PRESS
On the Edge (2008)
"weird and wonderful" - Michael Church, Independent, 18.vii.2008
"Rushton's score struck sparks off words and pictures, making the most of the unlikely instrumental combinations. No mere accompaniment, it became an evocative drama in its own right. Any such juxtaposition runs the risk of one element, probably the visual, dominating the others. Here the balance seemed spot on." - Nick Kimberly, Evening Standard, 11.vii.2008
"On the Edge seemed less a revival of an all-but-extinct musical form than a tribute to an all-but-extinct breed of Englishman." - Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday, 20.vii.2008
The Shops (2006-7)
"It’s a miniature masterpiece, holding a mirror up to its audiences just as Mozart did in Figaro, and pouring distinctly good-humoured, comic and indeed charming scorn upon our materialistic ways. Given that such ways might soon lead to the planet’s demise, The Shops, modest and innocuous though it might seem, makes a rather important statement." - Stephen Pettitt, The Spectator, v.2008
"Composer Edward Rushton (who looks barely old enough to shave, let alone to have written six operas) and his frequent librettist Dagny Gioulami set out to write a comic opera relative to contemporary society, and what more universal topic could there be than shopping? The Shops focuses on our need to have stuff, and the obsessions of collectors... Gioulami’s intelligent, literary, and insanely funny text... Rushton’s eminently singable vocal line is set against “a collection of clarinets”, strings, and a wild percussion battery... More than just accompaniment to an excellent text, the score dangles on the edge of tonality reminiscent of the cool, nervous tension of Kurt Weill’s Violin Concerto, but with the textual clarity, rhythmic acuity and sheer loveliness of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” and some of John Adams’ jauntier bop. ...the audience exited after a floor-stomping ovation... The Shops made me want to go buy myself something nice, which would have been a ticket to see it again." - Larry L. Lash, MusicalAmerica.com, 2.viii.2007
Immersions (2006)
"always full of surprises. Humour, in the form of spicy and subtle observation, lights up his works, not only in the choice of texts. Whether it's dealing with oppressive heat or the convulsions of the digestive tract, Rushton's music furnishes the text with images, without making it seem ridiculous." - Anja Bühnemann, Landbote Winterthur, 5.ii.2007
"A characteristic of his music is the way it changes around between emphasis and parody, and its virtuosic play with the unreal, that leaves the listener in a stimulating state of insecurity." - Jürg Huber, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 5.ii.2007
Palladas: Songs (2005)
"...magnificent ... art song is no museum exhibit... Rushton engages in a fascinating dialectic... Corrosively lyrical, jaggedly theatrical" - Geoff Brown, The Times, 5.x.2005
Birds. Barks. Bones (2004)
"Birds. Barks. Bones, with a libretto by Dagny Gioulami, is a marvellous piece, original in structure, packed with deft ensemble writing and expressive vocal lines, and both funny and moving.
The three elements in this "Trojan trilogy" are independent yet interdependent; there are no direct narrative or obvious musical connections between them, though Odysseus and the Trojan war are constant presences.
It is an archetypal classical Greek sequence - a tragedy and a comedy separated by a brief satyr play - yet each is so different in Rushton's treatment that there is no sense of contrivance. He can generate tremendous expressive power from a single instrumental line, and much of the tension in Philoctetes derives from the use of spare accompaniments to underscore the dramatic tension. Barks is a piece for the whole company, a choral tour de force introduced by diaphanous string textures, while Linen from Smyrna is the most obviously operatic, though with its over-the-top arias and ensembles very subversively so. ...
A triumph for all concerned." - Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 19.vii.2004
"... the world premiere of a Trojan Trilogy entitled Birds. Barks. Bones. by an outstanding composer of the younger generation, Edward Rushton. Dagny Gioulami's subtle, witty libretto provides Rushton with the material for an entertaining postmodernist take on the story of Odysseus that manages to realise an epic dimension that is coloured but mot destroyed by touchesd of surreal, contemporary humour. Rushton's astonishingly inventive, accomplished score was excellently sung and played by a cast of 10 and ensermble of 15. ... this superbly crafted piece of music theatre." - Barry Millington, Evening Standard, 19.vii.2004
"... an evidently natural operatic composer. ... Rushton's instinct for a living operatic texture. The work starts well – with an oboe cantilena punctuated by "tragic" tutti chords, the combination recalling Tippett's Trojan opera, King Priam – and gets better and better. Rushton moves easily between modernist and tonal influences, succumbing to the clichés of neither, always finding a satisfying instrumental response to his felicitous vocal lines. The use of solo double-bass notes in Philoctetes, the orchestral simulation of cicadas in Barks, the quasi-club beat at the start of the comic (and it really was) Linen from Smyrna, stay in the mind. Harmony varies from the stridulant to the dissonantly clustered to the Straussianly lush. It was under the sign of Strauss that four of the five voices in the all-female Linen finally coalesced into a genuine ensemble, that rarity of modern opera." - Paul Driver, Sunday Times, 25.vii.2004
"Birds Barks Bones is the work of a truly theatrical composer: vocally sympathetic, dramatically astute and inventively scored. A highly promising new voice in British opera." - Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday, 1.viii.2004
Palace (2001)
"Palace is a mature piece for a twentysomething composer. But then Rushton has a distinctive voice, heard here in what is effectively a compact symphony." - John Allison, The Times, 14.xii.2001
"a good-humoured and vibrant work." - Paul Conway, The Independent, 17.xii.2001
"four coherent, subtle but utterly compelling movements." - The Birmingham Post
Views from the Lowlands (2001)
"the alpine panorama is three-dimensional and tangible..." - Christoph Schulte im Walde, Westfälische Nachrichten, 2.xi.2004
L'an mil (1999)
"...a millennial fantasy depicting the eschatological predictions of a mediaeval monk, an urgent solo cello cresting into a coda of expanding calm when he awakes to find that the world has not ended. Rushton is, plainly, a man to watch." - Martin Anderson, The Independent, 28.ii.2000
"Rushton's meditations on the millenium "L'an mil" were quite wild..." - Christoph Schulte im Walde, Westfälische Nachrichten, 2.xi.2004