<<  -- 2 --  Roderic Dunnett    MUSSORGSKIAN GIANT

For all his originality and individuality, Knussen is acutely aware of the tradition whence he stems. Possibly his favourite composer is Debussy : 'I still wonder where Debussy's music comes from -- or in the later works, what it's even about. Listening to one of his Etudes is like watching Houdini get out of an impossible knot!' Sibelius's formal experiments are another cause for admiration : 'take Symphony No 5 -- what an ingenious way to merge a sonata with a scherzo! or Tapiola -- what an incredible way of fiddling with four notes!'

Knussen began composing when he was six. As a boy, he tried the cello for two years ('I made such a hideous noise that I stopped', although I come from a family of string players and my daughter -- who studied in the States -- is a very good cellist') and devoured Twentieth Century music eagerly : 'I heard a lot of Britten, Copland and Shostakovich, Schoenberg, Berg and late Stravinsky : then I used to go home and try to imitate them.' A recording of Ives' Fourth Symphony 'knocked me sideways!' Mussorgsky, Ravel and Mahler were other loves. And he quickly fell for 'all three of Bartók's stageworks' (including The Miraculous Mandarin, which he is conducting in the Birmingham concerts).

The young Knussen eagerly sought out works by 'Goehr, [Nicholas] Maw and Maxwell Davies' and was lucky enough 'to sit in on rehearsals of Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra' (as clever and dazzling an example of orchestration as one could dream up), and of works by Henze and Luigi Nono. The two experiences which, he says 'made me most want to be a composer' were 'going with my father to rehearsals of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, under Stokowski, and then attending Britten's dress rehearsals for the world première of Curlew River.'

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