1957) Wreck Op.10 Wreck is a large-scale symphonic allegory portraying a ship struggling through foul weather at sea. The rising fourths of the opening adumbrate the quartal harmony which informs much of the piece, lending a sense of wide-open spaces, high skies and, of course, great depths. Calmer waters are reached on occasion, but each time this happens a bell soon rings out like a buoy, warning of more violence to come. The third stormy episode seems to signal the ship’s destruction, as the music dies away almost to nothing. But then something begins to rise from the depths, and a distant female voice sings a song that has been present in the texture of the music throughout, but is only now revealed. In a language unknown to man, this remote voice appears to be delivering a message of salvation beyond despair, of consolation beyond grief.
 
Lina, lisne, amaten so devona.
Lestenos pa.
Pava san.
En lestela veda me fenosta.
O meli!
O lasen!
Senale ota mane.
Sena kal veden sale.
Melefa nesera, melefa stedora.
Le nomad stel.
Avane mis no veme li, no veme li.
Melista ranga, eno fenester a me?
Meli!
 
Wreck was first performed by the English Symphony Orchestra with Kathryn Rudge, conducted by Ken Woods on October 15, 2022.

Follow the Score:

Wreck-Full-Score-2

Critical Response:

“From here to Steve Elcock’s Wreck is to encounter more elemental, even existential forces – what the composer refers to as a ‘‘symphonic allegory’’ portraying a ship’s struggle against intemperate weather at sea. This unfolds as a constantly evolving design, juxtaposing music of unchecked aggression with that of fraught serenity, while highlighting Elcock’s mastery of large-scale formal and expressive contrasts, toward a seismic culmination whose gradual subsidence makes possible the sustained closing section. Here, off-stage mezzo sings in an invented (hence unknown) language what he describes as ‘‘a message of salvation beyond despair, of consolation beyond grief’’ but even this is tempered by encroaching doubt. The ESO gave its all in a piece as demonstrably commended itself to the appreciative audience.” Richard Whitehouse, Arcana.fm

Production Information

Recorded live at Worcester Cathedral for the Elgar Festival, 1st June 2024.

Video direction, audio recording and post production: Tim Burton
Orchestra Manager: Sarah Woolhouse
Orchestra Contractor: Andy Farquharson for The Music Agency