Music for ‘Channel Firing’
This is a small selection of the repertoire which I have gathered around the texts, drawings and paintings for ‘Channel Firing’. Here, Leoš Janácek responds to the outrbeak of the war, an elegy from Enrique Granados, the great Spanish composer killed in a U-boat attack in the Channel, and Frederick Delius’s lullaby, a small thread of comfort from the ‘Great Silence’, the five years after the tragedy drew to a close.
Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Violin
Roderick Chadwick-Piano
(Recording outtakes-30 10 14 St Michael’s Highgate)
Engineer-Jonathan Haskell-Astounding Sounds
Leoš Janácek-Violin Sonata (1914-15)
I. Con moto
II. Ballada
III. Allegretto
IV. Adagio

Enrique Granados’ ‘Danse Espagnole’ transcribed by the great Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler, who wrote a heart breaking account of his time at the front. Granados died off the Kent coast, on his way back to Spain from making piano rolls in New York (pictured at top), and giving a recital at the White House for Woodrow Wilson. He and his wife were passengers on the SS Sussex, which was torpedoed shortly after it left Folkestone in 1916.
Granados/Kreisler-Danse Espagnole
Frederick Delius-Lullaby for a Modern Baby (1923)
