Bryan Kelly was born in Oxford in 1934 and studied at the R.C.M. and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He was on the staff of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music then moved to the Royal College in London, where he taught Harmony, Counterpoint and Orchestration for twenty years. He has also lived and worked in the U.S.A., Egypt, Italy and France.
His musical output is copious and includes many works for orchestra, solo instruments and voices. He appears regularly as a solo pianist and is co-founder of the Zodiac Ensemble.
Elegy and Impromptu.Two Concert Pieces for bassoon and piano were written for Kerry Camden. Their titles – Elegy and Impromptu – reflect their strikingly different…
Elegy and Impromptu.Two Concert Pieces for bassoon and piano were written for Kerry Camden. Their titles – Elegy and Impromptu – reflect their strikingly different moods. In the Elegy, the piano plays a funeral march, a solemn and repeated two-bar rhythmic pattern, over which flows the bassoon’s legato melody. The central section is more animated, bassoon and piano sharing similar melodic phrases, sometimes in canon. The movement ends as it began, with the funereal themes dying away to pianissimo. The Impromptu is a sharply accented and vigorous piece, in which the piano’s interjections offset the bassoon’s phrases. Again there is a contrasting central section, creating a more legato effect over a rocking quaver movement in the piano.