Nicholas Maw

John Nicholas Maw (born November 5 1935 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England) is a British composer.

[edit] Background

He is the son of Clarence Frederick Maw and Hilda Ellen Chambers. He attended the Wennington School (a boarding school) in Wetherby in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His mother died when he was 14 of Tuberculosis. He attended the Royal Academy of Music on Marylebone Road in London. He then studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Max Deutsch.

In 1960, he married Karen Graham. They have a son and daughter.

Maw is best known for the orchestral pieces Odyssey (1987), The World in the Evening (1988), the guitar work Music of Memory (1989) and a violin concerto (1993) written for Joshua Bell. His music has been described as neo-romantic but also as modernist and non-tonal (for instance Personæ, his ongoing cycle of piano pieces). He is currently a member of the composition faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music at The Johns Hopkins University.

In 2002 an opera, Sophie's Choice (based on the novel of the same name), was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It was premièred at the Royal Opera House under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, and afterwards received a new production by stage director Markus Bothe at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Volksoper Wien, which had its North American premiere by the Washington National Opera in October of 2006. Mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, who sang Sophie in London, reprised the title role at the National Opera, joined by American baritone Rod Gilfry as Nathan Landau, the schizophrenic man who initially rescues Sophie and then persuades her to join him in a suicide pact. Maw has also prepared a concert suite for orchestra based on the music.

A performance of Odyssey took place in BBC's Maida Vale Studios on 9 December 2005, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 two days later. Simon Rattle has also conducted a recording of the work with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.