Fortissimo Autumn 2019

FABER MUSIC NEWS — AUTUMN 2019

fortissimo!

MARTIN SUCKLING ‘An exciting, distinctive voice and a rigorous ear for detail.’

THE OBSERVER (FIONA MADDOCKS)

Plus LA Philharmonic and Royal Ballet stage Thomas Adès dance extravaganza Soul Canoe: a new ensemble work by Tansy Davies George Benjamin at 60: celebrations planned for Paris in 2020 Kopatchinskaja and Gabetta premiere Francisco Coll Concerto

Highlights • Tuning In • New Publications & Recordings • Music for Now • Publishing News

Martin Suckling When Martin Suckling burst onto the scene in 2011 with Candlebird, a spectacular setting of poems by Don Paterson for baritone and ensemble commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, audiences were introduced to a vibrant and staggeringly assured new voice. With each finely-crafted work that has followed, Suckling has continued to combine innovative microtonal investigations with a direct and lyrical communicative instinct.

In 2017 The Times selected Suckling as one of Five British Composers to watch and singled out his ‘absorbing mood piece’ Psalm for harp and spatialised groups for special praise. The range of Suckling’s influences is wide ranging – from Rădulescu and Grisey to Celan and Goya – but what unites all his music is a fastidious ear and the tireless pursuit of rich new modes of expression.

Dear colleagues, Diversity is the buzz word in cultural circles these days and it would be impossible and ill-advised for a music publisher to be outside a trend which is recognising a wide range of cultural activity, and promoting it to mainstream platforms. You will see inside these pages reports on music of many different types. In our case I feel we are representing stylistic diversity rather than jumping on any box-ticking bandwagons.

Different composers have different ambitions, different outlets, different hopes for their music. Some of these are hard to categorise, although we try to make approximate attempts to represent these clearly. We hope that the music we publish is effective in realising the purpose for which it was created whether by commission or volition.

Throughout the diversity and the recent signings our aim is to find quality in all its manifestations.

Turning to our current roster and the choices we make in choosing composers to invest in, it is always a balance between our own belief in what he/she is doing, and how this is either already reflected by performing institutions, or whether we think it is likely to be!

One inspiring affirmation of a good choice is Francisco Coll.

He came to us as little more than a student, and he now has not only major commissions from international orchestras, but there are soloists including Sol Gabetta, Xavier de Maistre, and Javier Perianes all lining up with requests for concertos. Although the request for a second opera from Music Theatre Wales and Royal Opera here is now unlikely to be fulfilled in the immediate future, it is great to have the recognition that Francisco, as a major talent, is receiving. Read more about Francisco on page 8.

Sally Cavender Performance Music Director/Vice Chairman, Faber Music

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The coming months will see the premieres of two substantial works commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and Oxford Lieder Festival, as well as the recording of an all-Suckling orchestral disc for NMC with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov.

BBC Philharmonic commission The BBC Philharmonic will soon announce the premiere of a substantial new 20-minute orchestral work entitled This Departing Landscape as part of the series of studio concerts. ‘Morton Feldman used this phrase to highlight how music slips away from us even as we are hearing it’ explains Suckling. ‘The sometimes-hyperactive energy of my new work is far removed from Feldman’s soundworld, but his characterisation of music’s elusiveness provided the starting point for a journey across an imaginary landscape in constant flux.’

There are two movements, which run together without a break. The first presents a kaleidoscope of sharp-edged fragments constantly shifting into new configurations. There are abrupt changes of material and tempo: patterns loop, repeat and transform irregularly.

In the second movement the pace is radically reduced. This is music of glacial energy: extremely heavy, extremely slow, an inexorable continuity of gradual transformation. Tone becomes microtone becomes noise – and out of the noise, pulsation returns, a series of accelerations spiralling unceasingly, and then suddenly cut off.

An orchestral disc on NMC In February the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov will record a selection of Suckling’s orchestral music for NMC’s Debut Discs series. Tamara Stefanovich will record the compendious five-movement Piano Concerto (2014-16), whilst flautist Katherine Bryan performs The White Road, the flute concerto she premiered in 2017. The disc will also include the orchestra’s live recording of the audacious 12-minute concert opener Release, recorded at Volkov’s 2013 Tectonics Festival in Glasgow, and the BBC Philharmonic’s recording of This Departing Landscape.

Release unfolds as a vivid drama covering a dizzying range of emotions and a vast orchestral canvas. Loud common-chord strikes by the whole orchestra leave behind a trace of microtonal clusters, which eventually blossom into rich, resonant harmonies; a viola and cor anglais melody gradually expands to fill the available space; and chaotic, dense harmonic exhalations which gradually coalesce into simple pulses. In the uppermost register of the violins, a song begins to emerge.

HIGHLIGHTS Martin Suckling Forthcoming performances The Tuning World premiere 19.10.19, Oxford Lieder Festival, St John the Evangelist, Oxford; 6.12.19, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, UK: Marta Fontanals-Simmons/ Christopher Glynn

‘Chimes at Midnight’ from Postcards 3.12.19, Christ Church, Cockermouth; 4.12.19, Caird Hall, Dundee; 5.12.19, St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen; 6.12.19, Inverness Cathedral; 7.12.19, St John’s Kirk, Perth; 8.12.19, Crichton Memorial Church; 10.12.19, Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh; 11.12.19, Wellington Church, Glasgow, UK: Scottish Ensemble

Songs unlock the magic of Donaghy Five new songs by Suckling, entitled The Tuning will be premiered by Marta Fontanals-Simmons and Christopher Glynn at the Oxford Lieder Festival on 19 October 2019.

Commissioned by the Oxford Lieder Festival, they all set poems

by Michael Donaghy.

‘The musicality of Donaghy’s poetry is often remarked upon, and perhaps this is what drew me to his texts’ writes Suckling.

‘It’s a musicality that is more than just pervasive lyricism, one that extends to his precision of gesture and cadence and a delight in the union of formal elegance with expressive heft.

But I think what I love is the magic, and with it the makingstrange, whether of poem-as-spell or of a seemingly quotidian observation. The magic holds me.’

The five poems in the set are selected from across Donaghy’s output and are unrelated. They are not intended to present a coherent narrative, nor are they a cycle – though the music offers cyclic elements, and a narrative could be constructed if desired. ‘I chose them because I could hear them sung as I read them’ explains Suckling. ‘With the exception of ‘The Tuning’, whose exposition-heavy text required a different approach – I set them as songs: simple, often strophic vocal lines and a piano part focusing on a single figuration, as in classic Lieder.’

After an extended introduction, ‘The Present’ places cycling pairs of vocal phrases against ever-expanding piano descents.

‘The River in Spate’ and ‘Tears’ both offer types of musical near-suspended animation. In ‘The Tuning’ the piano takes the melodic lead, sinuous counterpoint enveloping the narrator’s arioso. ‘Two Spells for Sleeping’ practices a hypnotism of unceasing pulsation and not-quite-repeating loops.

Concerto makes Monaco Prize shortlist Suckling’s flute concerto, The White Road, has been shortlisted for the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco’s prestigious Musical Composition Prize. Described as a ‘sonic feast’ by The Scotsman after its premiere by Katherine Bryan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2017, the 14-minute concerto is a work of great subtlety and delicacy. Commissioned by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the concerto takes its inspiration from the work of the artist and author Edmund De Waal (see image above).

Melody is the guiding force, and the flute leads us through a number of beguiling landscapes, often inventively coloured with metallic percussion. An extended song, marked ‘almost a lullaby’, leads to a short virtuoso conclusion with gruff brass chords launching the soloist into the stratosphere.

Scottish Ensemble revisit Postcards To celebrate their 50th anniversary later this year, the Scottish Ensemble will tour a programme made up of significant snapshots and fragments from across its history, from pieces that have particularly resonated with their audiences, to some of their most significant commissions. Pride of place amongst these is Chimes at Midnight, one of the Postcards for string ensemble that Suckling wrote across the Ensemble’s 12/13 season.

This Departing Landscape World premiere January 2020, MediaCityUK, Salford, UK: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Meditation (after Donne) June 2020, Tour of South Scotland, UK: Scottish Chamber Orchestra/ Nicolas Altstaedt

Each of these four miniatures not only perfectly captures a poetic mood but also crystallises the composer’s style: radiant melodies that glow with microtones, shimmering textures that reveal dark undercurrents. The first postcard, entitled Chimes at Midnight, begins with a series of bells, but from within their resonance echoes of a dance emerge and a high violin sings.

Melding joy and grief Next summer the Scottish Chamber Orchestra will revive Suckling’s Meditation (after Donne) for a tour of south Scotland.

Commissioned by the SCO as part of the Armistice Centenary commemorations in 2018, the 11-minute work for chamber orchestra and electronics takes as its inspiration the massed ringing of bells as Armistice was declared. Suckling describes it as ‘a simple song for orchestra, with performers and audience surrounded by a constantly evolving tapestry of tolling bells created by live electronics’. The work is a tremendous achievement, melding together with uncanny ease the somewhat contradictory senses of celebration, anger and grief.

Meditation was the final work to emerge from Suckling’s time as Associate Composer with the SCO, a remarkably rich partnership which has seen the creation of a clutch of brilliant new works: Six Speechless Songs (premiered by Robin Ticciati then revived by Oliver Knussen), and the dazzling Piano Concerto for Tom Poster.

PHOTOS: SALLY CAVENDER © MAURICE FOXALL; MARTIN SUCKLING © MAURICE FOXALL

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Adès Dance Spectacular in Los Angeles

Standing ovations greet the premiere of a new Thomas Adès ballet in Los Angeles.

At its concert premiere by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in May, Adès’s ballet score Inferno elicited huge, spontaneous applause following its penultimate section. Two months later, the success was repeated in an ambitious all-Adès dance production which saw the LA Philharmonic combine forces with The Royal Ballet and Wayne MacGregor. Conducted by Adès, the evenings also included Outlier (MacGregor’s existing choreography to the Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz), and the Company Wayne MacGregor in new choreography for In Seven Days developed with AI technology from Google (Kirill Gerstein was the pianist). Inferno featured striking designs by none other than Tacita Dean.

Lisztiana The first part of what will become an evening-length ballet based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the 45-minute score to Inferno unfolds over 13 sections. A riotous carnival of the macabre, it is imbued with the spirit of Liszt. ‘Liszt really owns hell and the demoniacal’ Adès explained to the LA Times. ‘I looked at what he’d done, and those sounds that arose in him were still completely live cultures. I could put them in passages and new things would happen. So the music in Inferno moves from absolutely 100% me, to 100% Liszt and every gradation in between. I wanted to have this strange feeling that you were almost falling down into the past.’

‘ambitious and electrifying’ ‘Spectacular… Inferno, the first half of what will eventually be a full-length Dante ballet, makes an uproarious heaven of hell… It proved the most ambitious and electrifying of more than five-dozen commissions celebrating the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s centennial season and a bonanza for choreographer Wayne McGregor… McGregor’s style fits Adès’ well. The choreographer’s characteristic mix of fluid movement and sudden change of direction for this limb or that, effortless lifts that suggest flight, limn the bigger gestures of the music… Dean’s cavernous black-and-white backdrop was remarkable for its ability to change character through inventive lighting design… Each movement has a vivid musical character, with Adès’ flamboyant and whimsical take on Liszt appearing to be what interested McGregor most… The wildly galloping thieves at the end were a showpiece of whirling dervishes transformed into rocketpropelled worms.’

The LA Times (Mark Swed), 14 July 2019

Inferno will form the first part of a whole evening choreographed by Wayne McGregor for the Royal Ballet in London entitled The Dante Project which opens on 6 May 2020. Adès will conduct and Tacita Dean will once again design sets and costumes.

In his first score designed specifically for ballet, Adès demonstrates in no uncertain terms his total intuitive understanding of writing for dance. From the arresting opening ‘Abandon Hope’ to the final pages which depict Satan in the frozen lake, before Dante and Virgil climb out of Hell and see the stars, Adès keeps us spellbound. A dark-hued rendering of Liszt’s La Lugubre Gondola ushers in The Ferryman who rows dead souls across the river Styx whilst extraordinary orchestrations of the Bagatelle sans tonalité and the Grand Galop Chromatique transfigure the virtuosic piano writing of the originals into great visceral riots of orchestral sound, further amplifying the music’s manic, devilish energies.

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PHOTOS: INFERNO (PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY CRAIG MATHEW IMAGING AT THE WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL PROVIDED COURTESY OF THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION)

HIGHLIGHTS

Kopatchinskaja and Gabetta premiere Coll Concerto ‘What fascinates me most about this concerto (and Francisco’s music in general) is that it is rooted in tradition but sounds totally new,’ said Gabetta. ‘It is rhythmically alive – dancing and singing – but at the same time it is abrupt, always in search of extremes’. ‘Francisco is an original and captivating composer,’ adds Kopatchinskaja. ‘His compositions do not only come from the brain, they have a visceral appeal. He makes my instrument or voice sound so crazy as I never would have expected, enlarging technical and expressive limits.’

‘The highlight of the programme… A tight, effective piece.’

SRF (Jenny Berg), 12 June 2019

‘Filigree craftsmanship’ Francisco Coll conducted a dream duo of soloists in a compelling new Double Concerto with Camerata Bern.

Commissioned by Camerata Bern as part of Coll’s year as their Composer-in-Residence, the Double Concerto Les Plaisirs Illuminés for violin, cello and small orchestra was premiered in June with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta as soloists. Coll himself conducted, and shortly after the performances the 4-movement concerto was recorded for release on the Alpha label.

The sheer density of invention present in this 20-minute work (which takes its title from Dalí) is staggering. The solo writing veers from rapt interior moments of dialogue to wild gestures of brilliant – but barbed – bravura. A small orchestra (20 players, each with their individual part) is utilised with extreme precision and flair, nowhere more so than in the hallucinatory third movement ‘Alegrías’ where the orchestral violins echo Kopatchinskaja’s forced, hyper-expressive channelling of cante flamenco in thrilling heterophony.

‘Filigree craftsmanship… Although Coll alludes to a nearly-100-year-old work by Dalí in the title, and flirts with Flamenco borrowings, his composition is utterly contemporary. Coll’s art is of a physical intensity that demands a lot of stamina: in some raging episodes, the motives contest each other’s places, the solo instruments remain entangled in a never-ending dialogue, in the sombre “Lullaby” and the final emotionally disturbing “Lamento” the constant changes of expression come to a head.’

Der Bund (Stefan Bucher), 18 June 2019

‘The undisputed highlight of the concert… diverse timbres and very sophisticated rhythms brought the ear pleasures in “Alegrias”. “Lamento” ended with a climax which drew seconds of silence before the tension erupted in an enthusiastic and prolonged standing ovation.’

Badische Zeitung (Erich Kreiger), 13 June 2019

Soul Canoe: a new work for ensemble by Tansy Davies Watery dreamscapes and dark, uncanny energies combine in Soul Canoe, the culmination of Davies’s time as Composer-in-Residence at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

Commissioned by the Concertgebouw and scored for an ensemble of ten players, Soul Canoe was premiered in May by the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble conducted by Tom Goff. Davies’s inspiration for the 20-minute work was twofold: visiting an exhibition of the art and artefacts of Oceania, a Wuramon (or ‘Soul Canoe’ made by the Asmat people of West Papua) rekindled for her memories of an old dream of Amsterdam, long before she had ever been there, its canals eerily filled with empty barges.

Electric guitar cuts a lonely figure through much of the atmospheric four-movement work, obsessively returning to two ominous bluestinged idées fixes. Meanwhile, an accordion provides growling bass pedals and long, swelling, harmonies. The iridescent first movement repeatedly circles around itself – pulsating and flickering – whilst similar looping processes play out in the second movement, which riffs on some searingly elemental material from Davies’s 2018 chamber opera Cave. The third, and longest, movement sees mournful flugelhorn and guitar melodies snagging behind nervous web-like textures.

PHOTOS: PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA, FRANCISCO COLL AND SOL GABETTA © LUKAS FIERZ; TANSY DAVIES © RIKARD ÖSTERLUND

The striking last movement contains the work’s simplest but in many ways most mysterious music. Imbued with a lucid calm, the pared-back rhythmic writing and hushed dynamics seem to denote an opening out of some kind. It’s a luminous and compelling conclusion, with wind instruments tracing sinuous, echoing patterns that glide over a smooth but fast-moving soundstream.

Soul Canoe was co-commissioned by the Red Note Ensemble and Sound Scotland, who will present its UK premiere in Aberdeen on 1 November. A German premiere, by long-standing Davies supporter Konstantia Gourzi and her ensemble oktopus, follows in February at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

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Tansy Davies Forthcoming performances

Tansy Davies

grind show (electric)

A contemporary carol

Australian premiere

Christmas hath a darkness Brighter than the blazing noon

26.9.19, Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Syzygy Ensemble

In her imaginative and thoughtful response to Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Eve, Davies has created a beguiling 6-minute carol. Premiered at the 2011 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, this modern but accessible work for unaccompanied SATB choir would make an interesting pairing with the betterknown Rossetti setting In the Bleak Midwinter. The work will be performed at Kings Place, London this December by the Choir of St Catherine’s College, Oxford under Edward Wickham

Antenoux/Falling Angel US premieres 26.9.19, Auer Performance Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana New Music Ensemble/ David Dzubay

Plumes World premiere 27.9.19, The Sage Gateshead, UK: Royal Northern Sinfonia/Giedre Slekyte

Dark Ground 31.10.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Colin Currie

Soul Canoe UK premiere 1.11.19, Sound Festival, The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, UK: Red Note Ensemble German premiere 7.2.20, Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Munich, Germany: ensemble oktopus/Konstantia Gourzi

Iris 6.11.19, St George’s Hall, Liverpool: Rob Buckland/Ensemble 10/10/ Clark Rundell

The Beginning of the World 9.11.19, Aberdeen Music Hall; 10.11.19, Caird Hall, Dundee; 12.11.19, SWG3 Galvanizers Yard, Glasgow; 13.11.19, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Ensemble

new work World premiere 9.11.19, Kings Place, London, UK: Elaine Mitchener/London Sinfonietta German premiere 17.10.20, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Germany: Elaine Mitchener/ Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik

grind show (electric)/ Undertow/Loopholes & Lynchpins/salt box/ neon 9.11.19, Kings Place, London, UK: London Sinfonietta/Richard Baker

Christmas Eve 7.12.19, Kings Place, London, UK: The Choir of St Catherine’s College, Oxford/Edward Wickham

neon 7.2.20, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK: Musicians from the Royal Academy of Music

loure 19.5.20, Imperial College London, UK: Darragh Morgan

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Crash Ensemble record Antenoux Bloomington appointment The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music has appointed Tansy Davies Associate Professor of Composition, effective from 1 August 2019.

‘Davies has established herself as a highly individualized voice in composition today,’ said Gwyn Richards, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean. ‘Her music doesn’t reside in an airtight box, but is, rather, out on the street, friendly, aggressive, mingling with rock. Her arrival at Indiana University is highly anticipated.’

The Crash Ensemble, who premiered Davies’s Antenoux last year will release a recording of the 5-minute work in September on their own label Crash Records.

Commissioned as part of CrashLands – a ground-breaking project to mark the 20th anniversary of the ensemble – the work is scored for ten players and fluctuates between two kinds of energy: sultry and brooding cycles of highly rhythmic material in guitar, bass, and percussion, and more streamlined linear phrases.

Variation on a round

The Indiana New Music Ensemble and David Dzubay will present the US premieres of Antenoux and the Anselm Kiefer-inspired Falling Angel on 26 September.

Jolts and Pulses, Cycles and Circles Following the huge success of Davies’s chamber opera Cave, and the remarkable part Elaine Mitchener played in it, the London Sinfonietta and Kings Place have commissioned a new work for voice and ensemble of 5 players, to be premiered on 9 November 2019. The work will be premiered as part of a portrait concert entitled ‘Jolts and Pulses’ which will also include neon, grind show (electric) and Undertow. The work is a co-commission with the 2020 Donaueschinger Musiktage, where Mitchener will be joined by players from Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik.

Davies has been generating material for the piece using numbers from sacred geometry – inspired by the writings of Plato and harmonious forms from nature – whilst Sylvia Wynter’s writings on colonial repression provide a contemporary undercurrent. ‘The piece is very much about rhythm’ says Davies. ‘The voice begins as a drum; a percussive utterance. Elaine will play drum kit and the vocal part emerges as another layer of her (4-part) drum pattern. Rhythms and patterns cycle and circle around each other in ever-changing internal relationships.’

Other forthcoming works include Plumes, a 5-minute chamber orchestra work commissioned by Royal Northern Sinfonia to mark their 60th anniversary.

PHOTO: TANSY DAVIES © RIKARD ÖSTERLUND; THE SCOTTISH ENSEMBLE

In November the Scottish Ensemble will give four performances of Davies’s The Beginning of the World for strings. Commissioned for the 2013 BBC Proms as part of a suite of variations on Sellinger’s Round, this 5-minute work pulsates with energy. Fresh, vigorous textures maintain a poise and momentum throughout.

Like Davies’s other works for strings, Residuum and Dune of Footprints – the music is both elegant and highly personal. The latter work, a beguiling and richly sonorous 15-minute work, received its New Zealand premiere in April, with the Auckland Chamber Orchestra conducted

by Peter Scholes.

TUNING IN

David Matthews Revisiting: Dark Pastoral With Matthews’s Dark Pastoral – an 11-minute work based on the surviving fragment of the slow movement of Vaughan Williams’s Cello Concerto (1942) – cellists have gained a fascinating addition to the repertoire. The work was premiered by Steven Isserlis and the BBC Concert Orchestra at the 2010 BBC Proms, and in the past year has been performed in Cologne (by Piotr Skweres, the WDR Funkhausorchester and Frank Strobel) and in Glasgow (by Dai Miyata, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard).

Ninth Symphony recorded The English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods have released a disc of David Matthews’s music on Nimbus. His Symphony No.9 features alongside the Variations for Strings and the Double Concerto for violin, viola and strings (where Sara Trickey and Sarah-Jane Bradley are the soloists).

‘The Variations deserve a place in the canon of celebrated English string literature from Purcell through to Elgar, Bridge and Tippett.’

Matthews, who has a close link with Vaughan Williams, both as an editor of his music and as a fellow member of the English symphonic tradition, orchestrated the four minutes of music that make up the extant short score before adding around six minutes of original music.

David Matthews Forthcoming performances Sinfonia 16.11.19, Princes Hall, Aldershot, UK: Farnborough Symphony Orchestra/ Johann von Stuckenbruck

White Flame 27.1.20, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, UK: Nash Ensemble

Nicholas Maw Selected forthcoming performances Dance Scenes 30.6.20, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Kensington Symphony Orchestra/Russell Keable

Other Matthews works with Vaughan Williams links include the Sixth Symphony from 2007 – which is permeated by his hymn tune ‘Down Ampney’ – and Norfolk March for chamber orchestra (2016), which is a creative reconstruction of the lost Norfolk Rhapsody No.3.

Nicholas Maw

Gramophone (Peter Quantrill), July 2019

‘This is easy music to love… we’re beguiled at Matthews’ ability to write defiantly tonal music which nonetheless sounds contemporary. [The Symphony] is a compelling work and an irresistibly positive musical statement… The euphonious Double Concerto is another find.’

The Artsdesk (Graham Rickson), 29 June 2019

‘Matthews is a genuine symphonist and squeezes every drop of interest out of his theme.’

Limelight (Phillip Scott), 13 August 2019

‘A work unafraid to be in dialogue with tradition.’

BBC Music Magazine (Rebecca Franks), September 2019

This latest addition to the extensive Matthews discography will soon be joined by a release on Signum featuring the Eighth Symphony, Sinfonia, Towards Sunrise and A Vision of the Sea with the BBC Philharmonic and Jac van Steen.

Towards Opera

Revisiting: Dance Scenes

Generous support from the PRS Composers Fund will help Matthews to realise a long-awaited dream in one of the few genres he has yet to tackle: opera.

An exuberant and vigorous set of four orchestral dances, Nicholas Maw’s Dance Scenes (1995) might almost be called a concerto for orchestra in the way it imaginatively puts each group of instruments through their paces. Maw’s debts to his English forebears are clearly signposted in this kaleidoscopic 19-minute work – the brassy extravagance of the first dance sounds like Walton whilst later the tangy woodwind writing recalls Britten. The whole piece is breathtakingly scored, filled with a profusion of scintillating invention.

The proposed piece – to be workshopped next year – is set in a central European country during the 1989 revolutions, and deals with the seismic fall of communism, with its unforeseen and disturbing consequences. It’s a subject close to the hearts of Matthews and his librettist Sir Roger Scruton, who knew Czechoslovakia well in the communist period when they were part of an underground university and met many dissidents.

PHOTO: DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA; NICHOLAS MAW © MAURICE FOXALL

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Francisco Coll Forthcoming performances

Francisco Coll

Liquid Symmetries

Recording News

German premiere

In February, the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Gustavo Gimeno began recording an all-Coll disc which will include Mural, the new Violin Concerto, Four Iberian Miniatures, and a revised version of his opus 1 Aqua Cinerea. The disc will also feature Coll’s short orchestral work Hidd’n Blue which will receive its US premiere in February with Gimeno conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It was most recently performed back in May as part of Coll’s residency with the Orquesta de Valencia. Ramon Tebar conducted.

26.9.19, Alte Oper, Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Ensemble Modern/ Pablo Rus

Cantos Korean, Japanese and French premieres 18.10.19, Tongyeong, South Korea; 20.10.19, Daejeon Culture & Arts Center, South Korea; 22.10.19, LG Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea 25.10.19, Tokyo, Japan; 26.10.19, Kawanishi, Japan; 11.11.19, Alicante, Spain; 14.11.19; Salamanca, Spain; 16.11.19, Vic, Spain; 21.1.20, Théâtre d’Orléans, France: Cuarteto Casals

Hidd’n Blue US premiere 25-26.10.19, Cincinnati Music Hall, OH, USA: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Gustavo Gimeno

Violin Concerto

20-21.2.20, Monumental Theater, Madrid, Spain: Orquesta Sinfónica de RTVE/Nuno Coelho

Patricia Kopatchinskaja will premiere Francisco Coll’s new Violin Concerto in February with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno.

Four Iberian Miniatures Austrian premiere 8-9.11.19, Innsbruck, Austria: Annedore Oberborbeck/Orchester der Akademie St. Blasius/Michael Koeck Brass Quintet World premiere 14.11.19, Younger Hall, University of St Andrews, UK: The Wallace Collection/Stockholm Chamber Brass

Violin Concerto world premiere 13.2.20, Philharmonie Luxembourg: Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/ Gustavo Gimeno Netherlands premiere 23.5.20, NTR ZaterdagMatinee, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Patricia Kopatchinskaja/ Netherlands Radio Philharmonic/ Gustavo Gimeno

Lilith*/Turia World premiere 8.5.20, Palau de la Música, Valencia, Spain: Jacob Kellermann/ Orquesta de Valencia/Christian Karlsen/*Francisco Coll

One of the world’s most distinctive violinists, Kopatchinskaja has already performed Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures, Hyperludes, Rizoma, LalulaLied, and the double concerto Les Plaisirs Illuminés (see highlights section).

The concerto has been co-commissioned by the OPL & Philharmonie Luxembourg, the NTR ZaterdagMatinee, London Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony and Bamberger Symphoniker, an impressive list of partners that is a testament to Coll’s growing international reputation. The partnership of composer and interpreter, meanwhile, is nothing short of ideal: not only do both artists constantly push their disciplines to extremes, they also both delight in exploring the absurd and surreal.

Other forthcoming projects include a Brass Quintet for The Wallace Collection and Stockholm Brass, a piano trio, and Lilith – a 12-minute work for the Orquesta de Valencia, with whom Coll is Composer in Residence.

Levante (Justo Romero), 10 May 2019

Major addition to trombone repertoire Faber Music is pleased to announce that Coll’s Chanson et Bagatelle for trombone and piano will be published later this year. With this masterful 8-minute work Coll – a trombonist himself – has created a major addition to the instrument’s repertoire. The Chanson is almost Bergian with its dark harmonies and slow-burning passion, unfolding as a song without words whose broad lines exploit the whole compass of the instrument, from pale heights to baleful, gritty depths. The angular Bagatelle which follows could not be more contrasted, drawing much of its characteristic mood and colour from the use of a harmon mute.

Liquid Symmetries in Frankfurt Following on from recent performances by the London Sinfonietta and Aspen Festival Contemporary Ensemble, Coll’s Liquid Symmetries for 15 players (2013) receives its German premiere on 26 September at Frankfurt’s Alte Oper. Pablo Rus conducts Ensemble Modern.

Whilst the instrumental line up of this 13-minute work is modelled after the Chamber Symphony of Coll’s close mentor Thomas Adès, the soundworld created is far spikier and more astringent. Several virtuoso solo lines wind their way through the musical fabric – notably a jittery and gyrating muted trumpet solo and recurring, murmured viola statements. Surrealistic juxtapositions abound, no more so than in the work’s final movement, with its strange, cavernously empty near-unison passages and the lone, slightly droll, cowbell – hitherto unheard – that sets up a typically enigmatic conclusion.

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‘Outstanding music, fresh and full of meaning and feeling. Coll is a talent of the first order, both in what he says and how he says it. His expressive language – rich with pictorial imagination – explores timbres and sonorities in the most extreme tessituras. Coll explores and stretches the limits in a way that is intelligent and never faddish, making easy use of the endless opportunities offered by the orchestra… A work that triumphs in its attempt to be, in the composer’s words ‘a sort of collective schizophrenia’.

PHOTO: FRANCISCO COLL © JUDITH COLL

Score and part | 0-571-54078-3 | £16.99

TUNING IN

Carl Vine

Carl Vine Forthcoming performances

Fantasia recording Vine’s 16-minute piano quintet, Fantasia, has been recorded by the Jupiter String Quartet and pianist Bernadette Harvey on the Marquis Classics label. Vine described this single-movement work as a ‘Fantasia’ because it doesn’t follow a strict formal structure and contains little structural repetition or recapitulation.

‘The central section is generally slower than the rest and is followed by a presto finale’ he writes, ‘but otherwise related motifs tend to flow one from the other organically through the course of the work.’

‘Another find: Vine’s disparate ideas knitted with rare skill into a 15-minute movement… new music which deserves to become standard repertoire.’

Hymns to Earth, Moon, and Sun In June, the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago presented the US premiere of Vine’s Choral Symphony, with Carlos Kalmar conducting the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.

Scored for SATB choir, organ and orchestra, the Choral Symphony sets four ancient hymns in exotic languages that have not been spoken for thousands of years: ‘Enuma Elish’, an Akkadian creation myth describing the creation of the world from primeval chaos, and three Homeric Hymns to the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun (in Greek ‘Epic Dialect’). The vocal writing in this 26-minute symphony (Vine’s sixth) is homophonic throughout, reflecting the composer’s wish for the work to ‘revel in the power of the human community’.

‘resplendent choral writing’ ‘A contemplation of humanity’s timeless quest for peace and understanding… The resplendent choral writing of the opening, the staccato utterances of “Eis Gen Metera Panton” (“To the Earth, Mother of All”), the other worldly yearnings of “Eis Selenen” (“To the Moon”) and the orchestral/choral exultations of “Eis Helion” (“To the Sun”) made for an epic statement on the meanings of life.’

Chicago Tribune (Howard Reich), 16 June 2019

‘It was the music of Vine that proved the true discovery of the night… inspired and finely crafted… arresting, strangely beautiful sonorities…

[Here is] a composer who truly understands voices and knows how to write music for large chorus.

Vine writes in a tonal, melodic style yet wields a rich and subtle palette, ranging from the hushed stealing in of voices at the start of the first section to the resplendent final hymn to the sun. Most striking was the second section where the music for women’s voices alone was rapt and gorgeous.’

The Artsdesk (Graham Rickson), 13 July 2019

Piano Sonata No.4 A skilled pianist himself, Vine has created a substantial body of work for the instrument, displaying a scintillating command of sonority and space as well as a versatility and wit, which has led to the pieces being performed across the world. He recently completed his Fourth Piano Sonata, commissioned by American pianist Lindsay Garritson who will give the first performance at the Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, on 11 November. She will then present the 15-minute work in performance and workshop at London’s Royal College of Music and at the Melbourne Recital Centre in early 2020.

Other upcoming premieres include Then & Now, a setting of words by the remarkable activist and artist Oodgeroo Noonuccal, for Katie Noonan and the Australian String Quartet. The 5-minute work will be performed in an extensive Australian tour beginning at the Sydney Opera House on 30 October.

Peter Sculthorpe Revisting: Nourlangie One of Peter Sculthorpe’s most evocative works, Nourlangie, will be revived on 21 February by David Tanenbaum and the members of the San Francisco Conservatory conducted by Nicole Paiement.

Scored for solo guitar, strings and percussion (1 player) with optional didjeridu, it unfolds as one 20-minute movement. It was premiered by the guitarist John Williams and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and takes its name from an enormous rock formation (now known as Burrunggui) in the Kakadu National Park.

‘While writing this music,’ wrote Sculthorpe ‘I often dreamed of a lost guitar in the sea, lying there since 1606, when a Spanish expedition led by Luis Vaz de Torres vainly sailed through waters to the north.’

V 12.9.19, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, QLD, Australia: Queensland Symphony Orchestra/ Alondra de la Parra

Smith’s Alchemy 20.10.19, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Dale Barltrop

Then & Now World premiere 30.10.19, Sydney Opera House, NSW, Australia: Katie Noonan/ Australian String Quartet (12-date national tour)

String Quartet No.6 9.11.19, Ukaria Cultural Centre, Mt Barker Summit, South Australia; 17.11.19, Huntington Estate Music Festival, Mudgee, NSW; 21.11.19, Goldner String Quartet

Piano Sonata No.4 World premiere 11.11.19, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Lindsay Garritson UK premiere 28.1.20, Royal College of Music, London, UK: Lindsay Garritson Australian premiere 16.4.20, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Lindsay Garritson

Peter Sculthorpe Forthcoming performances Small Town 8.9.19, Springwood, NSW, Australia: Blue Mountains Orchestra

A Song for Neilma 15-16.10.19, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Genevieve Lacey/Flinders Quartet

From Oceania Japanese premiere 20.10.19, Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Japan: Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra/Kentaro Kawase

String Quartet No.12 Japanese premiere 30.11.19, Shibuya Hall, Tokyo, Japan: Renko Sugihara/Yukiko Ikeda/Kiyoshi Shigemichi/Minoru Nagasue/Kenichi Mizukoshi

Nourlangie 21.2.20, Caroline H Hume Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco, CA, USA: David Tanenbaum/San Francisco Conservatory/Nicole Paiement

Chicago Classical Review (Lawrence A. Johnson), 15 June 2019 PHOTOS: CARL VINE

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Colin Matthews Forthcoming performances

Colin Matthews

Violin Concerto

Spiralling

14.9.19, Barbican Hall, London, UK: Leila Josefowicz/London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle

Britten Sinfonia will give the Romanian premiere of Matthews’s Spiralling this summer at the Enescu Festival, Bucharest. Originally written for Spira Mirabilis (who premiered it unconducted!), this 25-minute work for chamber orchestra is constantly in motion: sometimes in rapid, scherzo-like figuration, sometimes in a slow unfolding, and sometimes in bold statements which turn in on themselves (as in the striking opening).

Spiralling Romanian premiere 19.9.19, George Enescu Festival, Bucharest, Romania: Britten Sinfonia/Andrew Gourlay

Little Suite 26.9.19, Music@Malling, Malling Abbey, UK: Hugh Webb

Metamorphosis

Everything is renewed

10.12.19, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus/Vladimir Jurowski

Hidden Variables 10.12.19, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group/ Susanna Mälkki

Hidden Agenda 21.2.20, Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival; 31.3.20, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: London Bridge Trio

Orchestrations Fauré Seven Songs 29.9.19, Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, UK: Siobhan Stagg/ Faust Chamber Orchestra/Mark Austin

Debussy La Puerta del Vino/Les collines d’Anacapri 20.3.20, Tobin Center, San Antonio, TX, USA: San Antonio Symphony

Benjamin Britten Forthcoming performances Death in Venice 21.11-6.12.19, Royal Opera House, London, UK: Padmore/Finley/Mead/ The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/Sir Mark Elder/dir. David McVicar 22.11-5.12.19, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Germany: Bostridge/Carico/Oney/ Orchester der Deutschen Oper/ Markus Stenz/dir. Graham Vick 4.4-7.5.20, GöteborgsOperan, Sweden: Nilon/Zetterstrom/Carlsson/ Göteborgs Operans/Steuart Bedford/ dir. David Radok 9-30.5.20, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Germany: Klink/Eiche/ Staatsorchester Stuttgart/Bas Wiegers/dir. Demis Volpi 3.5-25.6.20, Theater Münster, Germany: Sinfonieorchester Münster/ Golo Berg/dir. Carlos Wagner 24.5-24.6.20, Theater Bonn, Germany: Mertes/Morouse/Wessel/ Beethoven Orcheter Bonn/Hermes Helfricht/dir.Hermann Schneider

Children’s Crusade 28.3.20, Philharmonie, Paris, France: Etudiants du CNSMD/Choeur de l’Orchestre de Paris/Choeur d’enfants de l’Orchestre de Paris/Lionel Sow

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Rattle conducts Violin Concerto On 14 September, Leila Josefowicz performs Colin Matthews’s Violin Concerto with Simon Rattle and London Symphony Orchestra. This dazzling and mercurial work was written for Josefowicz, with her distinctive musical personality in mind, and is one of Matthews’s most vivid scores. A sustained, high-flying lyricism is one of score’s hallmarks, and it inhabits the rich yet airy soundworld typical of his post-Debussy Préludes pieces.

Cast in two movements of equal length, the 22-minute concerto is scored for an economical orchestra of only 36 string players, winds and seven brass and percussion.

Flugelhorns replace trumpets, and the distinctive bass sonorities of the lujon are prominent.

Revisiting: A Land of Rain 2021 marks 200 years since the birth of one of art’s great modernists: Charles Baudelaire. What better excuse for revisiting Matthews’s Spleen: A Land of Rain for medium voice and ensemble, an intriguing 25-minute work that sets 10 eccentric translations of the same Baudelaire poem ‘Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux’ from Les Fleurs du mal.

Mostly written under pseudonyms for a competition in the Sunday Times, the eccentric translations by Nicholas Moore embrace a vast stylistic diversity – sometimes serious, more often parodistic – an approach which Matthews has mirrored in his settings. Whilst the more light-hearted songs recall something like the madcap energy of William Walton’s Façade, the overriding mood is of a deep and listless ennui. After a brief ‘Envoi’, the work ends with the Baudelaire poem in French, set in the style of Duparc or perhaps Chausson. When this too evaporates, leaving just a spectral piano accompaniment, it feels like we have been transported back to a Parisian salon. Capricious, incisive and unruly, Spleen: A Land of Rain is also a fascinating meditation on the inexact nature of translation.

PHOTO: COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL

Metamorphosis for chorus and orchestra will be performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski in October. The final part of Renewal, Matthews’s vast quartet of orchestral works from the 90s, this 13-minute work for chorus and orchestra sets a text derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses describing the philosophy of Pythagoras: ‘Nothing in the whole world endures unchanged… everything is renewed’. Much of the music is underpinned by deep pedal C, and its hushed, mysterious mood will make it an excellent curtain-raiser to Mahler’s Second Symphony, with which it shares the programme.

Benjamin Britten The Wilderness of night Children’s Crusade, a setting of Bertold Brecht for children’s voices, two pianos, electric organ, and percussion, is one of Benjamin Britten’s most austere and unsettling pieces.

The 19-minute work takes the form of a ballad telling the story of a group of children trying to flee the ‘wilderness of night’ that was World War II Poland, searching for peace but ultimately becoming lost without trace in the snow.

Composed for the 50th anniversary of the Save the Children Fund, Children’s Crusade was completed in January 1969, immediately before two other works preoccupied with war: Who are these Children? and Owen Wingrave. Britten himself referred to this hard-hitting work as a ‘very grisly piece’, and its icy, claustrophobic and violent music offers almost no hope. Originally in English, it also exists in a German translation by Hans Keller.

The work will next be performed at the Philharmonie de Paris in February, with Lionel Sow conducting the Chœur d’enfants de l’Orchestre de Paris and students from the Paris Conservatoire. The Paris programme also includes the Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris singing another Brecht setting: Weill’s Berliner Requiem.

To peruse works by from all Faber Music’s composers, please visit: scorelibrary.fabermusic.com

TUNING IN

Jonathan Harvey Riot Ensemble record Song Offerings A new recording of Harvey’s Song Offerings – the second to date – will be released in September on Coviello Classics.

The performers are Sarah Dacey and the Riot Ensemble conducted by Aaron Holloway-Nahum. Premiered in 1985, Song Offerings for soprano and chamber ensemble of eight players remains one of his most celebrated works.

An intimate cycle of four ecstatic Tagore poems (sung in English), this 17-minute work abounds in exotic colours, torrents of gleaming effects and masterful word setting.

A new edition of Speakings

…towards a pure land in Warsaw Jonathan Harvey’s …towards a pure land (2005) will receive its Polish premiere in September at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, with Ryan Bancroft conducting the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The first fruit of Harvey’s extraordinary partnership with Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, this radiant 15-minute work won the 2007 RPS LargeScale Composition Award. It begins with the ‘Ensemble of the Eternal Sound’ – a small group of strings, hidden on the stage – which provides a backdrop of quietude onto which Harvey paints monumental, gradually shifting sheets of divisi strings (moving from toneless to pitched material). Towards the end, the wind players evocatively whisper fragments of words.

‘The work’s heart’, Harvey wrote, ‘is not solid, rather it is an emptiness, an empty presence… In the surrounding music, the tempi are often fluid, the ideas are fleeting: things arise, then cease, in an unending flow. To grasp them and fix them would be to distort them falsely. A Pure Land is a state of mind beyond suffering where there is no grasping.’

Faber Music is pleased to announce the publication of a new edition of what is undoubtably one of Harvey’s most important and ambitious works: Speakings for orchestra and electronics. Composed in 2008, during Harvey’s time as Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, it utilises a unique process of electronic transformation developed at IRCAM to explore the possibility that an orchestra could be made to ‘speak’.

Winner of the prestigious Monaco Prize, the 25-minute work belongs to that fascinating clutch of works composed around the time of Harvey’s final opera, Wagner Dream, which contain musical allusions to Wagner, in this case Parsifal. Unfolding over three continuous movements, the music moves from the babbling of a baby and the frenetic chatter of human life in all its expressions, to music of unity, a hymn which is close to Gregorian chant in which, in Harvey’s words ‘the paradise of the sounding temple is imagined’.

Typeset, and with input from Gilbert Nouno who collaborated with Harvey on the electronic element, this long-awaited new edition undertaking will make this stunning piece even more accessible to conductors and enthusiasts.

Jonathan Harvey Forthcoming performances Bird Concerto with Pianosong 21.9.19, Festival Musica, Strasbourg, France: Bertrand Chamayou/Sound Intermedia/Orchestre national de Metz/David Reiland 27.2.20, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Laura Sandee/Ensemble Insomnio/ Ulrich Pohl

Tendril Israeli premiere 21.9.19, Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel: Israeli Contemporary Players/ Zsolt Nagy

...towards a pure land Polish premiere 28.9.19, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Poland: Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Ryan Bancroft

Sringara Chaconne 7.11.19, Conservatorio Amadeo Roldán, Havana, Cuba; 9.11.19, Basílica de San Francisco de Asís, Havana, Cuba; 18.11.19, Studio des Ensemble Musikfabrik, Cologne, Germany: Studio Musikfabrik/ Peter Veale

Vajra 19.11.19, Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris, France: Ensemble Court-Circuit/ BCMG/BCMG NEXT/Jean Déroyer

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco 9.10.19, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex, UK 10.12.19, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group

Pre-echo for JeanGuihen 4.4.20, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Jean-Guihen Queyras

Sussex Electronic studio

String Quartet No.2

This Autumn, the Music Department at the University of Sussex will open a new resource honouring Harvey’s long association with the institution and his extraordinary legacy to British music. The launch of The Jonathan Harvey Electronic Music Studio will be marked on 9 October, with a brief concert including Harvey’s seminal electronic work Mortuous Plango Vivos Voco (1980).

11.6.20, Salle des Concerts, Cité de la musique, Paris, France: Quatuor Béla

Mortuous Plango will also be heard in Los Angeles this December, as part of a concert by the LA Philharmonic New Music Group curated by Susanna Mälkki and Leila Josefowicz.

Full technical details for all Harvey’s works involving electronics can be found online at: jonathanharveysoundsources.com PHOTO: JONATHAN HARVEY © MAURICE FOXALL

Score | 0-571-53888-6 | £39.99

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Thomas Adès Forthcoming performances

Thomas Adès

Asyla

‘Gerstein is ideally cast to explore the pristine sensuality of this outwardly traditional yet modern concerto… After an initial timpani beat as a starting signal, the thoroughbred virtuoso is immediately in his element in the Allegramente with its double octaves, glissandi and crazy trills. Such spectacles never remain and end in themselves, but are integrated into powerful lines, wide arcs of a gigantic orchestral kaleidoscope… It certainly isn’t the last time we will hear this piece…’

12.9.19, Konserthuset, Malmö, Sweden: Malmö Symphony Orchestra/Robert Trevino

Three Studies from Couperin 13.9.19, Ultima Festival, Oslo, Norway: Norwegian Radio Orchestra/ Geoffrey Paterson 3-4.10.19, Opéra National de Bordeaux, France: Orchestre National de Bordeaux/Paul Daniel 17.10.19, Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland: Marko Ylönen/Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Leo McFall

Leipziger Volkszeitung (Werner Kopfmüller), 26 April 2019

‘O Albion’ for string orchestra

21.11.19, Kuopio Music Hall, Finland: Kuopio Symphony Orchestra/ Jessica Cottis Japanese premiere 8-9.12.19, Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan: Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra/Alan Gilbert

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra Danish premiere 3.10.19, Koncerthuset DR Byen, Copenhagen, Denmark: Kirill Gerstein/Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon 11-12.10.19, Severance Hall, Cleveland, OH, USA: Kirill Gerstein/ Cleveland Orchestra/Alan Gilbert UK premiere 23.10.19, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Gerstein/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adès Finnish premiere 29.11.19, Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland: Gerstein/Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/Adès 27-28.2.20, Herkulessaal, Munich, Germany: Gerstein/Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Adès Netherlands premiere 19-21.3.20, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gerstein/ Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/ Adès 2-4.4.20, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Gerstein/LA Philharmonic Orchestra/Adès

Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face Netherlands premiere 10-12.10.19, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Adès

Violin Concerto 6,8.12.19, Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Augustin Hadelich/Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä 7.12.19, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK: Anthony Marwood/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Manze 14.2.20, Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland: Pekka Kuusisto/Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon 29.3.20, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany: Leila Josefowicz/NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester/Krzsystof Urbanksi

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Piano Concerto After the rapturous response at its world premiere with the Boston Symphony (its sole commissioner) in March, and its European premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus in April, many expected that Thomas Adès’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was set to enter the repertoire.

What no-one could have predicted, however, was the astonishing and unprecedented speed with which it has been taken up by orchestras. At the time of writing there are 35 forthcoming performances planned – all with Kirill Gerstein, the pianist who premiered it, at the keyboard.

In October Nicholas Collon will conduct the concerto with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, swiftly followed by Alan Gilbert and the Cleveland Orchestra. In the 19/20 season alone, Adès will conduct the work’s UK premiere with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and further performances with the Helsinki Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the LA Philharmonic.

This audacious 22-minute work (Adès third concertante work with piano) is almost bewildering in its wealth of invention. Throughout its three movements a highly sophisticated yet vital approach to rhythmic feel is married to a totally personal harmonic sense, and the resulting work is by turns playful, sombre, rowdy and ravishingly beautiful. Adès and Gerstein have worked together many times, both in concertos and as duo partners, and the solo writing is tailor-made for the latter’s combination of jawdropping virtuosity and musical intelligence.

‘The Adès’s soundworld is as exciting as it is individual… With the European premiere of this concerto the Gewandhaus have landed a real coup… It begins with a timpani upbeat followed by a memorable piano motif – full of earworm potential – that is passed through the orchestra, its many facets questioned by Gerstein in a stupendous virtuoso manner. The unanimous enthusiasm of the audience proved that this fantastic concerto will quickly be taken up by other orchestras.’

Bachtrack (Michael Vieth), 26 April 2019

PHOTO: THOMAS ADÈS © BRIAN VOCE

Ever since its premiere in 1994, Adès’s first string quartet, Arcadiana has been captivating audiences with its stunning evocations idylls vanishing, vanished, or imaginary. Its 6 commercial recordings to-date demonstrate just how successful it is in fusing contemporary sonority, formal familiarity and imaginative depth.

Of all the quartet’s movements it is ‘O Albion’ that has most captured the imagination of listeners: seventeen sighing, devotissimo bars in E-flat (the key of Elgar’s Nimrod). Last year the vocal consort Voces 8 recorded a version for Decca and now, due to many requests from performers, Adès has made an arrangement for string orchestra. It was commissioned by The Orchestra of the Swan (and partners) and will be premiered by them at Theatre No.8, Pershore, on 15 October.

Three Berceuses in Verbier Adès has created a set of Three Berceuses from The Exterminating Angel for viola and piano. They have been commissioned for Lawrence Power, by the Verbier Festival; Moritzburg Festival; BBC Radio 3; Aspen Festival; UKARIA Cultural Centre, South Australia; Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam; and underwritten by The Viola Commissioning Circle. Power gave the premiere at Verbier in July when he was joined by pianist George Li. The pieces – which last 9 minutes in total – are exclusive to Power until July 2021.

The Berceuses include some of the opera’s most exquisite music – the first two drawing on the yearning melancholy duets of the doomed lovers Beatrice and Egardo, the last a version of Silvia’s eerie berceuse macabre from Act III.

An Angel Symphony In May 2020 the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will premiere the Angel Symphony. Drawing on Adès’s extraordinary score to The Exterminating Angel, the work will be around 20 minutes long and has been commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Kölner Philharmonie, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, National Orchestra of Spain and the Barbican Centre.

Other forthcoming projects include a set of violin-piano pieces and a work for string orchestra.

TUNING IN

Tom Coult

Thomas Adès Forthcoming performances

Violet A co-production by Music Theatre Wales, Aldeburgh Festival and Theater Magdeburg, Coult’s chamber opera Violet with playwright Alice Birch will be staged across the UK in the summer and autumn of 2020. A full-length piece of around 80 minutes, for four singers and ensemble of 14 players, the opera has already been shortlisted for the prestigious FEDORA – GENERALI Prize for Opera.

Richard Baker will conduct the London Sinfonietta, with Elizabeth Atherton in the title role. The creative team will also include director Rebecca Frecknall and designer Tom Scutt.

New piano pieces Tom Coult’s new collection of piano pieces, entitled Inventions (for Heath Robinson) was premiered by Riot Ensemble’s Adam Swayne at the Petworth Festival in August.

The title Inventions has always had an attraction for Coult, who writes: ‘firstly, it suggests that the composer is intentionally reducing their means – evoking Bach’s Inventions, it implies rigour, concision, transparency and craft. Secondly, the word suggests a composer’s imagination taking flight – conjuring worlds that don’t exist yet, embracing the elation of creating artistic things.

Lastly, it conjures for me the idea of a mad inventor – working with pulleys, cogs, engines and sellotape. Creating contraptions whose complexity far exceeds their use value, but whose ingenuity has a charm in direct proportion to their uselessness.’

A Violin Concerto, Pleasure Garden, for Daniel Pioro and the BBC Philharmonic will be premiered in June, with Ilan Volkov conducting.

Loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Devil in the Belfry, the opera concerns the inhabitants of a village which begins losing hours from its day – one night, an hour disappears. On day two, two hours are missing, on day three, three are gone. Our story takes place over 24 increasingly short days, as time drains from the world, until the opera snaps shut as the final hour vanishes.

Diotima take up String Quartet Quatuor Diotima will give the French premiere of Coult’s String Quartet in February as part of Radio France’s Présences Festival.

Commissioned by the Hepner Foundation and premiered by the Arditti Quartet, the 12-minute work is characterised by the unusual tunings of half of the instruments – the 2nd violin has all its strings tuned down a semitone, and the viola has all its strings tuned down a tone. This greatly expands the number of different pitches available to be played as open strings – unlike the conventional tuning of a quartet, this combination contains 16 unique strings – and all the piece’s five movements are in some sense explorations of the distinctive timbre of open strings. It’s an ingenious work, perhaps Coult’s most compellingly original yet, with a fascinating mix of clarity and strangeness.

Three-piece Suite from Powder Her Face 2-3.12.19, Nationaltheater, Munich, Germany: Bayerisches Staatsorchester/Thomas Søndergård

Tevot Lithuanian premiere 12.10.19, Vilnius Festival, Lithuania: Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra/Modestas Pitrenas

In Seven Days Lithuanian premiere 19.10.19, Vilnius Festival, Lithuania: Nicolas Hodges/Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra/Adès 28-30.11.19, Konzerthaus, Berlin, Germany: Vikingur Olafsson/ Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Cristoph Eschenbach 1.3.20, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK: Nicolas Hodges/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski

Three Berceuses UK premiere 21.10.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Lawrence Power/Simon Crawford-Phillips

Powder Her Face Greek premiere 25.10-9.11.19, Kallithea, Greece: Greek National Opera/Ergon Ensemble/dir. Alexandros Efklidis

Angel Symphony World premiere 13-14.5.20, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

Inferno Netherlands premiere 18-19.6.20, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Adès

Tom Coult Forthcoming performances Études 3.11.19, Omnibus Theatre, London, UK: Fenella Humphreys

String Quartet French premiere 8.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de Radio France, Paris, France: Quatuor Diotima

Schumann – Studies in Canonic Form 28.3.20, St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, UK: Oxford Sinfonia/Robert Weaver

Pleasure Garden World premiere 4.6.20, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: Daniel Pioro/BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Ilan Volkov

Violet World premiere June 2020, Aldeburgh Festival, Snape, UK: Music Theatre Wales/ London Sinfonietta/Richard Baker/ dir. Rebecca Frecknall PHOTO: TOM COULT © MAURICE FOXALL; EXCERPT FROM INVENTIONS © FABER MUSIC

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Matthew Hindson Forthcoming performances

Matthew Hindson

Malcolm Arnold

Saxophone Concerto premiere

Arnold Centenary

Amy Dickson premiered Matthew Hindson’s Soprano Saxophone Concerto, a commission from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, on 25 August in Hobart. Benjamin Northey conducted. The 22-minute work in three movements was broadcast on ABC Classic FM radio.

In 2021, the centenary of Malcolm Arnold’s birth provides the ideal opportunity to reassess this fascinating and indispensable figure in 20th century British Music.

There can’t be any professional musician trained in the UK who is not familiar with the engaging and directly communicative qualities of Arnold’s work, but behind the popular image of Arnold is a much more complex personality, with a remarkably diverse output to match.

Arrival 16.9.19, Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, ACT, Australia: National Carillon/Lyn Fuller/Dr Thomas Laue

Light Music 5.10.19, Joan Hammond Hall, ABC Southbank, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Orchestra Victoria

String Quartet No.2 UK and Spanish premieres 14.10.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK; 16.10.19, Two Moors Festival, Chagford, UK; 17.10.19, Leicester International Music Festival, UK; 19.11.19, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain; 25.11.19, Penrith, UK: Elias String Quartet

Rush 3.12.19, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, UK; 4.12.19, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, UK: Craig Ogden/ Manchester Camerata

Malcolm Arnold Forthcoming performances Peterloo 8.9.19, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: Chetham’s School of Music/ Stephen Threlfall (choral version) 22.9.19, Christchurch Town Hall , New Zealand: Burnside High School Orchestra/Helen Renaud 16.11.19, Chester Cathedral, UK: Chester Philharmonic Orchestra/ Marco Bellasi 23.11.19, Blackpool, UK: Blackpool Symphony Orchestra/Helen Harrison 9.5.20, Scarborough, UK: Scarborough Symphony Orchestra/ Shaun Matthew

Concerto for Clarinet No.2 15.9.19, Miyaji Gakki Koganei Shop, Tokyo, Japan: Hiromi Takahashi/ Ensemble Grune/Kazuki Wada 10.11.19, Die Glocke, Bremen, Germany: Orchester Musikfreunde Bremen/Matthias Reckhardt 1.2.20, Mote Park, Maidstone, Kent, UK: Emma Johnson/Maidstone Symphony Orchestra/Brian Wright

The Turtle Drum 12.10.19, Malcolm Arnold Festival, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, UK: Hilary Davan Wetton

Four Irish Dances 29.10.19, LaGrange College, LaGrange, GA, USA: LaGrange Symphony Orchestra/Richard Prior

Elias tour 2nd Quartet in Europe A stunning musical depiction of an exploding supernova, Hindson’s String Quartet No.2 is one of his finest works in the medium. It was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia for the Elias String Quartet, who will perform it in the UK and Spain later this year, including the London premiere at the Wigmore Hall on 14 October.

‘A work of great initial dynamism laced with memorable effects – power-packed glissandi, slithering sul ponticello, bow-bouncing and cheeky pizzicato passagework… The still, quiet, central section is handled with masterful control and concentration, conjuring up the vastness of space itself… music of compelling, heart-breaking beauty.’

Limelight (Clive Paget), 20 August 2013

‘A skilful depiction of a supernova exploding, building from silence to chaos in an adrenalin-rush of notes… tough and rangy, packed with ideas which hatch and morph at dizzying rates.’

The Sydney Morning Herald (Harriet Cunningham), 20 August 2013

‘Requiem for a City’ wows audiences in Spain Hindson’s Requiem for a City for symphonic wind band was co-written with renowned Australian DJ Paul Mac in 2015 and has since been taken up by numerous ensembles.

Moreover, the 16-minute work was immediately recorded for Naxos. In recent months it has been performed – in a slightly reduced version – in Buñol, Spain at the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles Annual Conference. It was presented by its original commissioners, the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Orchestra conducted by John Lynch, who also performed it in Sydney in May.

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PHOTOS: MATTHEW HINDSON; MALCOLM ARNOLD

Arnold’s symphonies, works into which the composer poured his most serious and compelling musical statements, not to mention some of his most personal and emotional music, have for too long been unjustly overlooked. His Seventh Symphony, completed in 1973 is a startlingly original work (arguably the most deeply personal of all Arnold’s nine symphonies) and now boasts four separate commercial recordings.

Peterloo Overture at the BBC Proms Malcolm Arnold’s dramatic Peterloo Overture received a thrilling account at this summer’s Proms from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Ben Gernon. The 9-minute work was last heard at the Proms in 2014, when a new choral version with lyrics by Sir Tim Rice featured as part of the Last Night.

The overture powerfully portrays the terrible events of the Peterloo Massacre but, after a lament for the killed and injured, it ends in triumph, in the firm belief that all those who have suffered and died in the cause of unity amongst mankind, will not have died in vain.

Revisiting: the concerto for 3 hands Commissioned 50 years ago for the 1969 BBC Proms, Arnold’s vibrant Concerto for Two Pianos (3 hands) was written for the husband and wife team of Phyllis Sellick and Cyril Smith. Unashamedly popular and direct in style, this concise 13-minute work contrasts dark tragedy with melting romantic melodies, closing with a brilliantly witty and uplifting rumba.

TUNING IN

Torsten Rasch

John Woolrich

A new opera for Dresden

Trumpet Concerto for Alison Balsom

The unique expressive make-up of Rasch’s music – his fluency, assurance on the largest scale, and his uncanny ability to spin a vivid and personal sound-world around the ghosts of others – makes him a natural composer for the stage. His first opera Rotter (2007) was adapted from a play by the East German dissident writer Thomas Brasch, whilst a second, The Duchess of Malfi (2010), saw him join forces with the radical theatre company Punchdrunk for a critically acclaimed immersive adaptation of John Webster’s gripping revenge tragedy. Die Formel – an ambitious interdisciplinary work for singers, actors and orchestra – followed last year at Konzerttheater Bern.

From Ulysses Awakes, his iconic reworking of Monteverdi, to his much-loved Viola Concerto, John Woolrich has consistently made his own work a fascinating echo chamber for musical voices from the past. In May 2020, a new work for trumpet and chamber orchestra – Hark, the echoing air – will be premiered by Alison Balsom and the Britten Sinfonia. The new commission will be heard alongside Woolrich’s characterful, pungent, transcriptions

Rasch is now at work on his next opera: Die Andere Frau for the Semperoper Dresden. To a libretto by writer Helmut Krausser exploring the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, the work will both offer an exciting love story and trace the origins of the Abrahamic religions.

What’s more, Immo Karaman’s production will literally place the audience in the middle of the action: on the stage of the Semperoper itself. Roland Kluttig will conduct.

Seven As well as providing the libretto for Rasch’s next opera (and inspiring his dramatic Violin Concerto Tropoi), Helmut Krausser has also been pivotal in a new work commissioned by the RIAS Kammerchor. Scored for SATB choir and solo cello, and setting texts by Krausser, Seven takes the form of interpolations in the St Luke Passion by Heinrich Schütz. The choir will premiere the 17-minute work with cellist Anna Carewe at the Schütz Musikfest, Weißenfels, in October.

‘Schütz’ Lukas-Passion is a masterwork of austerity and expressiveness’ writes Rasch. ‘According to the Secrets of Enoch (from the apocrypha), man was created using seven consistencies: Earth, Dew, Sun, Stone, Clouds, Grass and Wind. Within the Lukas-Passion there are statements that correspond to these elements and Helmut wrote poems dealing with them. My aim was to be expressive; to elevate, construe and enhance the Passion within the context of these new poems.

PHOTOS: TORSTEN RASCH © MAURICE FOXALL; JOHN WOOLRICH © MAURICE FOXALL

of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas.

Revisiting: the Violin Concerto The Britten Sinfonia will also take Woolrich’s music to Romania this summer, where they will be joined by the winner of the Enescu Competition and conductor Andrew Gourlay for a performance of the Violin Concerto.

When the 21-minute work was premiered at the 2008 Aldeburgh Festival by Carolin Widmann and Northern Sinfonia conducted by Thomas Zehetmair, the Guardian found in it ‘a wilful intensity’ and praised its ‘flights of imagination and lyrical soul-searching.’ Conceived as a single movement, the concerto begins in medias res and it quickly becomes apparent that its character and internal dramaturgy fit no existing mould. ‘I’ve never done the 19th-century virtuosic thing of pitting the soloist against the orchestra, trying to get the soloist to shut it down’ says Woolrich. ‘With my Viola Concerto everything is pianissimo, supported by flute and harp. The Cello Concerto alternates between solo and tutti, or solo with hushed tutti. But the Violin Concerto is full of ensemble playing, because the violin is on top so it can sing out more easily. It’s exciting to find a way of keeping the poetry of this uneasy balance between the one and the many. All the ideas that come out of that thought become the beginning of how you think about the concerto.’

Torsten Rasch Forthcoming performances Seven World premiere 13.10.19, Heinrich-Schütz-Musikfest, Weißenfels, Germany: Anna Carewe/ RIAS Chamber Choir

Die andere Frau World premiere 3-24.6.20, Semperoper Dresden, Germany: Marquardt/Herlitzius/ Pucalkova/Deyhim/Sinfoniechor Dresden/Staatskapelle Dresden/ Roland Kluttig/dir. Immo Karaman

John Woolrich Forthcoming performances Concerto for Violin Romanian premiere 19.9.19, George Enescu Festival, Bucharest, Romania: winner of the Enescu Competition/Britten Sinfonia/ Andrew Gourlay

Pianobooks II, VI, VII, IX, XII, XIV, XV 2.11.19, Homerton College, Cambridge, UK: Clare Hammond

A Book of Studies Set 2 7.11.19, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK: RAM students

The Turkish Mouse 14.3.20, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; 15.3.20, Berlin Konzerthaus, Germany: Ensemble/Ben Voce

Three Capriccios 29.3.20, Folkestone, UK: Melinda Maxwell

Hark, the echoing air*/Scarlatti Sonatas Set 2 *world premiere

View a score of John Woolrich’s Violin Concerto at scorelibrary.fabermusic.com

14.5.20, Milton Court, Guildhall School, London; 16.5.20, Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, UK: Alison Balsom/Britten Sinfonia

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Anders Hillborg Forthcoming performances

Anders Hillborg

Bach Materia

Conversations with Bach

2.10.19, Ayr Town Hall; 3.10.19, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh; 4.10.19, City Halls, Glasgow, UK: Pekka Kuusisto/Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Hillborg seems to have an intuitive knack for getting the most out of his soloists, be it Martin Fröst in the now iconic Clarinet Concerto ‘Peacock Tales’, Lisa Batiashvili in the Violin Concerto No.2, or Pekka Kuusisto in Bach Materia, an inventive and witty companion piece to Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto. The 19/20 season will see Kuusisto tour the latter work with both the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra.

26.3.20, Stillwater; 27-29.3.20, Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, St Paul; 14.5.20, St Paul, MN; 16.5.20, Lincoln Center, New York City, NY, USA: Pekka Kuusisto/The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Rap Notes 4-5.10.19, Filharmonii Narodowej, Warsaw, Poland: Eva Vesin/Orkiestra Symfoniczna Filharmonii Narodowej/ Andrzej Boreyko

Mouyayoum 5.10.19, Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Sweden: Swedish Radio Choir/ Andrew Manze

The Breathing of the World World premiere 12.10.19, Saint James’s Church, Stockholm, Sweden: Theo Hillborg/ Filip Graden/St Jacobs Chamber Choir/Gary Graden

Exquisite Corpse 22.11.19, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland: RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra/Anja Bihlmaier

Tampere Raw 16.12.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Martin Fröst/Roland Pöntinen

new orchestral work/ King Tide World premiere 3.2.20, Centro Cultural Miguel Delibes, Valladolid, Spain: Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León/Andrew Gourlay

Opening Fanfare/ Brass Quintet/ Kongsgaard Variations/The Peacock Moment/ Tampere Raw/Duet/ Duo/Six Pieces for Wind Quintet 22.2.20, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London: GSMD Students

The Breathing of the World*/ Mouyayoum/O Dessa Ögon/Cradle Song/Lilla Sus Grav/ Stella Maris *UK premiere 22.2.20, St Giles Cripplegate, London, UK: Theo Hillborg/BBC Singers/Ragnar Rasmussen

new work*/Eleven Gates/Beast Sampler/Peacock Tales (Millennium Version)*/Violin Concerto No.1* *UK premieres

Major BBC SO focus After giving the UK premieres of both Sirens and the Violin Concerto No.2 in 2017, the BBC Symphony Orchestra will return to Hillborg’s music in February 2020 for one of their ‘Total Immersion’ days. They will be joined by musicians from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as well as the BBC Singers under Ragnar Rasmussen. The latter will place Hillborg’s rich body of choral music alongside works by Messiaen, Sanström, Stucky and Salonen before presenting the UK premiere a new work for choir and saxophone (see below). The day will culminate in an orchestral concert conducted by Sakari Oramo which will include the UK premieres of a new orchestral work and the Violin Concerto No.1 with Carolin Widmann.

Composed in the early 90s, the Violin Concerto No.1 is a pivotal work in Hillborg’s development as a composer.

Written in the wake of his highly experimental Clang & Fury and Celestial Mechanics – both of which employ complex and unconventional tuning systems – the concerto displays a more pragmatic approach, though the drama it sets up is far from conventional, with a very fluid soloist-orchestra relationship. Esa-Pekka Salonen, who recorded it with Anna Lindal and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra for Ondine, has described it as one of Hillborg’s best pieces.

The Breathing of the World Hillborg has composed a new work for mixed choir, soprano saxophone and cello, entitled The Breathing of the World. The 10-minute piece was commissioned by conductor Gary Graden who will conduct its premiere in Stockholm on 12 October 2019 with soloists Theo Hillborg and Filip Graden. The text for the work, which will also be performed at the BBC’s Total Immersion day, is Hillborg’s own: a lyrical celebration of nature with melancholic undertones reflecting on the state of our planet.

22.2.20, Barbican Hall, London, UK: Martin Fröst/Carolin Widmann/BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo

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PHOTO: ANDERS HILLBORG © MATS LUNDQVIST

A zany 15-minute work, Bach Materia contains numerous opportunities for the soloist to improvise. This spirit fits well with the Bach, the central Adagio of which consists of just two chords upon which the soloist elaborates.

Bach Materia has received over 20 performances since its premiere in March 2017, and a recording with Kuusisto and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra will soon be released on BIS.

Revisiting: Exquisite Corpse Back in February, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Alan Gilbert gave four performances of Hillborg’s thrilling orchestral piece Exquisite Corpse. The 14-minute work took its name from the surrealist parlour game where multiple artists would contribute sections to a drawing, with the bizarre finished composite image only revealed at the end of the process.

Familiar musical objects melt and buckle in what one critic described as the sonic equivalent of one of Dali’s paintings: material from Hillborg’s own work butts up against a chord from Stravinsky’s Petrushka, a salute to Ligeti and, towards the end, a passage from Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, barely visible through a mist of strings.

Like the Sibelius Symphony (with which it makes an ideal partner in concert programmes), Exquisite Corpse was commissioned by the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra who recorded it with Gilbert for one of Hillborg’s several portrait discs on the BIS label.

In November Exquisite Corpse will be performed in Dublin by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and Anja Bihlmaier.

Looking ahead February 2020 sees the premiere of a new orchestral work by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León conducted

by Andrew Gourlay. The 15-minute piece has been cocommissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and Helsinki Philharmonic.

Hillborg will then compose concertos for Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) and Lawrence Power (viola) before embarking on a substantial new work for large ensemble.

TUNING IN

Carl Davis

Carl Davis Forthcoming performances

Ballets across the world The Slovak National Theatre have announced further performances of Davis’s ballet based upon the life and work of Charlie Chaplin. Davis’s silent film score work makes him the ideal composer for the subject.

In other ballet news, the Shanghai Ballet will perform Davis’s The Lady of the Camellias in Shanghai and Brisbane in February and March next year.

Intolerance reissued on disc A recording of Davis’s 160-minute score for the 1916 D. W. Griffith epic Intolerance has been released by the Carl Davis Collection. Davis himself conducts the Luxembourg Radio Symphony Orchestra.

40 years of Napoléon 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of a major landmark in Silent Film: the unveiling of Carl Davis score to Abel Gance’s epic 1927 silent film Napoléon. The impact on the audience was overwhelming and Live Cinema – the fusion of film and live music – was reborn. The same team, Kevin Brownlow, the late David Gill and Carl Davis, subsequently worked together on over thirty restorations of silent films, initially financed by Thames and later by Channel Four Television. Their efforts have resulted in a worldwide revival of this lost art form.

Napoléon is a tour-de-force of experimental filming techniques using multiple cameras, the mounting of cameras on sleds, horseback and overhead pendulums to achieve stunning visual effects ahead of their time, the visual culmination of the film being the triptych in the last 20 minutes when three screens are used to show Napoleon leading his army into Italy. Davis’s suitably epic musical accompaniment uses quotations from Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Corsican folk tunes and a variety of other musical allusions and leitmotifs. All in all, this is an aweinspiring live cinema experience.

Conceived on an even grander scale than Griffith’s earlier movie, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance was immediately recognised as a powerful humane statement and a towering work of art. The film’s four tales are set in 539BC Babylon, 1st-century Judea, 17th-century France and contemporary America, and they culminate in a rapidly cut climax that brings together the crucifixion, the plotting against the peace-loving Belshazzar in Babylon, the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 Paris, and a woman’s heroic dash across the American countryside to save her wrongly convicted husband from the gallows.

‘How exciting to revisit this recording made in Luxembourg in 1986’ writes Davis of this release. ‘The recording of the score followed two live performances of the film with the RTL Orchestra so they were more than ready. Since the initial burst of performances in Leeds, London and Luxembourg, there have been performances in France and Germany as well as in New York of its recent reissuing on DVD with remastered sound and new material from the Library of Congress. Performing my 160-minute score to this extraordinary film is always challenging but deeply rewarding. The film’s subject has never dated and the international crises of 1917 are as relevant today... When will we learn?’

Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio 14-15.9.19, Lübeck, Germany: Kunst am kai Orchester/Gabriele Pott 16.11.19, La Seine Musicale, Paris, France: YSO Orchestra/les Chœurs et Orchestres des Grandes Écoles 26.4.20, Palais des Congres, Perpignan, France: Perpignan Mediteranee Communaute Urbaine/ Daniel Tosi

The General 12.10.19, Salzburg University, Austria: Philharmonie Salzburg 21.11.19, Stadthalle Reutlingen, Germany: Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen/Stefan Geiger

Chaplin, The Tramp 19.10.19-27.6.20, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava, Slovakia: Orchestra of the Slovak National Theatre/Dušan Štefánek/chor. Daniel de Andrade

The Lady of the Camellias 16.11-1.12.19, Shanghai Culture Square, China; 12-14.3.20, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, QLD, Australia: The Shanghai Ballet/chor. Derek Deane

Safety Last 16-17.11.19, Opera de Toulon, France: Opera de Toulon/Hugo Gonzalez Pioli

Remembering the Kindertransport One of Davis’s most gripping and important concert works, Last Train to Tomorrow is also one of the pieces closest to his heart. The 45-minute dramatic narrative for children’s choir, actors (or speakers) and orchestra based on the moving story of the Kindertransport was performed at the Three Choirs Festival, Gloucester, in August. The semi-staged performance was the culmination of work with children from across Gloucestershire. Just as with its previous performances in London, New York, Manchester and Prague, the work was received to great acclaim. The poignant piece reimagines the thoughts and feelings of the Jewish children fleeing persecution, the families they left behind, and the open-hearted British people who took them in.

PHOTO: CARL DAVIS © JASPER FRY

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Oliver Knussen Forthcoming performances

Oliver Knussen The Third Symphony on DVD

...upon one note/Study for “Metamorphosis”/ Songs without Voices

The London Symphony Orchestra have released a DVD of Sir Simon Rattle’s critically acclaimed first concert as Music Director, which included performances of Knussen’s Symphony No.3 and Thomas Adès’s Asyla.

9.9.19, BBC Proms, Cadogan Hall, London, UK: Emily Hultmark/ Knussen Chamber Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth

Coursing 18.9.19, Ormiston Church, UK: Red Note Ensemble/Simon Proust

Songs without Voices 20.9.19, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Britten Sinfonia/Andrew Gourlay 2.11.19, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music School, Singapore: London Sinfonietta 24.3.20, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Nash Ensemble/Jonathan Berman

The Way to Castle Yonder 17.10.19, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Michael Seal 1.3.20, University of Singapore: Singapore Symphony Orchestra/ Robert Spano

Where the Wild Things Are Russian premiere 20.10.19, St Petersburg, Russia: Shadwell Opera/Finnegan Downie Dear

Processionals Netherlands premiere 31.10.19, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, Netherlands: New European Ensemble/Jonathan Berman

Secret Psalm 2.11.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Tamsin Waley-Cohen

Songs and A Sea Interlude 20-21.11.19, Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Sweden: Sophie Bevan/ Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Ryan Wigglesworth Mussorgsky Miniatures Japanese premiere 28.11.19, Ishikawa Prefectural Concert Hall, Kanazawa, Japan: Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa/ Kentaro Kawase

Reflection/Ophelia Dances/Two Organa 10.12.19, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Leila Josefowicz/Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group/ Susanna Mälkki

Violin Concerto/ Flourish with Fireworks 6-8.12.19, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Leila Josefowicz/Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/Susanna Mälkki

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Tributes in Paris and Amsterdam Oliver Knussen will be remembered with concerts in Paris and Amsterdam, both of which include his masterful final work O Hototogisu!. Brad Lubman will conduct Ensemble intercontemporain and soloists Claire Booth and Sophie Cherrier in February. In Amsterdam, the 8-minute work for soprano, flute and large ensemble of 22 players will be heard alongside the Requiem and Two Organa. Bas Wiegers conducts Asko|Schönberg and its Ensemble Academie.

A secret uncovered A new article by Dr Felix Meyer at the Paul Sacher Stiftung has shed fascinating new light on Knussen’s Secret Psalm. This touching 5-minute work for solo violin, written in memory of the London Sinfonietta’s Michael Vyner, displays all the composer’s gifts as an accomplished miniaturist. Secret Psalm clearly references the Bruch Violin Concerto in its repeated refrain, but Meyer’s article uses Knussen’s sketchbooks to demonstrate that, in fact, most of the pitch material in the piece is also derived from the concerto. Moreover, the rhythmic material for the piece is taken from a transcription Knussen made of the Mourner’s Kaddish being recited. The Sacher Stiftung acquired Knussen’s manuscripts and sketches in 2018, and this is the first of what will surely be many remarkable findings.

Ditson Conductor’s Award

Composed in 1979 when Knussen was just 27 and the result of six years working, thinking, revising, and refining, Knussen’s Third Symphony is a 15-minute tour de force, which traverses a massive musical and emotional spectrum.

Originally inspired by the trauma, madness and drowning of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, this indisputable modern classic displays a kaleidoscopic brilliance, from the careering clarinet melodies and raucous Perotin-inspired trombone interjections of its first part to the unnerving submerged horn sonorities towards its close.

In other recording news, the London-based Berkeley Ensemble have released a brilliant account of Knussen’s …upon one note (based on Purcell’s five-part fantasia) for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Available from Resonus Classics, the disc also includes premiere recordings of Purcell transcriptions by Colin Matthews and George Benjamin.

Wild Things in Russia Where the Wild Things Are, the enchanting first part of Knussen’s double bill of fantasy operas written with Maurice Sendak, receives its Russian premiere in October, with Shadwell Opera conducted by Finnegan Downie Dear.

The opera tells the story of Max, a boy yearning for adventure, who runs away from home and sails to an island filled with creatures that take him in as their king.

Marinated in French and Russian opera, and containing allusions to Debussy’s La boîte à joujoux and the Coronation Scene from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, the 40-minute work peaks in a boisterous ‘danse générale’ (à la Borodin or Ravel) as Max and the Wild Things dance the Wild Rumpus – a dazzling 4-minute orchestral gem that also exists as a stand-alone concert work.

The 2018 Ditson Conductor’s Award has been presented posthumously to Knussen. Established in 1945, the Award honours conductors who have a distinguished record of championing contemporary American music. The citation made special mention of Knussen’s remarkable impact on the international musical community around the world which was a testament to his ‘unconditional generosity and inspiring curiosity as a musician’.

Publication news Faber Music is pleased to announce two new Knussen publications: a typeset score of O Hototogisu! and a manuscript facsimile of Eccentric Melody for solo cello. For more details please see page 28.

PHOTO: OLIVER KNUSSEN © ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC; A VOCAL ‘MODEL’ FROM THE SCORE OF WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE © FABER MUSIC

TUNING IN

Julian Anderson Revisiting: Transferable Resistance The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where Anderson is Professor of Composition and Composer in Residence, featured his 2010 work for brass ensemble Transferable Resistance in its second annual Chamber Festival back in July.

Ondine disc shortlisted for award A new disc from Ondine, featuring premiere recordings of Julian Anderson’s Heaven is Shy of Earth and The Comedy of Change has been shortlisted for a Gramophone Award.

Susan Bickley joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus for the oratorio whilst the London Sinfonietta perform the ballet score. Both works appear in live recordings conducted by the much-missed Oliver Knussen.

Heaven is Shy of Earth for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra sets poems by Emily Dickinson alongside the High Mass and Psalm 84. Commissioned for the 2006 BBC Proms (where The Sunday Times described it as ‘a revelation’), this 30-minute ‘secular mass’ is a beautiful and beguiling work. In 2008 it won a British Composer Award, then in 2010 it was extended with a further movement, ‘Gloria (with Bird)’, which highlights the piece’s intention to reflect and celebrate the natural world. The Comedy of Change for ensemble of 12 players pays tribute to Charles Darwin and celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication his The Origin of Species.

Commissioned by Rambert Dance Company and choreographed by Mark Baldwin, the work has also had a vivid life in concert

Dialogues on and around music Following the one day conference presented in 2017 by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, ‘Heaven is Shy of Earth: Julian Anderson at 50’, John Fallas, Rebecca Thumpston and Edward Nesbit gave a three-paper session on Anderson’s music at the Society for Music Analysis annual conference earlier this year at the University of Southampton. These three papers will serve as drafts for chapters in a book that Fallas is putting together together with Christopher Dingle.

This 3-minute work for four spatialised brass groups (16 players in all) was commissioned to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, and was premiered by the brass section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It is underpinned by a slow, majestic sequence of chords which swing antiphonally between the groups before blending smoothly amongst them. Faster celebratory fanfares from six trumpets eventually burst out above these chords, and the fanfares gradually spread to all instruments. The conclusive final chord, however, suddenly fades. ‘Instead of ending assertively’ Anderson explains, ‘my piece disappears inconclusively: the elusive search for scientific truth goes on’.

Poetry Nearing Silence Following NMC’s 2007 Gramophone Award-nominated Anderson portrait disc Book of Hours, in September the company will release a disc of chamber pieces performed by the Nash Ensemble. The album will include The Colour of Pomegranates for alto flute and piano, Another Prayer for solo violin, The Bearded Lady for clarinet and piano, and the violin-duo version of Ring Dance, alongside three works originally composed for the Nash players: the viola solo Prayer, and two works for chamber ensemble, Van Gogh Blue and Poetry Nearing Silence.

Composed in 1997, Poetry Nearing Silence is a collection of eight engagingly quirky miniatures inspired by the work of artist Tom Phillips. In this work, commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, the highly contrasted, often bizarre, juxtapositions of Phillips’s The Heart of a Humument – which sees him ‘treating’ an obscure late Victorian novel by selecting certain words and phrases, and then painting over the rest of each page – are mirrored in vividly imagined music whose pithy energy creates a playful, virtuoso tour de force for all seven instruments.

Oliver Knussen Forthcoming performances (cont.)

O Hototogisu!*/ Requiem *French premiere 10.12.19, Philharmonie, Paris, France: Claire Booth/ Sophie Cherrier/Ensemble Intercontemporain/Brad Lubman

Whitman Settings 22.12.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Claron McFadden/Alexander Melnikov

Two Organa 16, 18,19.1.20, Atlanta Symphony Hall, Atlanta, GA, USA: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/Robert Spano

Violin Concerto 6,8.2.20, Severance Hall, Cleveland, OH, USA: Leila Josefowicz/Cleveland Orchestra/Susanna Mälkki 19.2.20, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Leila Josefowicz/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko

Coursing/Songs without Voices 9.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France: London Sinfonietta/Christian Karlsen

Choral 5.3.20, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Philharmonia Orchestra/George Benjamin

O Hototogisu!*/Two Organa/Requiem *Netherlands premiere 14.5.20, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Katrien Baerts/Asko|Schönberg Ensemble/ Bas Wiegers

Julian Anderson Forthcoming performances Alhambra Fantasy 8.9.19, Klangspuren Festival, Innsbruck, Austria: IEMA/Huber

Khorovod 14.5.20, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Asko|Schönberg/Wiegers

Dingle has also collaborated with Anderson on a book of conversations entitled Composing, Listening: Dialogues on Music, Culture and Creativity by Julian Anderson and Christopher Dingle which will be published by Boydell & Brewer in 2020.

PHOTO: JULIAN ANDERSON ©MAURICE FOXALL

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George Benjamin Forthcoming performances

George Benjamin

Written on Skin

Written on Skin in Tokyo and Venice

27.9.19, La Biennale di Venezia, Teatro Goldoni, Venice, Italy: Hall/ Jarman/Murray/Purves/Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai/Schuldt

Kazushi Ono conducted the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra in Written on Skin at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall at the end of August. The two performances featured spectacular stage designs by Dr Shizuka Hariu (see design sketch below).

14.2.20, Festival Présences, Philharmonie, France; 16.2.20, Wiener Konzerthaus, Austria: Hannigan/Ramgobin/Mead/Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/ Benjamin Canadian stage premiere 25.1-2.2.20, Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts, Montréal, QC, Canada: Magali Simard-Galdès/ Okulitch/Schifano/Bourget/Richer/ L’Opéra de Montréal/Paiement/ dir. Gauthier

Shadowlines 27.9.19, Stresa, Italy; 20.1.20, Ostrava, Czech Republic; 13.2.20, Festival Présences, Philharmonie, Paris, France: Aimard

Ringed by the Flat Horizon 28.9.19, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK; 9.10.19, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany; 10.10.19, Kölner Philharmonie, Germany; 11.10.19, Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden, Germany: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/ Gražinyte-Tyla

Viola, Viola 29.9.19, Kronberg Academy, Kronberg im Taunus, Germany: Tamestit/Zimmermann 9.1.20, Boulez Saal, Berlin, Germany: Zimmermann/la Marca 16.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de Radio France, Paris, France: Mohamed/la Marca

Dance Figures 4.10.19, Festival Musica, Strasbourg, France: Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg/Hermus 24-25.11.19, Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, Germany: Badisches Staatskapelle/Moritz Gnann

Duet 5.10.19, WDR Funkhaus am Wallrafplatz, Cologne, Germany: Millet/WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln/E Schwarz 8.11.19, Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, France: Soules/Orchestre de chambre de Paris/Lee

Into the Little Hill 6-7.11.19, Opéra de Lille, France: Élise Chauvin/Camille Merckx/ Ensemble Carabanchel/Cemin/ dir. Osinski 11-15.2.20, Teatro del Canal Festival, Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain: Jenny Daviet/Julia Riley/Teatro Real/ Murray/dir. Morau 16.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de Radio France, Paris, France: France/Rasker/Ensemble Intercontemporain/Bleuse 7.3.20, 92nd Street Y, New York City, NY, USA: Mundy/Dhegrae/Talea Ensemble/Baker

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Focuses in Paris and Stockholm George Benjamin’s 60th birthday will be marked in Paris early in 2020 where he will be the featured composer at Radio France’s Présences Festival. There will be 11 works featured across 15 events, including concert performances of Written on Skin and Into the Little Hill.

Meanwhile, La Biennale di Venezia has awarded George Benjamin the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music 2019. Benjamin is the first British musician to receive the award. The honour, one of the most prestigious of its kind, will be awarded before a concert performance of Written on Skin by the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI which will open the 63rd International Contemporary Music Festival on 27 September. Clemens Schuldt will conduct a cast including Georgia Jarman, Christopher Purves, and James Hall.

Early 2020 will see concert performances in Paris and Vienna with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Benjamin (when Barbara Hannigan will reprise the role of Agnès) and the opera’s Canadian stage premiere at L’Opéra de Montréal where Alain Gauthier directs a new production (the eighth to date!).

Another major focus is planned at the Stockholm International Composer Festival in November 2019.

Highlights include a performance of dramatic scena Sometime Voices for baritone, choir and orchestra, with Gyula Orendt (who created the role of Gaveston in Lessons in Love and Violence). Benjamin is only the fifth British composer to have been featured there (the others being Tippett, Knussen, Musgrave and Adès).

Dream of the Song Another piece that features in the Stockholm festival is Benjamin’s most recent concert work: Dream of the Song.

A beguiling 20-minute piece for countertenor, women’s voices and orchestra, it will be sung by Bejun Mehta, who premiered it back in 2015 with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by the composer.

Employing a reduced orchestra (two oboes, four horns, two percussionists, two harps and strings), the work sets verse by three major poets who spent formative years in Granada; two Hebrew poets of mid-11th century, Samuel HaNagid and Solomon Ibn Gabirol (sung by solo countertenor in English versions by Peter Cole), and Gabriel Garcia Lorca (sung by the female chorus in the original Spanish). This inspired pairing of texts creates a rich, melancholy and strange poetic conjunction, expressed most beautifully in the final movement which, overlaying soloist and choir, offers two simultaneous visions of dawn, conceived a millennium apart.

The work receives its Argentinian premiere in Buenos Aires in December, with Flavio Oliver and the Argentine National Symphonic Orchestra conducted by Natalia Salinas. Next year, Benjamin conducts performances with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

‘Lessons’ on stage Following its initial run of performances in London and Amsterdam, George Benjamin’s third opera with Martin Crimp, Lessons in Love and Violence, travelled to the Hamburg State Opera and Opéra de Lyon. The performances were conducted by Kent Nagano and Alexandre Bloch respectively. The original Katie Mitchell production will now travel to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona and Teatro Real, Madrid.

Meanwhile, a new production directed by Florentine Klepper will open at Theater St. Gallen on 17 May 2020.

‘Crimp’s text suggests more than it explains, which leaves the music to reveal all that is unspoken.

Benjamin excels in animating this puzzle of impulses, with a restraint that occasionally gives way to strong outbursts (what brass!)… Benjamin preserves all of the text’s comprehensibility, working with accents and articulations to underline envy, sarcasm, and ferocity… There’s no doubt about it: Benjamin is one of the masters of contemporary opera.’

Le Soir (Serge Martin), 29 May 2019

PHOTO: GEORGE BENJAMIN © MATTHEW LLOYD; SCENOGRAPHY PROPOSAL FOR WRITTEN ON SKIN AT SUNTORY HALL © SHIZUKA HARIU

TUNING IN

Robert Simpson 100

Dream of the Song/ Sometime Voices/ Palimpsests/Duet

‘The opera fascinates, both musically and dramatically… The relations between vocal and instrumental elements achieves a balance that is rather rare amongst contemporary works…’

21, 23.11.19, Stockholm, Sweden: Mehta/Orendt/Eric Ericson Chamber Choir/Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Benjamin

A Mind of Winter/ Dance Figures/ Ringed by the Flat Horizon

Le Temps (Sylvie Bonier), 16 May 2019

‘A tight and ingeniously constructed drama… a thrilling score.’

22.11.19, Stockholm, Sweden: Andersson/Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Karlsen

Opernglass (Michael Lehnert), May 2019

…in concert…

Following his 2017 tour of Written on Skin, Oliver Zeffman conducted the Russian premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence in St Petersburg with the London Chamber Orchestra. The semi-staged performance featured Mark Stone (King), Susanna Hurrell (Isabel), Ross Ramgobin (Gaveston) and Toby Spence (Mortimer).

‘Benjamin writes operas in which everyone can find something… pure art.’

Delovoy Peterburg (Olga Komok), 12 July 2019

…and on disc Nimbus records have released a CD recording of Lessons taken from the 2018 Dutch National Opera performances conducted by Benjamin. Experienced together with excellent DVD from Covent Garden (directed for screen

by Margaret Williams, released on Opus Arte, and also conducted by Benjamin) it offers further fascinating insights into this gripping work.

‘The music is wonderfully inventive and varied…

Nimbus have again done Benjamin proud.’

MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber), June 2019

‘a masterpiece’ ‘The score does not cease for a moment to overpower the listener, from its theatrical sense and the virtuosity of an orchestra teeming with invention, to its alluring atmospheres, barely audible subtleties, sumptuous brilliance… a masterpiece.’

Classica (Pierre Flinois) – review of DVD, May 2019

‘Benjamin’s score is constantly arresting, its sense of dramatic pace, development and architecture fabulously judged, its moving and impactful unfolding delivered by way of an extraordinary sound fabric… This [DVD] release is a triumph.’

Opera Magazine (Christopher Balantine), June 2019

At First Light/Viola, Viola/Into the Little Hill

‘I’m not interested in vogue... What is in the substance of the music is what is important.’

2021 marks the centenary of the birth of Robert Simpson, a composer’s composer whose impressively single-minded – but now almost entirely neglected – body of work is crowned by 11 symphonies and 15 string quartets.

24.11.19, Stockholm, Sweden: Powell/Siffert/Komsi/Summers/ Members of Stockholm Opera Orchestra/Ollu

Dream of the Song Argentinian premiere 6.12.19, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Oliver/Argentine National Symphonic Orchestra/Salinas

A distinguished BBC producer and broadcaster in the 1960s and 70s, Simpson also wrote extensively on the work of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius – all composers who influenced his own mission of creating dynamic musical architectures linked to tradition through the gravitational forces of tonality. His unashamedly tonal style, however, was deeply unfashionable, and Simpson’s trenchant criticisms of modernist musical establishment further reinforced an over-simplified image of him as a backward-looking regressive. Listening to his music now, with the benefit of several decades distance, it is clear to anyone willing to open their ears that the best of his work displays a far more positive and progressive spirit: a burning belief in the ability for the great traditional forms of the past to continue to grow and live on well into the second half of the 20th century and beyond.

12.1.20, Alte Oper, Frankfurt, Germany: Mead/SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart/Junge Deutsche Philharmonie/Benjamin

Symphonic mastery

15.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France: Orendt/ Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Nagano

Described by the Guardian as ‘one of the best-kept secrets of post-war British music’, Simpson’s 11 symphonies display an incredibly vivid creativity. Simpson never repeats himself; his approach always seems formally and harmonically fresh, without ever slavishly following a tonal agenda (the level of dissonance is often quite high).

One of Simpson’s most thrilling and concise statements is the Seventh Symphony, a gritty work from 1977 whose harmonies seethe with troubled energy. Beginning with a determined statement in the bass regions of the orchestra, it ends 28 minutes later with a drawn-out, eerily expressionless C-sharp in the strings. Some wondered whether Simpson was portraying nuclear annihilation or some other apocalyptic event. He answered, ‘The end is C-sharp,’ but added that it could be ‘a picture of people not facing a fact that stares them in the face.’

Other Faber works include his epic 50-minute Symphony No.9 – which has been conducted by Sir Simon Rattle – and the String Quartet No.9, which also lasts almost an hour and takes the form of 21 variations and a fugue on a theme of Haydn.

PHOTO: ROBERT SIMPSON

George Benjamin Forthcoming performances

Sudden Time 9-10.1.20, Herkulessaal, Munich, Germany: Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Ticciati 12.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France: Orchestre National de France/Rophé

Duet/Palimpsests 7.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France: Benelli Mosell/Orchestra National de France/Benjamin

At First Light 9.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France: London Sinfonietta/Karlsen

Sometime Voices

Upon Silence 16.2.20, Festival Présences, Maison de Radio, Paris, France: Breton/ SIT FAST

Dream of the Song/ Duet 5.3.20, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK: Mehta/Aimard/Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus/Benjamin

Lessons in Love and Violence Swiss premiere 17.5-12.6.20, Theater St Gallen, Switzerland: Schöne/Owens/ Hofmann/Curievici/Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen/Pitrenas/dir. Klepper US premiere Oct 2020, Lyric Opera of Chicago, USA: Davis/dir. Mitchell Spanish premiere Feb 2021, Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona; April 2021, Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain: Pons/dir. Mitchell

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NEW WORKS

Stage works THOMAS ADÈS Inferno (2019) orchestra c.40 minutes 3(III=picc).3(III=ca).3(I in Bb+A, II in A, III in A=bcl).3(III=cbsn) – 4331 – timp(=rototom[s]) – perc(3): glsp/t.bells/tgl/ sleigh bells/clash.cyms/susp.cym/anvil/tam-t/whip/rattle(ratchet)/cast/washboard/wooden spatulas (2 pairs – thin)/tamb/2 SD/2 TD (with snares)/BD and mounted clash.cym(s) (‘machine’)/concert BD – harp – piano – strings (recommended 12.10.8.8.6) Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, Music and Artistic Director and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden Foundation for ballet performances with the generous support of the Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund.

Co-commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam for concert performances.

FP: Concert Prem: 10.5.2019, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/Gustavo Dudamel. Ballet Prem: 12.7.2019, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Music Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès/chor. Wayne McGregor/The Royal Ballet/Company Wayne McGregor Score and parts in preparation

Orchestra FRANCISCO COLL Aqua Cinerea (2005, rev. 2019) Op.1 large orchestra 12 minutes picc.2.2.ca.ebcl.1.bcl.2.cbsn – 4.ptpt.2.3.1 – timp – perc(4): glsp/anvil/xyl/t.bells/splash.cym/clash.cym/3 susp.cym/china. cym/ride.cym/tam-t/2 tgl/sleigh bells/3 c.bells/frying pan/tin box/metal oil drum (approx. 200 ltr.)/cabasa/2 hardback books/plastic bag full of scrap paper/tamb/bongos/cajon/4 tom-t/SD/BD – harp – pno – strings FP: 18.9.2007, Palau de la Música, Valencia, Spain: Orquesta Filarmónica de la Universitat de Valencia/Cristóbal Soler Score and parts for hire

Le Lac (2017) soprano and chamber orchestra c.18 minutes Text: Alphonse de Lamartine – Le Lac (French) 1(=picc).1(=ca).1.1 – 2100 – harp – strings Commissioned by the Orchestra of the Swan FP: 28.5.2019, Stratford Arts House, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, UK: April Fredrick/Orchestra of the Swan/Kenneth Woods Full score, vocal score and parts for hire

String Orchestra THOMAS ADÈS ‘O Albion’ from Arcadiana (2019) arranged for string orchestra by the composer. c.3 minutes FP: 25.10.2019, Number 8, Pershore, Worcestershire, UK: Orchestra of the Swan Commissioned by The Orchestra of the Swan (and partners) Score and parts in preparation

DVORÁK ARR. DAVID MATTHEWS Love Songs (2009, rev. 2019) high voice and string orchestra 18 minutes Text: Gustav Pfleger-Moravský (Czech) FP: 31.7.2019, Fishguard International Music Festival, St Mary’s Church, Haverfordwest, Wales: Rebecca Evans/Welsh National Opera Chamber Ensemble Score and parts for hire

Ensemble

DEBUSSY ORCH. COLIN MATTHEWS

TANSY DAVIES

‘Et la lune descend sur la temple qui fut’ from Images Book II orchestra c.4 minutes 2(II=picc).afl.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 4320 – timp – perc(1-2): crot/tam-t – cel – 2 harps – strings FP: Recording: 10.5.2019, Hallé Orchestra/Mark Elder Score and parts in preparation

Soul Canoe (2019) ensemble of 10 players c.20 minutes fl(=afl+picc).cl(=abcl†+bcl).flhn*(=c tpt**).perc(1): mar/sleigh bells or jingles/mark tree/caxixi or small basket shaker/BD.pno.electric gtr. accordion.vln.vlc.db † ossia: Eb clarinet, * ossia: trumpet in Bb, ** C trumpet preferable but not essential FP: 17.5.2019, Kleine Zaal, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Asko|Schönberg Ensemble Commissioned by Het Concertgebouw, Red Note Ensemble and Sound Scotland The commission has been made possible by a financial contribution from the Composition Commission Fund of The Royal Concertgebouw. The Composition Commission Fund is set up by a private donor with the intention of stimulating the development of new music and reaching a larger audience. The fund is managed by Het Concertgebouw Fonds.

Score and parts for hire

JONNY GREENWOOD Horror vacui (2019) solo violin and 68 solo strings (18.18.12.12.8). c.25 minutes Commissioned by the BBC Proms FP: 10.9.2019, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK: Daniel Pioro/BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Proms Youth Ensemble/Hugh Brunt Score and parts for hire

JOHN HARLE Briggflatts (2019) soprano saxophone and orchestra. 21 minutes 2(II=picc+afl).2(II=ca).2(II=bcl).2(II=cbsn) – 4.2(I+II=flhn).2.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(3): vib/2 glsp/tam-t/2 bowed cym/ claves/mar/crot/BD/cym (soft sticks)/xyl/African shakers/SD (rim-shot)/ride cym (soft sticks)/bongo (on stand, near SD)/ whip – harp – pno(=cel+Fender Rhodes)* – strings. *Fender Rhodes is optional, but preferable. All players clap written rhythms in the first movement. Where possible, the harp, piano/keyboards and the three percussion players should be placed together in a position close to the conductor.

FP: 16.5.2019, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Jess Gillam/BBC Concert Orchestra/Bramwell Tovey Score and parts for hire

MATTHEW HINDSON Concerto for Soprano Saxophone & Orchestra (2019) 22 mins.

2.2.2.2(II=cbsn) – 4.2.2.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(1): glsp/vib/t.bells/splash cym/cyms/susp.cym/ride cym/tgl/sligh bells/cowbell (high)/ tamb/squeaky toy/whip/flexatone/3 wdbl (high, med & sml)/tpl.bl/sandpaper blocks/bongos/hi-hat/SD/BD – strings (86543) Commissioned by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, through the philanthropic support of the TSO Commissioning Circle FP: 25.8.2019, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, TAS, Australia: Amy Dickson/Tasmanian SO/Benjamin Northey Score and parts for hire, solo part and piano reduction on special sale from the Hire Library

22

DAVID MATTHEWS

Chamber THOMAS ADÈS Three Berceuses from ‘The Exterminating Angel’ (2018) viola and piano c.9 minutes Commissioned for Lawrence Power, by Verbier Festival; Moritzburg Festival; BBC Radio 3; Aspen Festival; UKARIA Cultural Centre, South Australia; Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam; [others tbc] and underwritten by The Viola Commissioning Circle, supported by its Underwriting Members: Barbara and Michael Gwinnell; David and Elizabeth Challen; Christopher and Julia Hum; Alan Sainer; Vernon Ellis Foundation; Nicholas and Judith Goodison; Christopher and Lorna Bown; Rosemary and Jeremy Cook; John and Gilly Baker; The Boltini Trust; Graham Nicholson; Peter and Jenny Smart; Anonymous; Erica Stary FP: 21.7.2019, Verbier Festival, Eglise de Verbier Station, Verbier, Valais, Switzerland: Lawrence Power/George Li Score in preparation (exclusive until 22 July 2021)

TANSY DAVIES Hawk (2018) violin and piano 2½ minutes Commissioned by London Music Masters for Many Voices, a collection of new violin and piano works for young people, in the charity’s 10th Anniversary year Score and part in preparation

DAVID MATTHEWS Cuatro a tango (2019) Op.51h arrangement of the Tango movement from Symphony No.4 for violin, accordion, piano and double bass c.5½ minutes For Tangissimo Score and parts in preparation

PHOTO: INFERNO (PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY CRAIG MATHEW IMAGING AT THE WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL PROVIDED COURTESY OF THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ASSOCIATION)

NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS Solo Instrumental TOM COULT Inventions (For Heath Robinson) (2019) piano 15 minutes Commissioned by the Riot Ensemble FP: 2.8.2019, Petworth Festival, St Mary’s Church, Petworth, West Sussex, UK: Adam Swayne Score in preparation

CARL VINE Piano Sonata No.4 (2019) piano c.15 minutes Piano Sonata No.4 was commissioned by Lindsay Garritson FP: 11.11.2019, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York, USA: Lindsay Garritson Score in preparation

Vocal MARTIN SUCKLING The Tuning (2019) mezzo-soprano and piano 20 minutes Text: Michael Donaghy (Eng) Commissioned by Oxford Lieder Festival FP: 19.10.2019, Oxford Lieder Festival, St John the Evangelist Church, Oxford, UK: Marta Fontanals-Simmons/Christopher Glynn Score in preparation

Choral JESSICA CURRY I Loved You First: But Afterwards Your Love (2019) unaccompanied SATB chorus 5 minutes Text: Christina Rossetti (Eng) Commissioned by the London Oriana Choir as part of its five15 commissioning project FP: 30.6.2019, Stationers’ Hall, London, UK: London Oriana Choir/Dominic Ellis-Peckham Score on special sale from the Hire Library or as a digital download from the Faber Music Store

ANDERS HILLBORG The Breathing of the World (2019) SATB choir with soprano saxophone and cello 10 minutes Text: Anders Hillborg (Eng) Commissioned by S:t Jacobs Chamber Choir, Gary Graden, conductor FP: 12.10.2019, Saint James’s Church, Stockholm, Sweden: Theo Hillborg/Filip Graden/St Jacobs Chamber Choir/Gary Graden Score and parts in preparation Lilla Sus Grav (1978) SATB choir (min. 32 singers) 4 minutes Text: Li He, translated Göran Sommardal (Swedish) FP: 20.4.1983, Köping, Sweden: Eric Ericsons Kammarkör/Eric Ericson Score on special sale from the Hire Library

ELIZABETH MACONCHY I Sing of a Maiden (1966) carol for unaccompanied mixed voices (SSAT) c.3 minutes Text: anonymous from the 15th century (Eng) Score on special sale from the Hire Library or as a digital download from the Faber Music Store This Day (1966) carol for unaccompanied high voices (SSA) c.3 minutes Text: anonymous (c.1450) (Eng) Score on special sale from the Hire Library or as a digital download from the Faber Music Store

TORSTEN RASCH Seven (2019) an interpolation for the Schütz St Luke Passion for SATB choir and solo cello c.17 minutes. Text: Helmut Krausser (Ger) Ein Kompositionsauftrag des RIAS Kammerchores, ein Ensemble der RundfunkOrchester und -Chöre gGmbH Berlin Commissioned by RIAS Kammerchor, an ensemble of the Rundfunk-Orchester und –Chöre GmbH Berlin FP: 13.10.2019, Heinrich-Schütz-Musikfest, Weißenfels, Germany: Anna Carewe/ RIAS Kammerchor/Justin Doyle Score with Schütz St Luke Passion, standalone score and cello part in preparation

New Publications

New Recordings

GEORGE BENJAMIN

THOMAS ADÈS

Lessons in Love and Violence

Full Score 0-571-53884-3

£100.00

FRANCISCO COLL

JULIAN ANDERSON

Chanson et Bagatelle

Score and part 0-571-54078-3

£16.99

Prayer/Another Prayer/Poetry Nearing Silence/Colour of Pomegranates/The Bearded Lady Nash Ensemble NMC

£14.99

GEORGE BENJAMIN

£39.99

Lessons in Love and Violence Degout/Hannigan/Orendt/Hoare/Boden/France/Szabó/Róbertsson/Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/George Benjamin Nimbus Records

JONATHAN HARVEY Songs and Haiku

Score 0-571-53887-8 Speakings

Score 0-571-53888-6 OLIVER KNUSSEN Eccentric Melody

Playing score 0-571-54127-5

£9.99

O Hototogisu!

Score 0-571-54127-5

Asyla London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle LSO Live DVD

£24.99

BENJAMIN BRITTEN Cello Suites Cameron Crozman Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo

JOHN HARLE RANT! Jess Gillam/BBC Concert Orchestra/Jessica Cottis Decca

IMOGEN HOLST As I Sat Under a Holly Tree Blossom Street/Hilary Campbell Naxos

OLIVER KNUSSEN Symphony No.3 London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle LSO Live DVD

ELIZABETH MACONCHY This Day Blossom Street/Hilary Campbell Naxos

DAVID MATTHEWS Symphony No.9/Variations for Strings/Double Concerto Sara Trickey/Sarah-Jane Bradley/English String Orchestra/Kenneth Woods Nimbus Records

OLIVIER MESSIAEN La Fauvette Passerinette Alexander Soares Rubicon Classics

PURCELL arr. BENJAMIN, C. MATTHEWS and KNUSSEN Fantasia VII/...upon one note/Fantazia XIII Berkeley Ensemble Resonus Classics

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON Dust Daniel Pioro and Valgeir Sigurðsson Bedroom Community Hatching; Somnoptera Liam Byrne Bedroom Community Nebraska Siggi String Quartet Sono Luminus

ROGER SMALLEY Piano Pieces I-V/Capriccio No.1 James Cuddeford/David Herscovitch Toccata Classics

CARL VINE Fantasia Bernadette Harvey/Jupiter String Quartet Marquis Classics

23

Pablo Nouvelle

BC Camplight

Swiss producer, DJ and composer Pablo Nouvelle has signed an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with Faber Alt.

Faber Alt. has also signed an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with BC Camplight, the moniker of maverick songsmith Brian Christinzio. Christinzio’s discography, which acts as a soundtrack to a life rife with bad fortune, mental illness and running afoul of the law, has afforded him a reputation as one of indie music’s most forwardthinking artists.

Nouvelle first gained international attention in 2012 with his selfreleased and self-titled album. His EP You Don’t Understand followed on Black Butter records, and later two critically acclaimed albums, All I Need and Wired, released via Armada Music. At the beginning of the year he released Piano Pieces, his first neo-classical solo album.

Nouvelle has established himself as a prolific remixer and producer, having worked with the likes of Anne-Marie, Aurora, Gorgon City, Jessie Reyez, Josef Salvat and Marina & the Diamonds. He is also an acclaimed animator with three award-winning short films to his name.

In A Nutshell, his latest, was longlisted for an Oscar.

‘I’m very excited to start working with Faber Alt.’ said Nouvelle.

‘Our collaboration will go far beyond neo-classical music. As Faber is evolving in such an interesting direction with their small but smart roster, they are the perfect home for my upcoming releases, which will be very versatile too.’

Christinzio has released four albums to date, Hide, Run Away (2005), Blink of a Nihilist (2007), How To Die in the North (2015) and the critically acclaimed Deportation Blues (2018). With a slew of tours and festivals on the horizon, Christinzio – a remarkably relentless entertainer – will tour an immense live show to the UK and Europe ahead of a new album, expected in early 2020.

‘Brian is exactly the sort of artist that we feel compelled to champion’ said Lucy Holliday, Faber Music’s Head of Pop Publishing/A&R. ‘His music is original, important, honest and well-crafted. He’s a natural songwriter and to be able to support him to make the music he needs to make feels like a gift. We are so excited to hear what he puts out next.’

Film and TV Sarah Warne has recently scored BBC1’s Dark Money – a four-part drama written by BAFTA nominee David Addai, directed by Lewis Arnold and starring Jill Halfpenny, Rebecca Front and Babou Ceesay.

The full soundtrack album featuring Sarah’s haunting and electronicbased score was recently released on Silva Screen Records.

Meanwhile, Laurence Love Greed has completed the second series of the hit BBC Welsh drama Keeping Faith which returned last month. This followed on from the acclaimed first series which earned Laurence a BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Original Music, and was the fifth most-viewed TV series on BBC iPlayer to date.

Faber is also excited to welcome Jonathan Rhys Hill on a representation and publishing deal. The composer’s most recent work includes the BAFTA nominated The Long Song (Heyday Television), a BBC1 three-part TV adaptation of the award-winning, critically acclaimed bestselling novel by Andrea Levy, written by Sarah Williams, directed by Mahalia Belo, and starring Tamara Lawrance, Hayley Atwell, Jack Lowden and Sir Lenny Henry. Jonathan is currently scoring BBC1 drama The Trial of Christine Keeler, starring James Norton and Emilia Fox. Faber also welcomes media composer Niall Byrne, whose notable television dramas include BAFTA award-winning ITV drama series Little Boy Blue and most recently Manhunt, which is ITV’s highest rated new drama series since Broadchurch. He is currently working on The White House Murders.

In other news, Adrian Johnston has scored the critically acclaimed drama Summer of Rockets – the latest BBC Stephen Poliakoff series on which he has worked (he has scored all the director’s BBC dramas over the past 20 years). Harry Escott has composed the score for 6-part series Wild Bill which recently aired on ITV, and Simon Lacey is currently scoring the upcoming US feature film The Postcard Killings, which stars Famke Hanssen and Denis O’Hare.

24

EDUCATIONAL, MEDIA AND BÄRENREITER

A major milestone for Behind Bars

Sales of Behind Bars, Elaine Gould’s seminal and allencompassing guide to music notation, have now exceeded 10,000 copies. This extraordinary achievement is further proof, if any were needed, that ‘Gould’s Rules’, are now seen by many as definitive.

In this compendious work – the most thorough guide ever published in this field – Faber Music’s Senior New Music Editor provides a comprehensive grounding in notational principles. An essential resource for composers, editors, music-setters, students and teachers, Behind Bars covers everything from basic rules of mainstream practice to complex instrumental and vocal techniques and new technologies.

Supported by 1,500 music examples, Behind Bars encourages new standards of excellence and accuracy. Currently in its eighth impression, and also available as an eBook, it was shortlisted for the Music Industry Association’s Music Awards 2011 (Printed Music Awards, Best Classical Publication). The author’s understanding of, and passion for, her subject has resulted in a book that is not only practical but also compellingly readable. Sir Simon Rattle has described the book as ‘a reference for musicians for decades to come’. A Germanlanguage edition – Hals über Kopf – was published in 2014 and a Chinese-language edition is scheduled for release in 2020.

Behind Bars | 0-57151-456-1 | £75.00

Bärenreiter focus: the music of Charlotte Seither Charlotte Seither is best-known to UK audiences for her Language of Leaving (premiered at the 2013 BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and Josep Pons).

Seither’s subtle – often mysterious and ambiguous – music has been performed by the likes of Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, and members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2014 she was awarded the Deutscher Musikautorenpreis for Contemporary Choral Music. This November will see a new solo piano work unveiled at Wien Modern. Here we take a closer look at two recent orchestra works written in response to composers of the past.

A ‘distant encounter’ with Beethoven

“she who speaks”

To mark the Beethoven anniversary year 2020 the German Orchestra Competition commissioned Seither to write a new work for chamber orchestra. Entitled Ferne Begegnung – Trois Adieux für Ludwig van B, the resulting 7-minute piece contains references to the famous ‘Lebewohl’ motif from the Piano Sonata Op.81a, though the material becomes so stretched that any reference to its context is increasingly lost and it no longer sounds “Beethovenian”

Premiered in 2019, Seither’s “she who speaks” for orchestra responds to the life and work of one of the most important women in music history: Clara Schumann. It was commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of Schumann’s birth by the Schumann-Fest Zwickau and Beethoven Orchester Bonn, with generous support from the Kunststiftung NRW. In September this fascinating 11-minute work will be heard in Frankfurt (the city where Schumann taught piano) as part of a collaboration between Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium, the Akademie für Tonkunst Darmstadt and the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

‘Beethoven appears only from a distance, as if through burnt glass which becomes ever more blurred’ explains Seither. ‘The further I distance myself from Beethoven, the greater the closeness becomes – this paradoxical idea of the “distant encounter” interested me greatly when writing this piece.’

PHOTOS: ELAINE GOULD WORKING WITH THE CASTALIAN QUARTET © JAMES HOPKIRK; CHARLOTTE SEITHER © SEBASTIAN LINDNER

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The Silent Film Scores of Neil Brand

cues do… the ‘trip’ is full of incident and the exhilarating climax of the finale shows his prowess and relish for the big gesture but also a deeper instinct by resisting the big finish and returning to the lachrymose beginnings of the piece.’

Gramophone (Edward Seckerson), June 2019

‘A substantial four-movement work, a full-on fusion of lush late-Romanticism and feverish 20th-century rhythmic fire… Luxuriously scored, it also possesses the gold label charisma of film music, tracts of irrepressible lustre and a whopping great cinematic climax. Playing it calls for more than straightforward musicianship; it calls for performance art, which is what Cameron delivered with pinpoint finesse and agility.’

Faber Music is delighted to announce a new agreement with respect to the much-lauded silent film scores of Neil Brand. Brand is wellknown for his remarkable work as a composer, accompanist and broadcaster, and Faber already publish his concert works. The new live cinema catalogue includes orchestral and chamber scores for films including Hitchcock’s Blackmail, the 1922 version of Robin Hood, Anthony Asquith’s Underground, and the Laurel and Hardy short, You’re Darn Tootin’. Recent and upcoming performances include Hitchcock’s The Lodger at both the New Zealand International Film Festival and Indiana State University, and the 1922 version of Oliver Twist at the Dartington Summer School.

BBC Proms commission for Greenwood A new violin concerto from Jonny Greenwood, Horror vacui, is set to be one of the highlights of this year’s BBC Proms. The 25-minute work will be the culmination of a late-night event curated by Greenwood on 10 September and is scored for solo violin and 68 individual string parts (18.18.12.12.8). The soloist is long-time Greenwood advocate Daniel Pioro, who will be joined by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Proms Youth Ensemble, and conductor Hugh Brunt. 88 No.1 for piano, and one of the Three Miniatures from Water will also be featured and the composer himself will take to the stage playing tampura and bass guitar. The concert will be broadcast on both Radio 3 and BBC4.

‘Propulsive and exhilarating’ Elfman Concerto Widespread praise has greeted the premiere recording of Danny Elfman’s Violin Concerto ‘Eleven Eleven’, with Sandy Cameron, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and John Mauceri, which is now available from Sony Classical. The RSNO and Thomas Søndergård included the 40-minute concerto in their US tour in March, joining Cameron for performances in Tucson and Northridge.

The Scotsman (Ken Walton), 1 April 2019

Elfman focus at Paris Philharmonie Elfman’s Violin Concerto and the Piano Quartet will be centre-stage in Paris on 14 and 15 September, as part of an Elfman Weekend at the Philharmonie. Sandy Cameron and John Mauceri will join the Brussels Philharmonic, whilst the Piano Quartet’s commissioners – the Berlin Philharmonic Piano Quartet – will give its European premiere of their commission. The UK premiere of the Quartet takes place as part of Music@Malling in September, with Chamber Domaine.

Elfman’s next concert work will be a percussion quartet for Third Coast Percussion, to be premiered as part of Philip Glass’s Days and Nights Festival in Big Sur, California on 10 October.

Scottish Ensemble debut Sigurðsson Exploring the extraordinary story of a transplanted heart, We Are In Time is a new theatrical work by Valgeir Sigurðsson and writer Pamela Carter. Jointly produced and commissioned by Scottish Ensemble and Untitled Projects, the 70-minute work is scored for two singers, strings and electronics. It premieres on a 7-date Scottish tour in February and March 2020.

Sigurðsson’s Dust released by Daniel Pioro Sigurðsson’s Dust is the title track of the debut album by violinist Daniel Pioro, out now on the Bedroom Community label. Pioro describes the three-movement work for solo violin and electronics as ‘a bed of electronic sound and layers of improvised violin playing, pulled around, re-shaped, and improvised over again.’ The result is a hypnotic 15 minutes of perfectly blended acoustic and electronic sounds. Dust has frequently been performed live by the duo, and they will include it in a forthcoming Bedroom Community night at the Philharmonie de Paris on 8 November.

The concerto receives its UK premiere later this year with Cameron and Mauceri rejoining the RSNO for performances in Edinburgh and Glasgow on 29 and 30 November. Cameron joins JoAnn Falletta for performances with the Buffalo Philharmonic in October and gives the London premiere with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Bramwell Tovey at the Royal Festival Hall on 21 April.

‘The solo writing - not least in the cadenzas (gatecrashed in the motor second movement by the percussion section) - is propulsive and exhilarating. On the flipside of the coin is the darkly lyric minimalism of Shostakovich and I like the composerly way in which Elfman has the soloist emerge from the string oration at the start of the third movement ‘Fantasma’, the four-note idea hooking us like the best film

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PHOTO: IMAGE FROM NEIL BRAND SILENT FILM PERFORMANCE, DAVID RUSSELL HULME CONDUCTING © KEITH MORRIS

Keaton Henson’s ‘Six Lethargies’ travels Keaton Henson’s large-scale string orchestra work Six Lethargies has been presented in Dublin and Sydney in recent months, following its premiere to a sell-out Barbican Hall in July last year. In Dublin, Crash Ensemble were conducted by the original conductor, Mark Knoop, whilst in Sydney Paul Fitzsimon directed the Orchestra of Opera Australia. The 75-minute work explores themes and issues surrounding anxiety and depression, addressing the composer’s own well-documented struggles in its six movements. Jointly commissioned by the Barbican Centre, National Concert Hall, Dublin and Sydney Opera House (for Vivid LIVE), it has just been recorded for future release.

‘An emotional roller-coaster… When words fail, music speaks, and Six Lethargies surely confirmed that.’

CutCommon (Jessie Wang), 7 June 2019

‘An achingly beautiful ode to love’

immediately to the top of the UK classical charts on release in April 2019: ‘RANT!, drawing on folk materials from Cumberland and Westmorland, is especially powerful. Gillam’s saxophone is bright and resonant in its high range, gruff and punchy at the lower end, with Harle’s melodic lines and figures at times suggesting Kathryn Tickell’s Northumbrian pipe style.’

Gramophone (Pwyll ap Sion), June 2019

Gillam debuts another Harle composition later this year, when she performs a new commission, The Keys of Canterbury, as a highlight of the Canterbury Festival. The 26 October concert takes place in Canterbury Cathedral when Gillam will be joined by Dutch wind band, the Frysk Fanfare Orkest.

‘Anno’ in Holland and Japan

The Christopher Wheeldon-choreographed BalletBoyz production ‘Us’ premiered on a short UK tour earlier this year. It was so successful that it was immediately transferred to the West End for a two-week run at the Vaudeville Theatre in June. And now BalletBoyz have taken it to the Edinburgh Fringe for another fortnight’s run at Underbelly in July and August, followed by a further UK tour in September.

‘Combined with Henson’s lushly romantic score, it’s an achingly beautiful ode to love.’

Time Out (Siobhan Murphy), 5 June 2019

‘A piece that stirred the senses as it explored the intimacy and symbiosis of the traditional pas de deux through the relationship between two men… The choreography is muscular and vulnerable, tender yet not overtly romantic, and it’s matched by Henson’s sympathetic music.’

The Times (Debra Craine), 7 March 2019

Harle concerto premiered by Jess Gillam Saxophonist Jess Gillam has premiered John Harle’s 22-minute saxophone concerto, Briggflatts, to a standing ovation on London’s Southbank. It was the centrepiece of a concert given on 16 May by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Bramwell Tovey and later broadcast on Radio 3. Harle wrote the concerto especially for Gillam and it’s a marvellous vehicle for her outstanding talents.

The title is that of an epic poem by Basil Bunting, itself named after a Quaker meeting house near Sedbergh in Gillam’s native Cumbria.

There are three movements: ‘Flares’; ‘Garsdale’ and ‘Rant!’. The latter, dance-inspired movement (infused with Cumbrian folk-tunes) also features on Gillam’s debut album from Decca Rise, which shot PHOTOS: ‘US’ - CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON AND BALLETBOYZ © GEORGE PIPER

Anno – Anna Meredith’s refreshing take on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – continues to gain admirers the world over. Original commissioners the Scottish Ensemble took the piece to Classical:NEXT in Rotterdam on 18 May, and will also give the Japanese premiere on 16 September as part of the Yokohama Music Festival. Several sections of Anno reached a whole new audience when they featured in the Oscar-winning film The Favourite last year.

Elsewhere, Meredith’s 2011 work for chamber orchestra, visuals and electronics, Four Tributes to 4AM, is to receive its London premiere as part of BBC Radio 3 Unclassified Live, a concert curated by BBC presenter Elizabeth Alker and being given by Southbank Sinfonia under André de Ridder on 29 September in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with visuals provided by Eleanor Meredith.

Christmas commissions from Howard Goodall Two substantial choral works by Howard Goodall will be premiered this Christmas: In December Goodall will be in Houston, Texas to see the Choir of St Luke’s United Methodist Church unveil a new Christmas cantata, that draws together a number of pre-existing Goodall works into a 40-minute piece suitable for half an evening’s concert. Goodall favourites to be included are I Am Christmas Day, Romance of the Angels, Romance of the Epiphany, Stella Quam Viderant Magi, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and Lullaby of Winter. St Luke’s are longtime champions of Goodall’s music, having performed his Eternal Light: A Requiem several times, and commissioning and premiering his most recent large-scale work, Invictus: A Passion, in May 2018.

The Gravity of Kindness is a 15-minute commission from West London-based The Addison Singers. Subtitled ‘a Christmas Meditation’ it sets texts by US poet Naomi Shihab Nye, the Coventry Carol and the traditional Mexican lullaby ‘Arrorró mi niño’. It’s scored for solo soprano, SATB choir and small orchestra.

The first performance will be conducted by David Wordsworth on 7 December.

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O Hototogisu!

This exquisite ‘fragment of a Japonisme’ – premiered in 2017 and conceived as a kind of double concerto for soprano, flute and ensemble of 22 players – proved to be Oliver Knussen’s final work. The 8-minute piece couches seven exquisite haiku settings in richly evocative music which incorporates signals from Japanese theatre (particularly Kabuki). It concerns the Hototogisu (or Lesser Cuckoo), a bird widely invoked in Japanese haiku poetry of the 17th-19th centuries, where the poet listens for its arrival from the mountains both as a harbinger of Summer and a voice from the land of the dead.

O Hototogisu! is presented here as a typeset score with two facsimile pages of the composer’s manuscript.

‘A birdsong-like flute, festooned with grace notes, frames and punctuates the tiny songs themselves, with their elaborately soaring vocal lines, while the ensemble is used with microscopic precision to apply touches of colour…’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 26 June 2017

Full Score | 0-571-54111-9) | £24.99

Hire Schott Music Corporation/ European American Music Dist. Co. 254 West 31st Street, 15th Floor New York, NY 10001, USA Promotion: (212) 4616940 Rental: (212) 4616940 rental@eamdc.com

Sales Alfred Music Publishing Co. Customer Service P.O. Box 10003 Van Nuys CA 91410-0003, USA Tel: +1 (818) 891-5999 sales@alfred.com Written & devised

by Sam Wigglesworth with contributions from Tim Brooke and Rachel Topham Designed by Sam Wigglesworth COVER IMAGE: MARTIN SUCKLING © TESSA OKSANEN

Eccentric Melody Composed as a double tribute – for cellist Fred Sherry, in his 50th birthday year, to play to Elliott Carter on his 90th birthday – Oliver Knussen’s Eccentric Melody was first published in the journal Tempo in December 1998. Like many of Knussen’s works dedicated to friends, it contains a name cipher, in this case for Carter whose full name was E[lliott] C[ook] C[arter Jr]. Fred Sherry comments: ‘Carter often talked about, and composed, wide ranging melodies in which the pitches were meant to sound improvised or eccentric. I believe (but Olly never said) he was channelling the spirit of Carter in this work.’

Writing to Faber Music in 2001, Knussen stated his intentions to give Eccentric Melody ‘some siblings to form a 4-or-5 movement cello suite’ (he also mentioned that two movements were partly sketched in his notebooks). Sadly, that project was never realised, but we are pleased to be able to present this manuscript facsimile of Eccentric Melody as a stand-alone item.

Playing Score | 0-571-54127-5 | £9.99

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