LIFE

From Strength to Strength

With his new found sources of inspiration: orthodoxy, and Mother Thekla, and a new wife and family, Tavener's career was resurrected.  His works were successful, but fame and fortune came with his work 'The Protecting Veil' - premiered at the Proms in 1989, and recorded by Stephen Isserlis.  It was at No1 in the classical charts for several months in 1992 and won the gramophone award for the best contemporary recording.  There are now several recordings of the work available, all excellent.  A BBC television documentary in 1992 allowed the wider public a glimpse of the man and a sample of his works.

He was awarded an Apollo Award by the Greek National Opera in 1993 for contribution to Greek culture - Greece was by now his second home (he says he is a 'sun worshipper' - bronzing himself for half the year in Greece each year).  He is the only non-Greek to win this award.  To mark his fiftieth birthday in 1994 BBC Radio 3 devoted its annual January festival to Tavener's music, under the title Ikons, with concerts in Westminster Abbey and Westminster's Catholic Cathedral.

!994 saw the recording of what many consider his greatest work: Akathist of Thanksgiving at its second performance in Westminster Abbey.  It had been commissioned in 1987 for the millennium of the Russian Orthodox Church - the fp was given in January 1988.  It was based on a text written in the 1940s by Archpriest Gregory Petrov, shortly before his death in a Siberian concentration camp, and translated by Mother Thekla.

Since then new works and compositions have continued apace.  His writing remained prolific.  The inclusion of his choral piece 'Song for Athene' at the funeral of  Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1998 saw his fame extend to the four corners of the earth as half the planet watched the service, transmitted live by the BBC.

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