When I asked Neil Tennant what I should do with our recent song for Ukraine, Zero Hour, he replied, ‘Put it on the next Michael Berkeley album of Collaborations’ as though, pop star-like, this was a common occurrence. But it sparked an idea as there were several pieces, the results of working with favourite musicians, that came to mind. What the compilation demonstrates is my journey from a tonal base in the liturgical choral writing to a more linear spare language, as in The Magnolia Tree, and the two recent keyboard pieces, Haiku 1: Birds (for piano) and Haiku 2: Insects (for harpsichord). Both these works were inspired by the virtuosity of their dedicatees, Clare Hammond and Mahan Esfahani.

Separating these sketch-like pieces is a recent lament for solo violin, Notes on the Loss of a Friend, which was my immediate and impulsive response on being told by the violinist Madeleine Mitchell of the sudden death of Nicholas Snowman, a friend and great supporter of contemporary music.

I initially wrote my song cycle, Speaking Silence, for the baritone David Wilson-Johnson. However, a long-term collaborator (indeed my vocal guru when I was running the Cheltenham Festival), Julius Drake, suggested that the cycle would sit particularly well and maybe even better for mezzo and would suit the then young and rising star Alice Coote who gave the first mezzo performance in a Radio 3 broadcast from St.George’s Brandon Hill in Bristol which I include here.

Live first performances can be problematic but sometimes they have an immediacy that is hard to re-capture as in The Magnolia Tree (2023).  JS Bach has long been at the apex of the music I love and passages from The Art of Fugue inspired this chamber work, although that only becomes apparent as the music gradually unfolds. It’s a trio for clarinet (Robert Plane who gave several fine performances of my Clarinet Concerto – a score from what you might call my expressionist period), viola (Rachel Roberts) and piano (Chris Hopkins).  The piece was commissioned by the Presteigne Festival with which I have been associated since its inception over forty years ago.

I first worked with the BBC Singers when I was commissioned by the Corporation to write an anthem, Easter, setting George Herbert, for its 60th Anniversary Celebrations at St. Paul’s Cathedral in the presence of the Queen. Their musicianship was and is outstanding. They are conducted here by Owain Park, fellow composer and member of the Gesualdo Six.

Zero Hour transports me back to my days as a pop musician in a group called Seeds of Dyscord, a somewhat less august ensemble when compared to the line-up for Zero Hour which has vocals and lyrics from Neil Tennant, a guitar solo from the iconic David Gilmour and production by Hugh Padgham (Sting and The Police) and Paul Wix Wickens (musical director of Paul McCartney’s touring band).