Harry Castle: Cloudburst

Available for over a year

Harry Castle is 18 and from Sheffield. He began to compose at the age of nine, purely to escape from Grade 6 Theory, but soon realised just how exciting it was to be on the other side of the paper from the performers. Harry also plays violin and piano and is a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. In 2014 Harry was selected as a Senior winner of the Proms Inspire Young Composers’ Competition. As part of his prize, Harry received a BBC commission to write a short piece for chamber ensemble of BBC Symphony Orchestra musicians, taking ideas of memory, nature and freedom as a starting point. Developed over a series of workshops with composer Martin Suckling, conductor Rumon Gamba and BBC Symphony Orchestra musicians, the final piece, Cloudburst, received its world-premiere at a Proms Extra event at the Royal College of Music on 8 August 2015. “Cloudburst a piece about water. Water has always fascinated and terrified me - it is one of the aspects of nature that has the freedom to do exactly as it chooses. I have a lot of memories of water too, from trips to the beach to sailing yachts to getting caught in a downpour on top of a mountain. What I have tried to do is to follow the journey through half of the water cycle, beginning in a cloud, falling as rain and finishing up in the ocean. I have used a lot of extended techniques in an attempt to bring the three tableaux to life, and have learnt some valuable lessons in texture and orchestration during the writing process.”