On 19 March 2026, a lunchtime concert at St George’s Bristol will feature the posthumous premiere of a lost work by Bristol-born composer Ailsa Dixon (1932-2017).
A manuscript in faded blue ink, which came to light in the attic of her former home, was identified as Dixon’s ‘lost’ Scherzo for string quartet, her earliest significant work, written in 1955 when she was studying at Durham University. This delightful, mercurial piece, which earned her the Kisch Prize, shows remarkable confidence for a 22-year old, and already bears some of the hallmarks of her compositional style. Now, over 70 years after it was written, the piece will receive its first concert performance by the Villiers Quartet in the city where she was born.
This is the latest discovery in a remarkable revival of Ailsa Dixon’s music over the past decade. In 2017 a choral work she had written 30 years earlier received its first performance in the spectacular glass-roofed hall surrounding the keel of the Cutty Sark ship in Greenwich, just five weeks before she died. After her death, many unknown works were found in her archive, leading to a succession of belated premieres and a new level of recognition. Her sonata for piano duet Airs of the Seasons, performed at St George’s Bristol in 2018, was hailed as ‘most definitely a work by a British composer with an original musical vision’.
From rediscovery to recording
Ailsa Dixon’s compositions remained in manuscript until her daughter Josie began working through the musical archive she left after her death, and collaborating with musicians on concert performances. The resurgence of interest in Dixon’s music has now been marked by a recording of her chamber music, released in 2025.
Supported by the Vaughan Williams Foundation, the recording comes from the Villiers Quartet, renowned for championing the work of British composers, who will be performing Ailsa Dixon’s music at St George’s on 19 March. The album is the latest addition to the award-winning list of Resonus Classics, known for high resolution recordings of diverse and eclectic repertoire by an international roster of composers and performers. The label has strong representation of women composers, including the Master of the King’s Music, Errollyn Wallen.
The Spirit of Love, a set of songs for soprano and string quartet, gives the title to this collection of works from Dixon’s most fertile period of composition in the 1980s and 1990s. It was premiered by the performers on this recording at St George’s Bristol in February 2020, where a spellbound reviewer for the British Music Society registered ‘a feeling that something special had just occurred.’
When performed at the Nottingham Chamber Music Festival in 2024, the songs were hailed as a ‘stunning find’, with their ‘lush harmonies’ and ‘strange yet still beautiful dissonances’. The soaring soprano lines above the quartet give these songs a transcendent quality, and a capacity to move that demands the listener’s life be put on hold. When the first song, ‘As the harmonic to the sounding string’, was released as a single by Resonus Classics in July, it was immediately featured on Georgia Mann’s Essential Classics on Radio 3. Bristol music lovers will have another opportunity to hear a live performance of these songs as part of the concert at St George’s on 19 March 19, sung by Lucy Cox, whose silvery soprano voice perfectly suits their radiant intensity.
Publishing the scores
It is rare for a composer’s entire oeuvre to remain unpublished in their lifetime despite significant public performances of their music. This gives a historic dimension to the publication of Ailsa Dixon’s scores eight years after her death. Dozens of works left in manuscript in her private archive have been digitised and edited to produce performing scores which are now accessible to amateur and professional musicians alike.
Recognising the importance of this endeavour, some of the musicians who gave these works their first performance have been involved in editing the scores of works coming out this year. Lutenist Lynda Sayce, who gave Ailsa Dixon’s 3 Fugues on Biblical Subjects their first performance on a multi-tracked home recording during the 2020 lockdown, has now edited them for publication.
Waka Hasegawa, one half of the piano duo Piano4hands who premiered her sonata for piano duet, Airs of the Seasons, has produced a performing edition. Joshua Ballance’s string orchestra arrangement of Ailsa Dixon’s Nocturnal Scherzo (originally for string quartet) was premiered at the High Barnet Chamber Music Festival in 2022, and is now published for future performances by orchestras interested in exploring this new repertoire.
These landmark publications are available from Composers Edition, an independent publishing enterprise serving composers, performers and champions of contemporary music-making. Emerging out of founder Dan Goren’s work at the British Music Information Centre on publishing services and an online browsable library of contemporary music, it was established with the support of the Holst Foundation, The Britten-Pears Foundation and Arts Council England. It now features over a hundred composers from around the world, publishing more than 4,000 musical works, from solo and chamber pieces to choral and large-scale orchestral works, for an ever-growing global community of performers, libraries and educational institutions.
Commenting on this new acquisition to their list, Dan Goren comments:
‘Bringing hitherto under-represented music to wider attention is in the DNA of Composers Edition, so we are delighted to be publishing the treasure-trove of works by Ailsa Dixon. Here is music of real intelligence and instinct – direct, fresh and captivating.’
CDs and scores will be available to buy after the concert on 19 March.
The recording and publication of Ailsa Dixon’s works represents a significant milestone in the revival of her music which began shortly before she died. This belated recognition – shared with many women composers – left many works unheard in her lifetime, but the Shakespeare sonnet she chose to be read at her funeral suggests that she cherished a hope that her compositions would survive her:
‘Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea’ is a ‘fearful meditation’ on the inexorable destruction wrought by time, countered at the end with a fragile note of defiance: ‘unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright’.
Posthumous premieres in the city where she was born, the recording of her chamber music, broadcast on Radio 3, and now the publication of her scores have fulfilled that hope beyond her wildest dreams.
St George’s Bristol lunchtime concert
1.00pm on Thursday 19th March Tickets: Villiers Quartet with Lucy Cox | St George’s Bristol
For more information and interviews: contact us via the Ailsa Dixon website
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