Wonderful and evocative piano music with works from
Ayrshire composer Douglas Munn
Sunday 2 October
2pm and 4pm
£22 / £16 / UW & U18s £5
Festival Pass – Priority Booking and a 15% discount
A choice of either performance is included in a Festival Pass.
Dumfries House
Cumnock, KA18 2NJ
View in Google Maps
Approx running time 70 mins, no interval
Debussy Estampes
Douglas Munn Nocturne in D flat Major (1944)
Douglas Munn Nocturne in E flat Minor (1946, Revised in 1991 & 2004)
Martinu Butterflies and Birds of Paradise
Douglas Munn 3 Preludes
E Minor (1944/rev.2003)
F sharp Major (1946)
D Major (1947)
George Bernard Shaw once wrote to musician and composer Busoni: ‘You should compose under an assumed name. I heard you play and I said to myself: It is impossible that he should compose; there is not room enough in a single life for more than one supreme excellence’. The Scottish mathematician Douglas Munn would probably have scoffed at the comparison, but it comes to mind on discovering this music, from a composer who lived in Troon. Munn’s stature is as one of the major mathematicians of the twentieth century. Munn (1929–2008) was also a very capable composer, writing a series of short pieces – preludes, nocturnes and so on – for the piano, which he himself played with considerable skill. Munn and his wife Clare were supporters of Arta Arnicane during her student years at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow, and she now repays that debt in this special recital in Dumfries House.
“Arta Arnicane is a special Latvian pianist who has performed around the world. Her recital is an intriguing combination of music by Debussy and Martinu with the music of the great Troon mathematician Douglas Munn. I knew him when I was younger and it was only later that I discovered that he was also a composer of beautiful piano music.”
