Imagination takes flight (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Imagination takes flight

12:26pm Thursday 6th March 2008 in News By Lewis Cowen

THERE aren't too many British birds with pieces of music written specifically for them but the Wiltshire Great Bustard became one of them on Friday.

Ronald Corp's string quartet The Bustard received its world premiere at London's Wigmore Hall, played by the Maggini Quartet.

It was recorded during the concert and all members of the audience received a CD on their way out.

It is another coup for the Great Bustard Group, the Wiltshire-based conservationists who are trying to return the bird, the heaviest flying bird in the world, to Salisbury Plain, from where it was hunted to extinction in the 1830s.

Before the concert, Mr Corp, who has been writing music since he was ten years old, and David Waters, the director of the Great Bustard Group, gave talks.

A film made by naturalist Manuel Hinge and narrated by Sir David Attenborough about how the project was set up and how Bustard chicks are sent to the UK from Russia was also shown.

Mr Corp explained how a friend suffering from depression was rescued from the depths of despondency by seeing a film about the Great Bustard and his original intentions to write incidental music for a video about the bird expanded into his first full-blown string quartet.

The string quartet The Bustard opens with a rousing allegro movement before a more haunting movement portrays the Bustard's haunting call across the Plain.

A scherzo movement then evokes the Bustard's Russian origins before the quartet concludes in a stirring finale.