Composer Spotlight: Stephen Roberts

Liv Appleton
Aug 27, 2025
6 min read

Updated: Sep 1, 2025

Planets, Swans and Stars: Stephen Roberts and the British Open

With his latest work, 'Star Crossed Lovers' set to be showcased at the 2025 British Open in September, now is an excellent time to explore the music that has graced the stage at Symphony Hall from the pen of Stephen Roberts.

Who is Stephen Roberts?

Stephen Roberts (ARCM BMUS MA PHD) is a British Composer, arranger, horn player, conductor and pedagogue.

Born in London, Stephen studied French horn at the Royal College of Music with Alan Civil and gained a PHD in composition at the University of Birmingham. His first professional job as a horn player was with the Royal Ballet Orchestra, touring the UK with Swan Lake (a score that would influence his 2015 British Open test piece Reflections on Swan Lake).

In 1980, he became one of the founding members of the Fine Arts Brass Ensemble as well as the the musical director of the Jones & Crossland Brass Band and gained considerable success in the brass band contest arena.

Stephen has written extensively for brass bands, with four of his works being used in the British Open contest:

The Planets - 2003
Arabian Nights - 2013
Reflections on Swan Lake - 2015
Star Crossed Lovers - 2025

Other works of his have been used in competitions internationally, including The Other Side of Silence, which was used at the Swiss Open in 2022 and The Snaring of the Sun which was the Second Section test piece at the 2015 National Finals.

Major Works by Stephen Roberts

Before we are introduced to his latest piece - let’s explore some of the major works that have been featured at the British Open.

The Planets Suite [Venus & Jupiter] (1991)

I’m a huge Holst fan, with Jupiter from The Planets Suite, being one of my favourite pieces of all time - so, this seems a good place to start.

Stephen arranged The Planets in 1996 at the request of James Watson, who was the director of the Black Dyke Band at the time. It was then recorded by the band on the Doyen label later that year.

In 2003 two movements (Jupiter & Venus) were chosen as the set work for the British Open Brass Band Championships, where the Yorkshire Building Society Band took the title.

Venus: The Bringer of Peace, is the first of the two planets we are introduced to. The tone of this movement is quite cold and mysterious with an isolated opening solo for horn with thin accompaniment. It builds into a lilting, flowy stream of sound - basically if you could hear a Monet painting, this is the kind of vibe. It’s a dainty, rather feminine movement - which is fitting, considering the subject matter.

We then move into Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity, which offers a sparkly transition from the serene tones of Venus. It is when the main theme arrives - the one that was utilised as the tune for I Vow to Thee My Country - that gets me with sweaty eyes and a lump in my throat every time. I don’t know whether it’s the warmth of a brass band sound or the patriotic nature that has come to be associated with this theme - but it just adds another layer of emotion to this writing when it is played by a brass band. I imagine the god, Jupiter, being a warm, portly fellow - akin to the Ghost of Christmas Present from A Christmas Carol or Father Christmas and this arrangement captures this personality and warmth incredibly well.

With both movements, Roberts manages to capture the imagery, energy and persona of each planet set out in Holst’s blueprint and expertly adapt them to suit the timbre and tone of the brass band.

Arabian Nights (2013)

Arabian Nights is an exotic and dramatic work written for the 2013 British Open inspired by Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade. The original suite, written in 1888 takes its inspiration from the main character from One Thousand and One Nights. In the story, a sultan is so convinced that all women are untruthful and adulterous that he vowed to put each one to death after the wedding night. However, Scheherazade uses her storytelling skills to keep the Sultan awake for a thousand and one nights, avoiding execution.

Roberts' arrangement opens with the same bold motif of the original - thought to represent the stern sultan. A sandstorm of sextuplets from around the stand and a whimsical twinkle of glockenspiel and vibraphone transport us to the opulent palaces of Arabia and into the imagination of Scheherazade. A fiendish euphonium duet follows, which combines the opening theme with a whirling dance motif. A hauntingly beautiful theme represents the title character, presented by cornet and euphonium before moving into a lush ‘lovers theme’. The work sets challenges for the band’s soloists, namely a cornet solo that climbs the lofty heights to reach a top D - with a diminuendo to pianissimo! The rest of the work takes us on a vibrant journey through the tales of Scheherazade before finishing with one final flourishing coda featuring a reworking of Scheherazade's theme that requires many of the band having to play above the normal range of their instrument! Arabian Nights is a real test of stamina, as well as musical creativity and technical skill for both band and conductor. Scheherazade may not die in the end, but your lip probably feels like it will!

Reflections on Swan Lake (2015)

The next piece by Roberts to be commissioned for the British Open was his Reflections on Swan Lake, which was inspired by one of the most famous ballets by Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake tells the tragic tale of Prince Siegfried and Princess Odette who is cursed to live as a swan by the evil Baron von Rothbart. After Siegfried is tricked into pledging himself to Odile, Rothbart’s daughter, he and Odette choose to die together, breaking the spell through their love and sacrifice.

Roberts' work is in the form of a tone poem that utilises the themes from the well known ballet score to take the listener through the story of Swan Lake. Rather than simply utilise movements from the ballet, Roberts weaves in ‘pure’ recognisable themes and features from the original ballet and sets them within juxtaposing technical and virtuosic backdrops.

The work features a range of testing, isolated solos, particularly for cornet, horn and euphonium. Similar to Arabian Nights it’s a lip buster of a work!

Star Crossed Lovers - (2025)

Ten years later, the British Open has once again commissioned a piece from Stephen Roberts. Similar to Swan Lake and Arabian Nights, Roberts has taken inspiration from an iconic composer, this time it’s the turn of Prokofiev and his ballet score for Romeo and Juliet.

Karyn Mortimer, one of the organisers of the British Open contest is a former ballet dancer and wished for a piece that was based on the three-hour ballet by Prokofiev. Don’t worry - we're not going to be sitting through 18 three-hour performances at the Open. The piece has condensed the score down to just a handful of themes that Stephen has woven within his own compositional material to create a 15-16 minute work that musically illustrates the tale of the eponymous, tragic ‘star crossed lovers’.

In a nutshell, the piece is based on a few key motifs and themes from the original ballet score that have been chosen to reflect opposites, namely, good vs evil, love vs hate. The key themes to listen out for are:

The ‘main theme’ that can first be heard in the introduction and love scenes within the original ballet, but is drawn upon and referenced throughout the test piece
The ‘Love’ theme - delicate and caring, this forms the basis of solo work and the ending
Juliet’s themes - light, energetic and capricious motifs - used to personify the girlish, innocent personality of Juliet and to placate hostility shown by the rival families
Mercutio’s theme - a mischievous, agile, taunting, and playful motif that ends in disaster with the death of the character at the hand of Tybalt
Themes of hate - the two most recognisable motifs from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, taken from Montagues and Capulets

After looking through the score and listening to the original ballet music that Stephen’s latest work is based on, I’m excited to finally hear this work in all it’s glory on 6th September at the British Open.