Stillness, simplicity, an occasional playfulness and a tendency to set unusual and quixotic texts are to be found in the music of Cardiff-born composer, Peter Reynolds. His music avoids large-scale rhetorical forms and is often fashioned on a small-scale and often revised over many years before reaching its final shape. He formed the Cardiff-based PM Music Ensemble in 1991, was Artistic Director of the Lower Machen Festival from 1997 to 2009, a writer on music, a part-member of the music staff at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and was the Composer-in-residence with the Young Composer of Dyfed scheme. Peter’s music appears on a number of CDs including Duncan Honeybourne’s acclaimed One Hundred Years of British Piano Miniatures and was the recording was the subject of a half hour programme on Austria’s main national radio network Osterreich One. Plans are in motion for Honeybourne to record a CD of Peter’s complete piano music for release on the Prima Facie label in 2022. A delightful legacy is that he is recognised by the Guinness World Records as having written, with writer Simon Rees, the shortest opera, Earth, Sands of Time: a three-minute and thirty-four-second long piece (including set changes).
Peter died unexpectedly in October 2016, and the contemporary music scene in Wales is still feeling from the shock of his premature death.
Peter Reynolds
