Howard Goodall's The Seasons
Howard Goodall’s soundtrack to the upcoming natural history series on ITV1 The Seasons with Alan Titchmarsh will be released by EMI Classics on 17 May.
Goodall, Classic FM’s Composer in Residence, comments on the suite for cello and strings: “Several composers over the centuries have responded musically to the idea of the changing seasons, most notably Vivaldi, Haydn, Spohr, Verdi, Glazunov and Tchaikovsky, but I believe I am the first composer to create my Seasons suite over the period of a year in the respective seasons themselves.
"I would like to take credit for this approach, but in all honesty the season-by-season time scale was dictated by the filming schedule of the ITV series The Seasons with Alan Titchmarsh, for which the suite provides a soundtrack."
EMI Classics will release the soundtrack on CD and digitally to coincide with the ITV broadcasts. Howard Goodall says the suite is ‘all but a cello concerto, since I decided right at the start that a keening and curling, dipping and diving solo cello set against the string ensemble would give me great expressive scope’.
Howard Goodall has composed music for several other television series and films, including Mr Bean, Blackadder, The Vicar of Dibley, The Catherine Tate Show, Q.I., The Gathering Storm and Mr Bean’s Holiday.
Last year Goodall was named Classical BRIT Composer of the Year for Eternal Light: A Requiem. This year, his Enchanted Voices, released on the Classic FM label, has earned him nominations in the Classical BRIT Composer of the Year and Album of the Year categories.
