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Interviews composer Denis ApIvor. Discusses his unperformed opera \"Yerma,\" his work with the Royal Ballet company, his friendship with Dylan Thomas and the retreat from expressionism by composers over the second half of the 20th century.

ApIvor's friendship with [Constant Lambert] led to his sole run of public successes. Shortly before his drink-driven death in 1951, Lambert recommended ApIvor to the choreographer Andree Howard, resulting in commissions for five ballets, among them A Goodman of Paris, A Mirror for Witches (based on the Salem witch-hunt that would soon stir Arthur Miller) and, the most successful of all, the Lorca- inspired Blood Wedding, which took the stage in countries from Turkey to Chile. ApIvor felt an especial sympathy with Lorca (he eventually translated his complete poetry, over a thousand pages), and the impact of Blood Wedding brought a further commission, for the opera Yerma. ApIvor moved to Trinidad, where he had taken a part-time medical post (he was now qualified as an anaesthetist) to carry him through the composition of Yerma; he completed the orchestration back in Britain, in a cottage near Sudbury. Under the influence of [Peter Warlock] and van [Bernard van Dieren], of whose works he generously prepared a number of performing editions, ApIvor's earliest style had been a kind of chromatically inflected diatonicism; he admitted that Stravinsky, too, had had a bearing on his ballets. In the late 1950s his music began to move towards serialism, reinforced from 1960 by an acquaintance with recordings of Webern - though his vocal music always remained lyrical. Even when serialism became the dominant dogma of the day, it aided ApIvor not a whit: William Glock at the BBC turned down his major work of the 1960s, the [Dylan Thomas] cantata Altarwise by Owl-Light (1961).

In 1937, [Denis ApIvor] met the critic Cecil Gray, who introduced him to the composer and conductor [Constant Lambert]: an important artistic friendship ensued. Lambert's influence can be seen in ApIvor's first major work, his 1939 setting of TS Eliot's The Hollow Men, a poem which ApIvor felt to be expressive of the impending European catastrophe. This affinity with certain types of poetry became clear in ApIvor's relationship to the work of [Dylan Thomas], whom he came to know personally. In the postwar years, he also met Roy Campbell, Louis MacNeice, fellow composer [Elizabeth Lutyens] and her husband Edward Clark. Lutyens's interest in Webern may have influenced ApIvor, who had been employing serial techniques as early as 1949. In the 1960s, he produced a series of highly innovative works including the orchestral Overtones, inspired by the paintings of Paul Klee, the second of his five symphonies and the opera Ubu Roi, based on the play by Alfred Jarry. He also made vital contributions to the 20th- century repertoire for guitar. My personal experiences of Denis ApIvor date from his final years. A chance discovery in a library basement of his Violin Sonata (1946) led to my performing it at ApIvor's home in Brighton. He spoke with passion of his friendships with Dylan Thomas, Constant Lambert and Edward Clark, and the disappointments of an artistic life governed by the fickle changes of musical fashion.

Presents an appreciation of Denis ApIvor, who died on 27 may 2004 at the age of 88, focusing on his contribution to British opera and ballet between 1947 and 1966, and, in particular, his operas \"Yerma\" and \"Ubu Roi\".