Wood was born in
Parbold,
Lancashire and grew up in a musical family; while still a teenager, he was encouraged by the composer
Alan Bush. He was educated at
Oundle School. He says that his "earliest enthusiasm was
Bach... and that's been at the center of everything ever since." After military service in Egypt, he studied history at
New College, Oxford, where he dedicated much of his time to music and writing compositions for the theatre. In 1954, he moved to London to study composition privately with
William Lloyd Webber,
Anthony Milner,
Iain Hamilton, and
Mátyás Seiber. He also started a parallel career as a music teacher by finding work in schools, including
Morley College, and as a lecturer at the
Royal Academy of Music. In 1958, Wood composed his first published work: a set of variations for viola and piano showing the influence of
Schoenberg and thematic references to
Beethoven, which was premiered by
Cecil Aronowitz. Its premiere at the 1965
BBC Proms provided Wood a public success. His music commands a broad communicative range: it can be violently expressionistic, poignantly lyrical, or even, as in the jazz inflected Piano Concerto, exuberantly rhythmic. Wood liked to compose slowly and he typically preferred chamber music genres, though several of his large-scale works, such as his Symphony and Violin Concerto, are amongst his best known.
Career highlights • 1965 – highly acclaimed Proms premiere of BBC commission
Scenes from Comus. • 1969 – Proms premiere of Cello Concerto, commissioned by the BBC. • 1978 – Premiere of String Quartet No 3 at the Bath Festival. • 1982 – Proms premiere of Symphony by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. • 1998 – UK premiere of Variations for Orchestra at Last Night of the Proms. • 1999 –
Serenade and Elegy premiered at Cheltenham Festival. • 2001 – The
Lindsay Quartet premiere String Quartet No 5 in Sheffield. • 2015 – Proms premiere of BBC commission
Epithalamion with BBC Symphony Chorus and orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis == Key works ==