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Oliver Leith’s Eeyore Premiered by Ben Goldscheider and Richard Uttley at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

Nov. 27, 2024

On November 24 Ben Goldscheider and Richard Uttley premiered Oliver Leith’s Eeyore at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. The work for horn and piano, named for the downbeat donkey from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series, was commissioned by Judy Vida-Spence, in memory of her husband, Stuart Spence, for Ben Goldscheider and Camerata Pacifica, with additional commissioning support by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

The 10½-minute piece, a “duet between a donkey and a piano”, is cast in four short movements: ‘Sure is a cheerful colour’, ‘Thanks for noticing me’, ‘It’s all for naught’, and ‘Eeyore’. It opens with a throbbing, steady, tread, before the second movement sets out a braying figure using harmonics over two octaves. The third movement is “a crying foghorn”, with grand, broad gestures, before a final movement that orbits sadly around a single G-sharp. 

The carefully calibrated microtonal bends that are a characteristic feature of Leith’s work – “tiny shimmering blemishes” – are spotlighted throughout the work, with the horn mostly circling a limited group of pitches. The instrument, normally cast in heroic light, “brays wobbled sad songs, whuffles one note laments”, as Leith puts it. “Eeyore is tediously, comedically, joyfully sad”, he notes. “So resolute in sadness that it becomes a different thing. Saying as much as donkey can…Triumphantly sad.”

The piece receives its US debut in April 2025 in the Camerata Pacifica concert series, touring venues throughout California in San Marino, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Ventura, where Goldscheider is joined by Gilles Vonsattel – full details here.

Listen to Oliver Leith's will o'wisp (2022):

will o'wisp/Manchester Collective

To learn more about Oliver Leith, visit fabermusic.com.

Oliver Leith
Eeyore (2024)
for horn and piano
10.5'

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