Graham Lynch
Graham Lynch was born in London, and he gained a PhD from King’s College London as well as having lessons with Oliver Knussen. Subsequent to his studies he moved to a remote part of the North West Highlands of Scotland, where he gradually rethought his musical language, before settling in Penzance where he has been for over twenty years. During this time he’s remained largely outside the arena of British classical music and his compositions have flourished elsewhere.
Graham’s music has been commissioned and performed in over forty countries, as well as being frequently recorded to CD and featured on radio and television. Although the majority of his performances still take place outside the UK performers of his music include the likes of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Singers, BBC Concert Orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North, and El Ultimo Tango from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Ensembles and soloists who have taken up his pieces include The Eastman Saxophone Project, Onyx Brass, Ellipsos Saxophone Quartet, Faux Pas Ensemble, Helsinki Guitar Duo, Mahan Esfahani, Mark Tanner, Jane Chapman, and Paul Simmonds. He has also worked as an arranger for the Belcea Quartet.
Graham enjoys close and ongoing collaborations with a number of performers, including Assi Karttunen (Finland), Rody van Gemert (Finland) and Paul and Kayleen Sánchez (US). In the last years his works have been played in venues as diverse as the South Bank, Royal Albert Hall, Kennedy Centre, Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, the Barbican, Merkin Hall New York, Paris Conservatoire, the Venice Biennale, Palace of Monaco, and from the Freiberg Jazz Club to a cake shop in Japan, and everything in between.
In 2018, Paul and Kayleen Sánchez performed the world-premiere of Graham's "Sappho Fragments."
"The premiere of my ‘Sappho Fragments’, given by Kayleen and Paul Sánchez, was one of the best first performances I’ve ever been fortunate enough to have. Not only was there a complete technical command of the music and fabulous attention to detail, but there was also a deep understanding of what I’d written. The result was that the music came alive in exactly the way I intended, and was full of colour, tonal shading, and vitality. A beautiful performance."
– Graham Lynch
In 2020, Graham composed the solo piano works White Book 3, "Absolute Inwardness," and "The Couperin Sketchbooks" for Paul Sánchez. Sánchez recorded them on the CD Seria Ludo, released by Divine Art Records in 2021. Read Paul's liner notes, as published in Seria Ludo, here.
“…what a beautiful performance that movement receives from Sánchez; grand, noble, reflective, yet shot through with internal light, something faithfully reflected by the superb recording from Divine Art.”
– Fanfare Magazine
“….Throughout, it is evident that Sánchez enjoys complete resonance with Lynch’s output; there is the most blissful sense of comprehension, of melding even, in these performances.”
– Fanfare Magazine
“The very end of White Book 3 hangs in the air. The hard touch required by the opening of Absolute Inwardness comes as a nice contrast but subsides to reveal a piece that again has one foot in the physical and another in the etheric; the composer links the atmosphere of the piece to a “world of intense feeling and subjectivity reminiscent of Novalis and Hölderlin.” What is magnificent about Sánchez' performance is his absolute lack of hurry; the music just unfolds.”
– Fanfare Magazine
“….Sánchez’s control of his instrument at the very lowest dynamic level is highly commendable. A gripping performance of a work that is compositionally fascinating in its juxtaposition of worlds; and despite that thematic clarity, the overall envelope remains elusive. A quick word of praise is in order for Sánchez's finger evenness, a prerequisite for this piece and heard in delicious abundance.”
– Fanfare Magazine
“….Sánchez’ performance is beguiling.”
– Fanfare Magazine
For a behind-the-scenes look at recording Seria Ludo, click here!
White Book 3
Graham Lynch composed White Book 3 for Paul Sánchez in 2020.
Following is an excerpt of Graham Lynch's notes on White Book 3 as published in the liner notes of Seria Ludo:
The first three pieces of the set have surface qualities of colour and light, and move easily from one to the next. Seria Ludo has a playful, free-wheeling energy, spiced with syncopations and a devil-may-care attitude to every gesture that rushes past. The Hesperides tunes into the magical and enigmatic zone of imagery created by Le Brun’s painting of the same name, at times conjuring translucent harmonies from the piano that counterpoint the balanced tread of the opening and closing sections. And finally, Glow, where constantly shifting foreground rhythms are framed within a more regular, formal architectural structure. These pieces, I suppose, reveal my predilection for the qualities of French music, but with The Rhine a new world opens out, one of a Northern European sensibility. This work is by far the longest of the set and the individual ideas are subordinated within the textures, sometimes breaking the surface of the music before falling back again – the abundance of the
notes threatening to blur the distinction between line and decoration, dragging the music into the world of the unconscious. This is music of a much darker nature, its primal energy gathering weight as it moves towards a climax, before concluding, with a nod to the Wagnerian Rhine, on a series of hushed E flat chords. Before the last sounds have died away, the lustrous opening of Landscapes with Angels begins. This is the one piece in the set in which the title is not from a specific Le Brun painting, instead reflecting a number of his works, including the studies for the Parables at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral as well as ‘Travellers in a Landscape’. Angels walk among men, and the world is momentarily transformed by a heavenly presence.
Seria Ludo features new works for piano by Graham Lynch, including White Book 3, "Absolute Inwardness," and "The Couperin Sketchbooks."
Absolute Inwardness
Graham Lynch composed "Absolute Inwardness" for Paul Sánchez in 2020.
Following is an excerpt of Graham Lynch's notes on "Absolute Inwardness" as published in the liner notes of Seria Ludo:
For Hegel, the true content of Romanticism was absolute internality, the infinite subjectivity of the idea, spirit as pure thought. This music gazes deeply into itself, creating webs of events that sometimes reveal their connections, whilst at other times remaining mysterious in their relationships; the curious qualities of that third intangible essence, that can arise out of the juxtaposition of two unrelated ideas, is one of my key compositional interests. The music periodically re-energises itself, and at times opens into textures reminiscent of the late piano pieces of Brahms, alongside hints of distant chorales. Much of the material is muted and suggestive, and embraces a world of intense feeling and subjectivity reminiscent of Novalis or Hölderlin.
The Couperin Sketchbooks
Graham Lynch composed "The Couperin Sketchbooks" for Paul Sánchez in 2020.
Following is an excerpt of Graham Lynch's notes on "Absolute Inwardness" as published in the liner notes of Seria Ludo:
This piece may come as a surprising contrast to the preceding one. The themes are clear-cut, and each enjoys its moment on stage before stepping lightly aside for the next entry. Structural stability, through repetition, is almost absent, and every scene plays its part with the spontaneous grace and charm of a figure in a painting by Watteau. My continuing fascination with the music of Couperin is expressed more fully here as the sections all have Couperinesque titles – The Majestic Arrival, The Graceful One, The Departure, Sylvie or the Virtuous One, The Flowering Orchids, Waltz, The Restless One, Acrobats and Aerialists, Zephyr, Light and Dark, Pastorale. Short passages from Couperin’s own works are interspersed between some of these sections, always played with the una corda pedal, and in a manner that leaves the seamless flow of the music uninterrupted. The final bars are from an earlier harpsichord work of mine (Pastorale). Notated in the style of an unmeasured prelude, this weaves a further connection between my own work and that of Couperin and the era of the French clavecinists.
