Fortissimo Autumn 2017 by Faber Music

FABER MUSIC NEWS — AUTUMN 2017

fortissimo! TOM COULT ‘St John’s Dance’ reaches international audiences via radio and TV at the First Night of the Proms ‘A sizzler of a piece… Weird but compelling; I loved it.’ THE TIMES (RICHARD MORRISON)

Plus The New York Philharmonic performs Tansy Davies’s Forest Knussen conjures the sounds of Japan in O Hototogisu! Adès’s Powder Her Face Suite premieres in Berlin Coll, Hillborg and Adès at the BBC Proms

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

Tom Coult Tom Coult is not yet 30, but in testament to his growing reputation as one of British Music’s most exciting young voices he was given the prestigious spotlight of a premiere at the First Night of the Proms. Recently selected by The Times as one of the five ‘British composers to watch’ (together with another Faber Music composer, Martin Suckling), Coult impresses more with each ingenious new work, and has quickly established himself as one of the most individual voices of his generation.

Dear colleagues, Looking through this fortissimo I find we are welcoming more than a dozen new works to the catalogue, either performed in the last 6 months in the UK or abroad. No one can say that this is not evidence of a healthy musical culture – it is! But a recent article in the Saturday Financial Times (5 August) examined the economics of this culture calling it a ‘gig’ economy. The point made was that whilst the writing of commissioned music keeps composers busy, the remuneration is not enough to stay alive in the process. Ideally, income from existing works should fill the gap, but the ‘premiere syndrome’ resulting from a ‘throw away’ society which relishes the new, obviously militates against hearing last year’s music. Could more concerts feature this valuable cornucopia of existing music? Are there too many composers always ready to provide something new? Difficult questions to answer! In any event we should applaud the RPS and BBC who supported the Encore project, ditto the PRS Foundation for carrying the idea forward with its Resonate scheme, as well as the BBC, who with its Total Immersion focus digs back into the history and past of its featured composers so that we can actually understand how they got to where they are. One composer who will never be regarded amongst the ‘too many’ is Oliver Knussen and, regardless of the ‘gig’ economy, we are thrilled that the long silence from his pen has been broken with Reflection for violin and piano and the stunning O Hototogisu! for soprano, flute and 22-player ensemble which, though lasting only 8 minutes, is full of beauty and incident (see page 4). I join many others who will say, ‘more please’ to Olly!

Since signing with Faber Music in 2014, Coult has received a string of high profile premieres from the likes of Britten Sinfonia, the BBC Philharmonic and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. His ensemble work Spirit of the Staircase, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, was recently shortlisted for a Southbank Sky Arts Award. With future projects including a work for the Arditti Quartet and a chamber opera with playwright Alice Birch (supported by a Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship from Snape Maltings), Coult’s star seems set to rise even higher in the coming years.

Dancing to delirium Inspired by subjects as wide ranging as the imaginary encyclopaedia of Luigi Serafini and the playful late cutouts of Matisse, Coult’s music is often infused with a sense of play and fantasy. In St John’s Dance, premiered by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the First Night of the 2017 Proms, this playfulness takes on a darker edge. The 6-minute work takes its name from a form of contagious mass hysteria affecting European peasants in the Middle Ages (where people would start dancing involuntarily and wouldn’t be able to stop for weeks and sometimes months on end), and unfolds as an exhilarating set of dances, often heard simultaneously. ‘A sizzler of a piece from a rising young composer of today… Coult’s St John’s Dance, inspired by those medieval raves when hundreds danced themselves to death, grew from a hoarse squawk on solo fiddle into an apt frenzy of crossrhythms punctuated by thumping brass chords. Then the whole process was repeated, with an added whimsy — a clarinettist producing literally disembodied shrieks on a halfdismantled instrument. Weird but compelling; I loved it.’ The Times (Richard Morrison), 17 July 2017

‘A very individual voice’ ‘A composer who spins glittering, teasingly ambiguous patterns out of simple-seeming material… Suddenly we were off into a capering dance punctuated by huge major chords, each hurled across the main melody at a peculiar angle. In its gleeful reinvention of familiar things and ostentatious brilliance Coult’s piece recalled Adès, but the music’s sly way of pulling the rug out from under its own feet, plunging from noise to near-silence, revealed a very individual voice…’ The Telegraph (Ivan Hewett), 19 July 2017

Sally Cavender Performance Music Director/Vice Chairman, Faber Music

‘A new work by a rising British composer that got things off to an intriguing start… epigrammatic and edgy music, its textures diamond-hard, its momentum coming and going like little gusts of wind, and radiating innocent fun.’ The Independent (Michael Church), 17 July 2017

PHOTO: SALLY CAVENDER © MAURICE FOXALL

HIGHLIGHTS Tom Coult Selected forthcoming performances Two Games and a Nocturne 14.11.17, New Music North West, MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester, UK: Psappha

new work for string quartet 29.5.18, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Arditti Quartet

Sonnet Machine 3.8.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain/George Benjamin

‘Short, energetic and skilfully knotty, opening with an unearthly, hushed solo violin then punching out a series of noisy, interlocking dances.’ The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 21 July 2017

‘A six-minute crescendo of contagious rhythmic agitation…’ The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 16 July 2017

‘A work of desperate yet joyous rhythmic drive’ ‘The piece hurtles through several mini-dances, with woody tuned percussion, chattering winds and weighty thumps that bring to mind Stravinsky’s Kashchey from The Firebird; together, they conjure up the feeling of being trapped in repeated motion from which there is no escape. A work of desperate yet joyous rhythmic drive.’ The Guardian (Erica Jeal), 15 July 2017

‘A series of dances that featured swaying orchestral rhythms punctuated by bellowing brass chords, hoedown-style mayhem, clunking temple bells, dizzying rhythmic passages from pizzicato strings and wood blocks, and a sad, mad little oboe tune; the whole piece – like a sudden return to reason – then floated away into nothing on a twittering of flutes and piccolos. An impressive opening.’ musicOHM (Barry Creasy), 15 July 2017

‘A brilliant sense of orchestration… The piece is impeccably, imaginatively scored, with nods to Britten and Stravinsky… this is a terrifically imaginative piece that deserves frequent airing: it works perfectly both as opener and as orchestral showpiece.’

NYOGB to perform ‘Sonnet Machine’ Audiences in Birmingham, Snape and London will have a chance to hear an earlier orchestral work by Coult when the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and George Benjamin revive Sonnet Machine, a BBC Philharmonic commission from 2016. Recalling Alan Turing’s fascination with the idea of machines writing sonnets, Coult describes the piece as ‘a creative misunderstanding of sonnet form – 14 bits of music that “rhyme’’ in various ways, as if an early computer had arbitrarily applied the rules of sonnet form to a piece of music.’ Over the course of the work’s riproarious 10 minutes, whipcracks articulate many jolting gear changes and non sequiturs, whilst the front desks of violins and violas double on instruments whose scordaturas lend a blazing rawness to the open-string sonorities of the work’s arresting point of departure. A succession of dazzling orchestral textures – intricate and multilayered but always transparent – once again testifies to the maturity of this young composer’s craft. Later, the glint of open strings returns to initiate a breathless coda which hurtles forward to its close.

Further recognition In October 2017 Coult begins a two-year post as Visiting Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. The position will see Coult residing in Cambridge during Full Term, pursuing his work and more generally participating in the life of the College. Coult has also been awarded the prestigious Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize based at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Previous winners of the Fund include Per Nørgård and Coult’s teacher George Benjamin.

Seen and Heard (Colin Clarke), 15 July 2017

PHOTO: TOM COULT © MAURICE FOXALL

A new Knussen work conjures the sounds of Japan

New works by Oliver Knussen appear far less often than his admirers would like, with each meticulously created statement the hardwon prize of a ceaseless creative perfectionism. Knussen’s much anticipated O Hototogisu! premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in June and subsequently broadcast on Radio 3, with the composer himself conducting the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

‘A birdsong-like flute solo, 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 that sometimes evoke Japanese kabuki without ever seeming lazily anecdotal.’ The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 26 June 2017

Conceived as a kind of double concerto for soprano Claire Booth and flautist Marie-Christine Zupancic, and dedicated to the outgoing heads of BCMG, Stephen and Jackie Newbould, the 8-minute work couches seven exquisite haiku settings in richly evocative music for flute and ensemble of 22 players.

‘The intricately scored suite is a tight, expressive showcase for soprano and flautist: the vocal part yearning and supplicatory, the instrument brittle and beaky.’

This ‘fragment of a Japonisme’ is part of a larger work in progress concerning the Hototogisu (or Lesser Cuckoo), a bird widely invoked in poetry of the 17th-19th centuries as both a harbinger of Summer and a voice from the land of the dead.

Looking ahead, Knussen and the BCMG will give the work’s London premiere on 16 September as part of the Barbican’s 10-day festival ‘This is Rattle’.

The Times (Neil Fisher), 26 June 2017

Tansy Davies’s Forest in New York Forest now travels to the Warsaw Autumn Festival in September, where it will be performed by the original soloists and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Liebreich. ‘The bigger novelty on display turned out to be Forest a loud concerto for four — count ’em, four — horn virtuosos. It delivered nearly half an hour of flamboyant tootling around and above a rather cacophonic symphonic tapestry.’ The Financial Times (Martin Bernheimer), 30 April 2017

‘An alluringly blended sound of great plasticity that appears to throb and breathe like a living organism.’ Forest, Tansy Davies’s thrilling new concerto for four horns, received its US premiere in April with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the New York Philharmonic and soloists who premiered it: Richard Watkins, Katy Wooley, Nigel Black and Michael Thompson. After the world premiere by the Philharmonia Orchestra in February, The Guardian described the 20-minute work as ‘teeming with energy’. Pitting a quartet of soloists against a vast tapestry of orchestral sound, Forest is one of Davies’s most vivid and ambitious musical statements to date. 4

IMAGES: EXCERPT FROM ‘O HOTOTOGISU’ BY OLIVER KNUSSEN © FABER MUSIC; TANSY DAVIES AND ESA-PEKKA SALONEN © NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

‘The orchestral writing is reminiscent of Péter Eötvös, an alluringly blended sound of great plasticity that appears to throb and breathe like a living organism. [Solo] lines rarely stand out clearly, but seem partly obscured by the orchestral texture, much in the way moving objects in a forest are perceived in flashes behind branches and foliage… The music maintains a poetic tension throughout.’ The New York Times (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim), 28 April 2017

HIGHLIGHTS

Powder Her Face: the orchestral suite Commissioned by Rattle as one of a string of new works to mark the end of his 16-year tenure with the orchestra, the Suite incorporates four newly-orchestrated sections of the opera, interpolated between new orchestrations of the three existing Dances from Powder Her Face, to make a new extended work. ‘The Suite includes not just the swanky tango and distorted waltz, which evoke the decline of aristocratic order in full orchestral treatment, but also brooding atmospheric passages and solemn woodwind melodies. Rattle milked the pauses of the riotous Overture and revelled in the almost Mahlerian textures of the Ode… A welcome indulgence.’ The Financial Times (Rebecca Schmid), 16 June 2017

After almost 22 years, and more than a dozen productions worldwide, Powder Her Face, Adès’s precocious and risqué treatment of the scandal surrounding Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, is already established as part of the repertoire. Adès has returned to the riotous score repeatedly in recent years, beginning in 2007 with the 12-minute Dances from Powder Her Face for orchestra. Then, in 2010 Adès decided that the playful virtuosity of the music in its depiction of the Duchess’s grace and glamour would translate into a Concert Paraphrase for piano rather in the manner of Liszt or Busoni. This Paraphrase was itself reworked into a version for two pianos in 2015. Now comes an extended 30-minute orchestral Powder Her Face Suite, premiered by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker in May.

‘The orchestra clearly enjoyed the wild mixture. You could see the groove, swing, melody and kitsch: the soundworld of the 30s and 50s… A distorted image of modernity, with splintering motifs and diagonally squeezed phrases.’ Der Tagesspiegel (Christiane Peitz), 2 June 2017

The work now travels the world with an impressive schedule of 16 performances from the work’s co-commissioners: Philadephia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; the St Louis Symphony and David Robertson; the London Philharmonic under Adès himself; and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Juanjo Mena. (For full details see page 11.) The score of the Powder Her Face Suite, together with many other Adès works, can be viewed at the Faber Music Online Score Library.

Spleen: A Land of Rain In June, Claire Booth and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group under Oliver Knussen premiered an intriguing new work for medium voice and ensemble by Colin Matthews. A Land of Rain sets 10 of Nicholas Moore’s eccentric translations of the same Charles Baudelaire poem ‘Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux’. Mostly written under pseudonyms for a competition in the Sunday Times, the eccentric poems embrace a vast stylistic diversity – sometimes serious, more often parodistic – an approach which Matthews has mirrored in his settings. Whilst the more lighthearted 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, A Land of Rain is also a fascinating meditation on the inexact nature of translation. Those looking to further explore Colin Matthews the ironist may be interested in his pugnacious Hidden Variables from 1989. A 13-minute work available in versions for orchestra and 14-player ensemble, it comprises a series of wicked vignettes on minimalist composers from Louis Andriessen to Philip Glass which are pitted against more chromatic and congested material. PHOTOS: THOMAS ADÈS © BRIAN VOCE; COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL

Tansy Davies Selected forthcoming performances

Tansy Davies A new work for ensemble

Song Horn

In July the Crash Ensemble premiered Antenoux, Davies’s new work for ensemble of ten players at an outdoor location in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. The 5-minute work was commissioned as part of CrashLands – a ground breaking project to mark the 20th anniversary of the ensemble which will showcase new work from 20 composers and organise live performances in unusual rural locations scattered across Ireland. The piece will be repeated at Dublin’s National Concert Hall in November.

World premiere 10.9.17: Berliner Festspiele, Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie, Berlin; 6.10.17, WDR Funkhaus am Wallrafplatz, Cologne, Germany: Christine Chapman (MusikFabrik)

Forest Polish premiere 15.9.17, Filharmonia Narodowa Warschau, Warsaw, Poland: Richard Watkins/Nigel Black/Katy Woolley/ Michael Thompson/Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Alexander Liebreich

Iris German premiere 9.2.18, Munich, Germany: Koryun Asatryan/ensemble oktopus/ Konstantia Gourzi

Cave World premiere June 18, The Printworks, London, UK: Mark Padmore/Elaine Mitchener/London Sinfonietta/ Geoffrey Patterson/dir. Lucy Bailey

A quest for survival and renewal A new opera by Davies, entitled Cave will be premiered in the vast warehouse space of The Printworks, London in June. Staged by the London Sinfonietta in association with the Royal Opera, this new music theatre work for tenor Mark Padmore and contralto Elaine Mitchener will follow a grieving man’s quest for survival and renewal, in a dystopian future of deserted shopping malls and melting ancient glaciers. Desperate to connect one last time with his daughter, he enters a dark cave, triggering a journey into an underworld of spirits. Geoffrey Paterson conducts the London Sinfonietta, whilst Lucy Bailey directs. The project furthers the successful collaboration between Davies and Drake following their opera Between Worlds (2015) which won her a British Composers Award.

‘Dune of Footprints’ Beguiling and richly sonorous, Dune of Footprints for string orchestra was premiered at the Freden International Music Festival in July. Commissioned with support from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, the 15-minute work was inspired by the ancient underground river beds that cavedwellers used as pathways. The work unfolds meditatively and is something of a departure for Davies, with quivering tremolos and darkly lustrous harmonies.

Antenoux fluctuates between two kinds of energy: sultry and brooding cycles of highly rhythmical material in guitar, bass and percussion, and more linear, ethereal phrases and moments. The two materials coil and uncoil around each other, inspired by the imagined lines of an underground water phenomena known as geospirals. These phenomena come in pairs, one curling left and one curling right, and relate to the bi-monthly phases of the moon. Ancient calendars were all based on lunar cycles, and in the Celtic world each month was divided into two fortnightly periods, known as Anagan and Antenoux.

Berliner Festspiele premiere Davies’s latest work, a solo horn piece entitled Song Horn will be premiered by MusikFabrik’s Christine Chapman on 10 September as part of the Berliner Festspiele. A horn player herself, Davies has an instinctive understanding of how to write innovatively for the instrument whilst also honouring its long history – as her recent concerto for four horns and orchestra Forest has proved. The result of close collaboration with Chapman, this 10-minute solo work comprises airy, almost Bachian solo lines, together with earthier, folk-like passages in which the player is asked to sing through the horn whilst playing. This is not the first time Davies has asked instrumentalists to sing: in Re-greening, her energetic 8-minute work for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, the players sing two ancient melodies which weave their way through the colourful and intricate orchestral texture.

Saxophone concerto in Munich Iris, Davies’s dazzling 2004 concerto for soprano saxophone and ensemble, will receive its German premiere in February with Koryun Asatryan and ensemble oktopus conducted by Konstantia Gourzi. The 15-minute concerto brings together differing musics – a dark, mournful chorale and a dirty, wildly exuberant rumpus – with the saxophone, shaman-like, bridging the gap between one realm and the other. Since Iris, the idea of the shaman has become increasingly important to Davies – influencing the character of her concerto for piano and ten instruments, Nature, and providing the spiritual dimension to Between Worlds, her highly individual opera in response to the events of 9/11. 6

PHOTO: TANSY DAVIES © RIKARD ÖSTERLUND; CHRISTINE CHAPMAN © MUSIKFABRIK

TUNING IN

Carl Vine A pair of concertos travel the world

Melbourne focus The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has announced a major Carl Vine residence as part of their 17/18 season which will culminate in the premiere of his Eighth Symphony conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. The project highlights Vine’s position as one of the most respected Australian composers working today. It will feature his Smith’s Alchemy, Concerto for Orchestra, The Tree of Man for voice and strings, and the orchestral fanfare V (as part of the Last Night of the Melbourne Proms in addition to performances on tour in China). Smith’s Alchemy for string orchestra derives from Carl Vine’s String Quartet No.3. This 15-minute work seeks to transform the individual instruments into a single superinstrument while capitalising on their natural singing qualities – a kind of aural alchemy. Commenting on this arrangement of the original quartet version of the piece, Vine comments that ‘the potential to “share” difficult techniques across more than one instrument has in many ways liberated the music, allowing greater emphasis on its lyrical qualities.’

Looking ahead The Arrival of Implacable Gifts, Vine’s new work for piano four hands will be premiered by the ZOFO Duet in September. The 4-minute work was composed as musical accompaniment to the 1985 painting of the same name by Australian painter James Gleeson (1915-2008), which the composer advises should be viewed while listening to the music. In November cellist Julian Smiles and pianist Ian Munro will premiere Vine’s Strutt Sonata at the Huntington Estate Music Festival. Named after its commissioner Josephine Strutt and her husband, John, this single 15-minute movement includes a lyrical aria that returns in darkly mirrored form and a joyous presto finale.

Carl Vine Selected forthcoming performances

Inspired by Oliver Sacks’s fascinating exploration of atypical mental states, Vine’s Trombone Concerto Five Hallucinations was premiered in October 2016 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and James Gaffigan. The soloist was renowned Australian trombonist, and long-time member of the Chicago Symphony, Michael Mulcahy. Each movement of the 20-minute concerto is based on a different hallucination, from the ominous ‘Doppelgänger’ to the rather absurd ‘The lemonade speaks’. Mulcahy gave the work’s Australian premiere on 5 April with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.

The Arrival of Implacable Gifts

‘Densely swirling textures and swiftly changing contrasts in sound, rhythm and mood established an unsettling, restless energy and eerie, mysterious atmosphere. Mulcahy’s focused, crystalline solo line alternated between penetrating resplendence and subdued subtlety, yet always powerfully navigated its way through Vine’s intricate soundscapes.’

12.10.17, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Takács Quartet

The Austalian (Murray Black), 7 April 2017

Meanwhile, Pipe Dreams, Vine’s ever popular concerto for flute and strings receives its Japanese premiere in September with the Million Concert Orchestra and Jiro Yoshioka. Composed for Emmanuel Pahud and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, this mesmerizing 14-minute work from 2003 has also been recorded by Sharon Bezaly on BIS. Pipe Dreams follows one of Vine’s preferred architectures: a single movement with three sections in the classic ‘moderate-slow-fast’ form. Although the solo lines are unashamedly virtuosic, the composer states that his intention was ‘not to dazzle but to explore as much dreaminess as possible, filtered through the wilfulness of a metal pipe which believes it has no limits’.

A Sixth Quartet Having previously premiered Vine’s dark and pensive String Quartet No.4, the Takács Quartet unveiled his Sixth Quartet with nine performances as part of a Musica Viva tour in August. A US premiere is scheduled at Carnegie Hall (who co-commissioned the piece with Musica Viva and The Seattle Commissioning Club) in October. The new work’s emotional palette is a world away from that of the Fourth Quartet, and looks set to leave audiences uplifted, edified and elated. Unfolding over five movements the 20-minute work is subtitled ‘Child’s Play’, and takes its inspiration from the unbridled exuberance, unselfconscious concentration, and pure elation of infancy.

World premiere 14.9.17, Music on the Heights, Zakopane, Poland: ZOFO Duet

Pipe Dreams Japanese premiere 17.9.17, Yomiuri Otemachi Hall, Otemachi, Japan: Million Concert Orchestra/Jiro Yoshioka

String Quartet No.6 US premiere

Strutt Sonata World premiere 23.11.17, Huntington Estate Music Festival, Huntington Estate, Mudgee, NSW, Australia: Julian Smiles/ Ian Munro

V 25.3.18, BBC Last Night of the Melbourne Proms, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis (also touring to China in May)

Concerto for Orchestra 10,12.5.18, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Melbourne; 11.5.18, Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis

Smith’s Alchemy 9.8.18, Recital Centre, Melbourne; 10.8.18, Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Dale Barltrop

Symphony No. 8 World premiere 30.8,1.9.18, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Melbourne; 31.8.18, Deakin’s Costa Hall, Performing Arts Centre, Geelong, VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis

The Tree of Man 8.9.18, Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Greta Bradman/Members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

‘Charming and engaging from start to finish… The music has an appealing, easy-listening quality that alternates between bustling, playful rhythms and soothing calmness.’ The Australian (Mark Coughlan), 14 August 2017

‘A sterling product from this fecund composer, its five segments a gripping and meaty construct.’ The Age (Clive O’Connell), 14 August 2017

PHOTO: TAKÁCS QUARTET © KEITH SAUNDERS

Anders Hillborg Selected forthcoming performances

Anders Hillborg Ensemble Modern

Violin Concerto No. 2

Having premiered Hillborg’s riotously colourful Vaporized Tivoli in 2010, Ensemble Modern will give the first German performance of Scream Sing Whisper in Frankfurt this December, with Duncan Ward conducting. An energetic virtuoso showcase for 18 players, Scream Sing Whisper was first performed by the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble and Christian Karlsen. An impressive 23-minute tour de force, the work sets raucous ensemble unisons against towering spectral sonorities that carve out vast sonic vistas.

US premiere 14-16.9.17, Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, MN, USA: James Ehnes/Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä Asian premiere 3.11.17, Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul, South Korea: Viviane Hagner/ Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra/ Thierry Fischer Finnish premiere

‘Sirens’ at the BBC Proms

24.11.17, Helsinki Music Centre, Paavo Hall, Helsinki, Finland: Lisa Batiashvili/Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Hannu Lintu UK premiere 29.11.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: Lisa Batiashvili/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo

Bach Materia Dutch premiere 29.9.17;1.10.17, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Pekka Kuusisto/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Andrew Manze US premiere 9-19.11.17, Trinity Lutheran Church, Stillwater, MN, USA: Pekka Kuusisto/ St Paul Chamber Orchestra (9 performance US tour) German premiere 20.1.18, Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Pekka Kuusisto/Karajan-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker

Eleven Gates 30.11.17, Malmö Live Concert Halls, Malmö, Sweden: Malmö Symphony Orchestra/Marc Soustrot

Scream Sing Whisper German premiere 9.12.17, Alte Oper, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany: Ensemble Modern/Duncan Ward

Peacock Tales (original version) 13.1.18, NTR ZaterdagMatinee, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Martin Fröst/Residentie Orkest/Nicholas Collon

Beast Sampler French premiere 10.3.18, Auditorium Maurice-Ravel, l’Orchestre National de Lyon, Lyon, France: Orchestre National de Lyon/ Leonard Slatkin

new work: Hommage to Stravinsky 21.4.18, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vladimir Jurowski

‘Bach Materia’ Anders Hillborg’s Bach Materia – an inventive and witty companion piece to Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto – was premiered in March by Pekka Kuusisto and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard. The zany 15-minute work (commissioned by the SCO) contains numerous opportunities for the soloist to improvise, the spirit of which fits well with the Bach, the central Adagio of which consists of just two chords upon which the soloist elaborates. The SCO will tour the work widely across Europe next summer, and Kuusisto will also perform it with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, St Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Karajan-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker. ‘A delicious opening that gets the music to vibrate the expectations and paves the way for Kuusisto’s partly improvised solo part. Here are Bachian harmonic variations and more dramatic Bachian gestures, in addition to jazzy swing and the strings replaced with clattering bamboo sticks… Hillborg’s playful undermining of the score is as refreshing as the modernism of the 1950s and 60s, and at the same time pleasant to listen to.’ DN Kultur (Johanna Paulsson), 6 March 2017

Recently released in a new edition by Faber Music, Hillborg’s Sirens received its UK premiere in August at the BBC Proms, with James Gaffigan conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus together with sopranos Hannah Holgersson and Ida Falk Winland. Hillborg’s evocative 30-minute score is inspired by the dangerous yet alluring sirens in Homer’s Odyssey: two soprano soloists and a large mixed choir attempt with increasing desperation to manipulate Ulysses. ‘Atmospheric… extraordinary power and intensity.’

Violin Concerto No.2 Hillborg’s Violin Conceto No.2 continues to travel the world, with upcoming performances in Helsinki, London, Minnesota and Seoul. Described as music of ‘directly speaking, timeless beauty’ at its 2016 premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the concerto was composed for Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili who performs it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in November. James Ehnes and Viviane Hagner are also scheduled to perform this powerful 24-minute work, which alternates between moments of melancholy, almost glacial, calm and driving passages of extraordinary muscle and bite, giving the soloist ample opportunities to showcase his or her considerable talents.

PHOTO: ANDERS HILLBORG © MATS LUNDQVIST

Bachtrack (Alexander Hall), 29 July 2017

‘Hillborg’s music uses cinematic techniques: deep focus, differential focus, soft focus, dissolve… whispering voices creating a shimmering cloud.’ The Times (Anna Picard), 31 July 2017

‘Aeterna’ A contemplative odyssey of sound and vision that portrays our future in a thought-provoking manner, Aeterna is a new 90-minute environmental film by Fredrik Wenzel and Jesper Kurlandsky with a score by Hillborg. It premiered in August at the Baltic Sea Festival, Stockholm with EsaPekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra with Hannah Holgersson.

TUNING IN

Carl Davis WWI on screen 2018 sees the centenary of the end of WWI and no doubt we will see this milestone commemorated in concert, exhibitions and theatre. However, this anniversary also gives us the opportunity to revisit the important and revelatory legacy of silent films made in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. An epic drama set on the battlefields of WWI, Rex Ingram’s 1921 silent The Four Horsemen is often regarded as one of the first true anti-war films. Davis’s remarkable score for the 132-minute film responds with extraordinary sensitivity to the extended scenes of the devastated French countryside and personalized story of loss. King Vidor’s The Big Parade is another early film that neither glorified the war nor ignored its human costs, whilst Wings, a romantic action picture starring Clara Bow and including spectacular flying sequences, won the first Oscar for Best Film and Special Effects in 1927.

‘The High Sign’ in Luxembourg A testament to his ravishing scores and their ability to capture the imaginations of both musicians and audiences alike, Davis has performed in Luxembourg every year since 1987. He returned there in May to conduct the Luxembourg Philharmonic in the premiere of his new score to Buster Keaton’s classic silent The High Sign. The first of 19 short comedies directed by Buster Keaton (and Eddie Cline) between 1920 and 1923, The High Sign is Keaton’s true debut as an independent filmmaker. Full of brilliant and surreal gags, the film climaxes in an elaborate chase sequence through a multi-levelled set, with Keaton evading the gangsters by sneaking through the extensive system of trapdoors and secret passageways. Davis has composed a dazzling 20-minute score for 14 players which wonderfully matches the on-screen antics.

‘Aladdin’ on stage and record The Carl Davis collection has announced the release of a new reissue of the classic recording of Davis’s ballet Aladdin, with the Malaysian Philharmonic conducted by the composer. A score of sweeping scope, the three-act ballet based on a story from One Thousand and One Nights was choreographed to great acclaim by David Bintley. The reissue in September coincides with a UK tour of Bintley’s Aladdin by Birmingham Royal Ballet. Speaking in Maestro, the recent book dedicated to Davis’s life and music, Bintley said: ‘I love Aladdin from beginning to end. There are no clouds in the sky, and we know it’s going to end well. It’s so redolent of nineteenth-century Orientalism, and Carl’s original music captured that atmosphere perfectly… The company really took to it… The whole score just dances.’

PHOTO: STILL FROM ‘WINGS’

Meanwhile, Eureka Videos has announced the release of new 4K restorations of Keaton’s The General and Steamboat Bill, both featuring scores by Davis. Together the films represent a true master at his peak, and will be presented in a lavish limited edition box set to be released on 16 October 2017.

A truth universally acknowledged… With his acclaimed music for the BBC’s dramatisation of Pride and Prejudice in the mid-90s, Davis perfectly captured the mood of Jane Austen’s witty drama of friendship, rivalry, and love in a small nineteenth-century town. Now, audiences can experience all the magic of Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice in Words and Music, a new suite for narrator, violin and piano which was premiered by Hayley Mills, Matthew Trusler and Ashley Wass at the Octagon Theatre, Yeovil, Somerset in February 2017. The suite, which combines Davis’s perfectly judged music with some of the novel’s most memorable passages, will be heard at the Jane Austen Festival, Bath and at the Kenton Theatre, Henley-on-Thames in September.

Carl Davis Selected forthcoming performances Pride and Prejudice in Words and Music 9.9.17, Jane Austen Festival, Bath, Somerset; 16.9.17, Kenton Theatre, Henley-on-Thames: Hayley Mills/ Matthew Trusler/Ashley Wass

The General 16.9.17, Theater Bremen, Bremen, Germany: Landesjugendorchester Bremen/Stefan Geiger 2.11.17, Paard van Troje, Den Haag, Netherlands: Residentie Orkest/ Judith Kubitz

Aladdin 20-23.9.17, The Lowry, Salford; 3-7.10.17, Hippodrome, Birmingham; 25-28.10.17, Theatre Royal, Plymouth; 31.10-2.11.17, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, UK: Birmingham Royal Ballet/chor. David Bintley

The Crowd 30.9.17, Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Pordenone, Italy: orchestra TBA/Carl Davis

The Kid Brother 18.10.17, festival Lumière, Auditorium Maurice-Ravel, l’Orchestre National de Lyon, Lyon, France: Orchestre National de Lyon/Carl Davis

A Christmas Carol Suite 16-17.12.17, Alberta Bair Theatre, Billings, MT, USA: Billings Symphony Orchestra/Anne Harrigan

The Mysterious Lady/ Scene from The Divine Woman 4.3.18, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Philharmonia Orchestra/Carl Davis

Thomas Adès Selected forthcoming performances

Thomas Adès Acclaim for LSO disc

Asyla

Portuguese premiere

The London Symphony Orchestra’s disc of Asyla, Brahms, Polaris and Tevot, conducted by Adès, continues to garner critical acclaim and was recently shortlisted for a Gramophone Award. In September the LSO will perform Asyla once again as part of Sir Simon Rattle’s inaugural concert as their Music Director. To coincide with the concert, Adès has programmed an evening of chamber music for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama which will include his arrangement of Madness’s Cardiac Arrest together with music by Nicholas Maw and John Woolrich.

23.9.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música/Sylvain Cambreling

‘The music is carried aloft by great, heaving cosmic waves through a universe glistening with heavenly sounds…’

14.9.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle

Madness arr. Adès Cardiac Arrest 18.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: GSMD Students/Richard Baker

Dances from Powder Her Face

Blanca Variations/ Life Story 24.9.17, Festival Musica, Salle de la Bourse, Strasbourg, Alsace, France: Raquel Camarinha/Yoan Héreau

Three Studies from Couperin 29.9.17, Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner 15,19.10.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: London Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink 27.4.18, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Berliner Philharmoniker/ Alan Gilbert 13.11.17, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Centre, New York City, NY, US: Juilliard School/Thomas Adès

Totentanz French premiere 6.10.17, Festival Musica, Palais de la Musique et des Congrès, Strasbourg, Alsace, France: Christianne Stotijn/Adrian Eröd/Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg/ Marko Letonja Czech premiere 21-23.3.18, Dvorák Hall, Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic: Christianne Stotijn/Simon Keenlyside/Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès 22.4.18, Grosser Saal, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Christianne Stotijn/Simon Keenlyside/ Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/ Thomas Adès

The Exterminating Angel US premiere 26.10-21.11.17, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York City, NY, USA: Metropolitan Opera/ Thomas Adès Danish premiere 23.3-6.5.18, Operaen på Holmen, Copenhagen, Denmark: Royal Danish Opera/cond. Robert Houssart/dir. Tom Cairns

The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 3 March 2017

‘Totentanz’ After critically-acclaimed performances in London, New York, Copenhagen and Warsaw, Thomas Adès’s monumental Totentanz, receives its French premiere in October as part of the Strasbourg Musica Festival. Marko Letonja will conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and soloists Christianne Stotijn and Adrian Eröd. 2018 sees performances in Prague and Berlin, with Thomas Adès conducting the Czech Philharmonic and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.

Couperin rendered strange and new ‘My ideal day,’ Adès once remarked, ‘would be staying at home and playing the harpsichord works of Couperin – new inspiration on every page.’ A love of the 18th-century master permeates Ades’s output – from his arrangement of Les Barricades Mystérieuses for five players, to his Sonata da Caccia – and finds its fullest expression in his Three Studies from Couperin for chamber orchestra (2006) where three keyboard works by the 18th-century master are cast in a vivid new light. From the burbling bass and alto flutes of ‘Les Amusemens’, ‘Les Tours de Passe-passe’ with its interplay between instruments (Adès divides the strings into two orchestras throughout the Studies) and the languid, aching sighs of ‘L’Âme-en-Peine’ (‘The soul in pain’), there is a tender and understated quality about this charming 15-minute work that makes it easy to see why it has become so popular in the concert hall. The Studies boast two commercial recordings and the rest of 2017 will see performances from Edward Gardner, Bernard Haitink, Alan Gilbert, and Adès himself. ‘Adès’s reworkings are an object lesson in how to reveal the richnesses latent in something you might think you know. His orchestration amplifies the dimensions of Couperin’s music, making you realise just how inventive these pieces really are, but he also renders them strange and new.’ Tom Service in liner notes to the Norwegian Radio Orchestra’s recording of the Studies with Andrew Manze

‘What strikes one most about these performances is how brilliantly Adès marshals what often seem like collisions of contradictory ideas into cogent and compelling structures.’ The Times (Richard Morrison), 3 March 2017

Opera premiere of the year Following its world premiere at the 2016 Salzburg Festival, where The Observer described it as ‘a turning point for Adès and, it felt, for opera itself ’, Adès’s The Exterminating Angel received its UK premiere in April at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to critical acclaim. The opera also won the prestigious premiere of the year award at the International Opera Awards. Based on the surrealist film classic by Luis Buñuel, the work now travels to the Metropolitan Opera, New York (October 2017) and the Royal Danish Opera (March 2018). ‘A triumph: his finest stage work so far. Part of its strength lies in his ability to add texture – both poetic and psychological – to that of the film. Whereas Buñuel’s characters are sometimes difficult to tell apart, Ades’ are clearly differentiated, the music fleshing out their quirks and quiddities. The soundworld he builds up, with eerily beautiful ondes martinot, harp, guitar, bells and a lorryful of percussion, Mexican brass, Viennese waltz and a haunting offstage Requiem at the end, offers a multi-faceted commentary on the scenario. And interpolated within the overall arc of the story is a series of exquisite solos and duets that deepen the focus on individuals and their obsessions.’ The Evening Standard (Barry Millington), 25 April 2017

‘The ultimate ensemble opera’ ‘Full of brilliantly crafted orchestral sounds and virtuosic allusions… the ultimate ensemble opera. Don’t miss seeing it.’ The Times (Richard Morrison), 25 April 2017

PHOTO: THOMAS ADÈS © BRIAN VOCE

TUNING IN

Torsten Rasch ‘A grand endeavour written out of love for the form’ ‘On first encounter The Exterminating Angel challenged ears and eyes simply to keep up, to absorb the panoply of sounds and sights… I found it compelling. What would a second encounter reveal? It was as convincing as before, and also different. The countless musical jokes bristling through the piece were funnier. The shifts between lyricism and manic adventure were more gripping in their tight control… Adès pulls out every card he has and plays each with technical virtuosity, which has been his hallmark for more than 20 years. The Exterminating Angel, on second encounter, confirms itself as a grand endeavour written out of love for the form, generously achieved, wonderfully performed. That’s quite something.’ The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 28 April 2017

‘An epic undertaking. It is at once surreal, mysterious, macabre and threatening, and Adès’s score is all these things and more. He draws on sources as far-flung as Strauss waltzes, Spanish flamenco and Hebrew songs, and piles them up with shattering power. Adès’s capacity for invention here is nothing less than prodigious. You come out with your head spinning with music. At first it seems that the characters trapped in this musical vortex may have no space to emerge as individuals, but gradually solo spots arise — a lullaby, a profession of love, a tantrum over teaspoons, each a haunting shaft of light into a troubled soul.’ The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 25 April 2017

‘A score of infernal ingenuity.’

Intimate poetry in WW II song cycle Torsten Rasch’s new orchestration of A Welsh Night, his 14-minute song cycle setting poems by the Second World War poet Alun Lewis, was premiered in July at the 2017 Three Choirs Festival, Worcester, with Susan Bickley and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Frank Beermann. The inspiration for the song cycle came partly through an encounter with Lewis’s widow. ‘Having met Gweno,’ Rasch comments, ‘I naturally wanted to make this cycle as personal as possible and reflect the couple’s relationship which was cut tragically short due to Alun’s early death.’ After an introductory movement taken from the poem ‘A Welsh Night’, the cycle continues with short excerpts from poems addressed to Gweno, which Rasch reimagines as a dialogue between husband and wife, where it is often uncertain who is speaking. As their exchanges become more distant, the poetry grows ever more intimate. In the final song, Gweno remains alone with a lullaby, the only poem in the cycle that the composer sets in its entirety.

‘Utterly immediate’ ‘In many, if not most, concerts one would come away with Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass proving to be the most impressive and memorable. However, the other half packed a punch – albeit of an entirely different order – that was easily its equal. There’s a great deal packed inside Lewis’ words, and in any case the nocturnal, even sepulchral, emotionallycharged sensibility that Rasch creates in the work is utterly immediate. The transparency of the Philharmonia’s performance was exquisite, a superbly-judged balance of delicacy and dread… vocal fragility and orchestral threat.’

The Artsdesk (Peter Quantrill), 25 April 201

‘The opera is so discombobulating that one half expects to encounter some kind of force-field at the Covent Garden doors.’ The Guardian (Erica Jeal), 25 April 2017

PHOTO: THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL © ROH. PHOTO BY CLIVE BARDA

Bachtrack (Simon Cummings), 27 July 2017

‘Die Formel’ In April 2018 Konzerttheater Bern will stage an ambitious interdisciplinary work for singers, actors and orchestra with music by Rasch entitled Die Formel. 100 years after the end of the First World War and the October Revolution, Doris Reckewell’s text takes Bern’s important role as a neutral waystation and imagines an encounter between seven of the twentieth century’s most cultural figures who passed through the city: the revolutionary exile Lenin with his wife; the emancipated social pedagogue Nadeshda Krupskaja; the as-yet-unknown physicist Albert Einstein and his wife Mileva Marić; the artist Paul Klee and his pianist wife Lily; as well as the young, uprooted poet Robert Walser. Jonathan Stockhammer will conduct Camerata Bern and Vokalensemble ardent in a production directed by Gerd Heinz.

Thomas Adès Selected forthcoming performances (cont.) Powder Her Face Argentinian premiere 25.11-3.12.17, Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Opera de Camara/Martín Sotelo/Marcelo Lombardero 17.2-11.3.18, National Opera House, Wexford. Ireland: Opera Theatre Company/cond. Fergus Sheil/dir. Antony McDonald (7 performance Irish tour) 31.3-25.5.18, Theater Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germnay: Theater Magdeburg/Magdeburgische Philharmonie/cond.Jovan Mitic/dir. Magdalena Fuchsberger

Powder Her Face Suite US premiere 7,9,10.12.17, Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 8.12.17, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Philadelphia Orchestra/ Yannick Nézet-Séguin 12-19.1.18, Powell Hall, St Louis, MO, USA: St Louis Symphony Orchestra/David Robertson (6 performance tour of CA) 25,26,28.1.18, Symphony Hall, Boston, MA, USA: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Adès UK premiere 11.4.18, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Thomas Adès Danish premiere 17,19.5.18, DR Konserthuset, Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish National Symphony Orchestra/ Juanjo Mena 28.5.18, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany: Philadelphia Orchestra/ Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Living Toys 28.12.17, Festspielhaus, Erl, Austria: Ensemble Resonanz/Tito Ceccherini

Lieux retrouvés Dutch premiere of orchestration 26.5.18, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Steven Isserlis/Britten Sinfonia/ Thomas Adès

Torsten Rasch Selected forthcoming performances Die Formel World premiere 2.3-14.4.18, Stadttheater, Bern, Switzerland: Vokalensemble ardent/ Camerata Bern/cond. Jonathan Stockhammer/dir. Gerd Heinz

Martin Suckling Selected forthcoming performances

Martin Suckling ‘Candlebird’ toured by Aurora

new work for string quintet

Candlebird, Suckling’s exquisite song cycle for baritone and ensemble from 2011, has been selected as one of the works to be championed by the PRS Foundation’s Resonate Scheme. The Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon will perform the 25-minute work as part of their 17/18 season. Collon is no stranger to the work, having conducted its premiere with the London Sinfonietta as well as a series of well-received performances with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra back in 2015. Candlebird sets texts by Don Paterson, though only the central song, ‘Motive’, is a Paterson ‘original’: the others are his versions of evocative texts by Robert Desnos, Antonio Machado and Abbas Ibn Al-Ahnaf.

15.10.17, Wellcome Collection, London, UK: Musicians from Aurora Orchestra

Candlebird 7.4.18, Hall 1, Kings Place, London, UK: Mark Stone/Aurora Orchestra/ Nicholas Collon

Benjamin Britten Selected forthcoming performances Russian Funeral 6.9.17, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski

Owen Wingrave (Chamber reduction by D Matthews) 9.9.17, Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick; 13-16.9.17, Tiger Dublin Fringe, O’Reilly Theatre, Dublin, Ireland: Opera Collective Ireland/Irish Chamber Orchestra/Stephen Barlow/ dir. Tom Creed

String Quartet No.3 3.10.17, Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA: Momenta Quartet

Quatre Chansons Françaises 29-30.10.17, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Christiane Karg/Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/ Rafael Payare

The Burning Fiery Furnace 30.10-5.11.17, Juilliard School, New York City, NY, USA: Juilliard School Students

Suite for Harp 2.11.17, David Josefowitz Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK: Royal Academy of Music Student

Third Suite for Cello 8.12.17, Kings Place, London, UK: Pieter Wispelwey

Young Apollo 21.2.18, Harmonie, Heilbronn, Germany: Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn

Death in Venice 23.9.17-5.7.18, Opernhaus, Stuttgart, Germany: Staatsorchester Stuttgart/ Marco Comin/dir. Demis Volpi 19.5-6.7.18, Landestheater Linz, Linz, Austria: Landestheater Linz/Roland Böer/dir. Hermann Schneider

A composer to watch In July Martin Suckling was selected by The Times as one of ‘Five British Composers to watch’, singling out Suckling’s ‘absorbing mood-piece’ Psalm and the recent flute concerto The White Road for special praise. Described as a ‘sonic feast’ by The Scotsman after its premiere by Katherine Bryan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in February, the concerto is a work of great subtlety and delicacy. Melody is the guiding force from the opening bars of the work, which place solo song-fragments and string harmonics in an antiphonal relationship. The soloist leads us through a number of beguiling landscapes, often inventively coloured with metallic percussion before an extended song, marked ‘almost a lullaby’, floats atop wind and strings. This eventually leads to a short virtuoso conclusion, gruff brass chords launching the flute into the stratosphere.

A string quintet for Aurora From the violin concerto de sol y grana to Postcards, the poetic set of miniatures composed for the Scottish Ensemble, Suckling is particularly adept at writing for strings so a new string quintet for members of the Aurora Orchestra is a particularly exciting prospect. The intimate scale of the commission should also provide a fantastic opportunity for Suckling to explore the nuanced spectral sonorities that have come to typify his work. The work will showcase Aurora’s two new Principal Cellists, Torun Sæter Stavseng and Sébastien Van Kuijk, and will be premiered alongside poems by Frances Leviston and Schubert’s great String Quintet in C Major D596. This is Suckling’s second commission from the Aurora Orchestra, following Psalm for harp and three spatialised ensembles, a response to writings of Paul Celan and Edmund de Waal. The premiere at London’s Wellcome Collection will be broadcast on Radio 3 and the Aurora Orchestra is planning a performance at Kings Place in January 2018.

Benjamin Britten Youthful genius One of the most remarkable of Britten’s early works, the Quatre Chansons Françaises have been recorded by soprano Christiane Karg and the Bamberger Symphoniker under David Afkham. Karg will also perform the songs in Berlin with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Rafael Payare in October. Written in the summer of 1928 as a wedding present for his parents (when Britten was not yet 15!) the songs show his new-found interest in Debussy and Ravel, though at times the harmony veers off into what sounds like Bergian Expressionism. In his setting of Hugo’s ‘L’enfance’, where a mother lies dying whilst her five-year-old son innocently sings, Britten weaves a French nursery rhyme in and out of the texture; whilst in the final song, Verlaine’s ‘Chanson d’Automne’, a Tristanesque cadence on the word ‘morte’ belies Britten’s other great teenage love: Wagner. Not performed until 1980, these songs have since taken their place as an example of youthful genius.

‘The Prodigal Son’ at 50 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Britten’s Prodigal Son, the third of his three Church Parables. Inspired by Rembrandt’s painting ‘The Return of the Prodigal’ which Britten had seen two years earlier on a trip to Leningrad, the work – like its two predecessors – sets a libretto by William Plomer. The manner of presentation is consistent with the conventions established in Curlew River and The Burning Fiery Furnace and, whilst it is a knottier and more problematic piece in some ways, it marks a significant advance on its predecessors and the handling of the modest ensemble of seven players is particularly fine. New colours are provided by the mellow tones of the alto flute, primarily associated with the pastoral tranquillity of the father’s home, and by the small trumpet in D which accompanies the Tempter’s promises of excitement.

PHOTO: AURORA’S TWO NEW PRINCIPAL CELLISTS, TORUN SÆTER STAVSENG AND SÉBASTIEN VAN KUIJK © AURORA ORCHESTRA

TUNING IN

Jonathan Harvey Deo, a new all-Harvey release from the choir of his alma mater, St John’s College, Cambridge, has been awarded a prestigious BBC Music Magazine Award. Released on Signum Classics, the disc includes premiere recordings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis with organ (1978) and Praise ye the Lord (1990). Also featured are two works commissioned by St John’s: The Royal Banners Forward Go (2004) and The Annunciation (2011), a 4-minute setting of Edwin Muir which was written to mark the College’s Quincentenary celebrations. The disc is completed by two organ works: Laus Deo (1969) and Toccata for organ and tape (1980).

Giving voice to the orchestra In January one of Jonathan Harvey’s late masterpieces will receive a rare performance from the Basel Sinfonietta, SWR Experimentalstudio and Baldur Brönnimann. Speakings for orchestra and electronics was composed in 2008 during Harvey’s time as Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and 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’. Faber Music is currently working on a new typeset edition of Speakings that we hope will make this stunning piece even more accessible to conductors and enthusiasts.

From chaos to stasis

The recording has received extensive critical acclaim with The Observer calling it ‘ecstatic’ and ‘richly challenging’ and Gramophone hailing: ‘remarkable and underperformed repertoire, beautifully performed and recorded’. Andrew Nethsingha, Director of Music at St John’s, said: ‘We are very proud and grateful to have received this prestigious award. We started working on the music in April 2009, so several generations of choristers and choral and organ students have been involved in the project. Jonathan was one of the greatest composers of his time, but some of his Church music is less well-known. While many contemporary composers are vigorous self-publicists, Jonathan was quite the reverse so it is particularly gratifying when his music is recognized in this way.’

Recognition in Munich In July Harvey was a featured composer at Musica Viva, Munich with a complete string quartet cycle from the Arditti Quartet and a performance of …towards a pure land by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Matthias Pintscher. ‘Its calmness lies in the power of bright-sounding fields of percussion and unmixed orchestral colours. A piece without pithy rhetoric, strong, concise and concentrated, and without the widespread giddy loquaciousness of New Music. In calm their lies, nevertheless, a force.’ Münchner Abendzeitung (Robert Braunmülller), 10 July 2017

In Wheel of Emptiness, Harvey’s 1997 ensemble work for 16 players, the often chaotic foreground instrumental activity is heard against the background calm of a sampler’s harmonic spectra, resulting in a gradual progression from ever-changing to measured stasis. Commissioned by the Belgian ensemble Ictus – who later recorded it – the 16-minute work will be performed in Paris this April by Ensemble intercontemporain and Daniel Harding.

Surprisingly, this was the first time all four of Harvey’s quartets – described as ‘the most cohesive and stretching cycle of British quartets since Tippett’s’ by Gramophone Magazine – have been heard together in concert. As one would expect, the Ardittis proved to be the ideal interpreters, having commissioned one quartet per decade from Harvey from 1977 onwards – and premiering his String Trio in 2004.

St John’s BBC Award

The quartet were joined by Gilbert Nouno for the Fourth Quartet, a remarkable work in which the music literally gains another dimension, as sounds are spatialised around the listener using IRCAM-designed software.

Up-to-date information on the electronic performance materials required for the performance of Harvey’s music can be found at jonathanharveysoundsources.com PHOTO: JONATHAN HARVEY © LAURIE LEWIS

Jonathan Harvey Selected forthcoming performances Bhakti 23.9.17, Philharmonie, Paris, France: Ensemble Intercontemporain/ Duncan Ward 14.10.17, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Ensemble Intercontemporain/ Matthias Pintscher

Toccata 25.9.17, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Simon Johnson

Serenade 6.10.17, DePaul Concert Hall, Chicago, IL, USA: DePaul University/ Cliff Colnot

Death of Light, Light of Death 17.10.17, Teatro Farnese, Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy: Ensemble Prometeo

Run Before Lightning 24.10.17, De Link - Het Cenakel, Tilburg, The Netherlands; 28.10.17, Casa della Musica, Parma, Italy: Helen Bledsoe/Ulrich Löffler (Musikfabrik)

Scena 13.11.17, Innsbruck, Tirol, Austria: PHACE

Mythic Figures 29.5.18, Village Underground, London, UK: City of London Sinfonia

Lauds 16.12.17, Kings Place, London, UK: Oliver Coates/Tenebrae/Nigel Short

Speakings 28.1.18, Musical Theater, Basel, Switzerland: Basel Sinfonietta/SWR Experimentalstudio/Gilbert Nuono/ Baldur Brönnimann

The Angels/ Plainsongs for Peace and Light 30.1.18, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir/Kaspars Putninš

Wheel of Emptiness 5.4.18, Philharmonie, Paris, France: Ensemble Intercontemporain/Daniel Harding

Matthew Hindson Selected forthcoming performances RPM

Matthew Hindson Dazzlingly brilliant ballet ‘Faster’

Dangerous Creatures

In March The Australian Ballet staged the Australian premiere of Matthew Hindson’s Faster. Choreographed by David Bintley, the one-act ballet enjoyed a ten-day run in Melbourne before moving to Sydney Opera House in April as part of a triple bill. Bintley and Hindson’s second ballet together, Faster initially toured the UK with Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2012 and has since been staged in Tokyo by New National Theatre Ballet.

24.9.17, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Richard Morecroft (narrator)/Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Toby Thatcher

‘Hindson’s work is dazzlingly brilliant, pointillist and exact, and provides much of the acceleration that drives the piece.’

9.9.17, Town Hall, Brunswick, VIC, Australia: Victoria Youth Symphony Orchestra/Ingrid Martin

Speed Irish premiere 22.9.17 (2 perfs), National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland: RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Robert Trevino

New work World premiere 8.12.17, Cranbrook School, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Cranbrook School Chamber Strings/Luke Gilmour

Time Out (Tim Byrne), 20 March 2017

‘Ballet imitating sport could have been a gimmick. However, thanks to the dynamic allegro, soaring partner work, and display of sheer endurance as the dancers kept pace with Hindson’s frenetic score, it was elevated to mastery.’ Daily Review (Melinda Oliver), 20 March 2017

‘A whirlwind of dances with a rollicking, multifaceted score by Hindson.’ ABR Arts (Lee Christofis), 20 March 2017

New quartet in Queensland residency Hindson travelled to Townsville in July this year, where he was Composer-in-Residence at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Artistic Director Piers Lane programmed a number of Hindson’s works, including AK-47 (performed by Jayson Gillham and Timothy Constable) and the newly-commissioned String Quartet No.5 (Celebration), given by the Goldner String Quartet. ‘There was a crowd-pleasing selection of Hindson’s blazing rhythmical curlers, fired at lightning speeds with bluegrass strains and daubs of techno.’ ArtsHub (Gillian Wills), 11 August 2017

A homage to Luther Taking as its starting point a Lutheran chorale tune, Saviour of the Heathens (Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland) is a new 6-minute work for tenor, cello and chamber organ. It was written for The Song Company who gave 6 performances around Australia in June.

Central Park stages ‘Maralinga’ Maralinga for violin and strings received its US premiere on 27 June, part of a programme being given in Central Park’s iconic Naumburg Bandshell, and broadcast live on WQXR radio. Canadian soloist Lara St John was joined by Ensemble LPR. St John premiered the original violin and piano version of Maralinga and later commissioned the orchestral reworking for a national tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The work takes as its inspiration the controversial secret nuclear tests conducted by the British government in South Australia in the 50s and 60s. 14

Francisco Coll

‘Concerto Grosso’ In April Cuarteto Casals – arguably Spain’s finest quartet – premiered Coll’s Concerto Grosso for string quartet, harp and string orchestra in Madrid with the Orquesta Nacionales de España under David Afkham. Subtitled ‘Invisible Zones’, this is an 18-minute work of brooding lyricism and concealed passion, with bursts of flamenco growing out of shifting banks of string harmonics. Later that April, Cuarteto Casals also premiered Cantos, a 5-minute quartet based on Coll’s Hyperlude V for solo violin, at the Semana de Música Religiosa de Cuenca. In the coming season the quartet will perform Cantos alongside late Beethoven in Barcelona and Vienna.

Guitar concertino Turia, a new guitar concertino in five movements commissioned by Christian Karlsen and the ensemble Norrbotten NEO, will be premiered in December with Jacob Kellermann as soloist. The work takes its name from the dried-up river in Valencia which now hosts gardens, fountains, cafés, and even an opera house by architect Santiago Calatrava. ‘As a child,’ Coll explains, ‘I used to walk in this unusual river, full of light, flowers and people. I always thought that one day I would write the music of this river. When Christian Karlsen contacted me, I immediately knew that this was my opportunity to write a piece for guitar and ensemble with Spanish luminosity. This soundscape evokes the light and the respective shadows of my country.’ Flamenco is very much in the surface of this work, although it is always filtered through Coll’s distinctive sonorous imagination.

A new chamber opera Coll is currently at work on a new evening-length opera based on La Dama Boba by the Spanish Golden Age playwright Lope de Vega. Commissioned by Music Theatre Wales, the Royal Opera House, Theater Magdeburg and Scottish Opera, the opera sees Coll working again with Meredith Oakes, who supplied the punchy and cleverly assembled libretto for his critically acclaimed chamber opera Café Kafka.

PHOTO: FRANCISCO COLL, THOMAS ADÈS AND THE NYO AT THE BBC PROMS © BBC, CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

TUNING IN

Mountains as Cathedrals

‘Lacrimae’ and ‘Stella’

This summer Coll’s vast orchestral work Mural toured the UK with Thomas Adès conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. The 24-minute piece – premiered last year by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno – is an extraordinary achievement, handling vast forces with an impressive single-mindedness to create a five-movement work of stark and unsettling poetry.

A keen admirer of the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria, Coll has composed a new 5-minute anthem for 8-part choir which he describes as a ‘reflection’ on Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella. Commissioned by ORA100 for Suzi Digby OBE and the singers of ORA, Stella will be premiered in early 2018 as part of a concert to launch the choir’s next CD, which will feature the work alongside the Renaissance masterpiece that inspired it.

In the last movement of Mural, Coll writes, ‘Mountains are seen as cathedrals.’ With it, he feels ‘that a period in my work is closing. As if across a mural, the piece presents a synthesis of the musical language I have developed in the last decade. Its structure and harmony have been a constant obsession through the two years it took me to complete. I had the feeling of returning to the traditional problems of composition. I am trying to approach simplicity in each new work; structure, rhythm and harmony are crucial in the process, and melody is becoming more and more important.’

It is not the first time that Coll’s work has made reference to Victoria: in the fourth movement of Mural, fragmentary vestiges of the introit from Victoria’s Requiem Mass connect with a chaotic section that evokes the anxiety of life in a busy Western city, creating a hybrid of high and low culture and a fascinating melding of ancient and modern.

‘Adès’s only pupil shares his teacher’s ear for alluring orchestral effects. Nor are they surface gloss: they shape the music itself. He’s also firmly in control of energy and pace, and has an ear for contrasts. In Mural, Apollo meets Dionysus, slow and fast movements alternate, fragments of Victoria’s Requiem meet modern anxiety. And Coll is good at endings: a marvellous chord that seems to be at once standing still and teeming with life concludes the central movement, while the finale is pared back to a simple glimpse of E-major purity. Yet when that evaporates, a quiet cluster hangs on – a shadow of doubt.’ The Times (Rebecca Franks), 7 August 2017

Coll has also composed an eight-part choral setting of the Stabat Mater, Lacrimae, which premiered at the ENSEMS Contemporary Music Festival of Valencia, Spain in June. The seven-minute work was premiered by Orfeó Universitari de València under Francesc Valldecabres.

Francisco Coll Selected forthcoming performances Cantos 6.10.17, L’Auditori, Barcelona, Spain: Cuarteto Casals Austrian premiere 23.2.18, Mozart-Saal, Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria: Cuarteto Casals

Hyperludes 22.10.17, Teatros del Canal, Madrid; 12.11.17, Centro Turina, Sevilla; 29.11.17, J. C. Arriaga Conservatory, Bilbao; 30.11.17, Auditorio Palacio de Congresos Zaragoza; 2.12.17, Centre del Carme, Valencia, Spain: Carmen Antequera Antequera (Asociación Grup Instrumental de València)

Turia World premiere 14.12.17, Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden: Jacob Kellerman/Norrbotten NEO/Christian Karlsen

Four Iberian Miniatures Spanish premiere of orchestration 2.2.18, La Coruña, Spain: Chloë Hanslip/Orquestra Sinfónica de Galicia/Eugene Tzigane

‘Four Iberian Miniatures’ Following their Swiss premiere in March, with James Gaffigan conducting the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures will receive their Spanish premiere with Chloë Hanslip and the Orquestra Sinfónica de Galicia under Eugene Tzigane. Described by the Observer as ‘glittering with sharp Andalusian light’ this 12-minute work for violin and chamber orchestra flickers with light, colour and rhythm. Hanslip is the fourth violinist to tackle the flamenco-influenced work, the others being Pekka Kuusisto, Augustin Hadelich and Noa Wildschut (a protégé of Anne-Sophie Mutter).

‘Music of extremes... vast, almost Brucknerian harmonic vistas’ ‘It’s a measure of the imagination and confidence of Coll’s Mural that its impact wasn’t diminished at all when heard alongside two such immensely powerful musical statements [ The Rite of Spring and Adès’s Polaris ]. There’s the vivid instrumental imagery that one recognises from Coll’s ensemble pieces. It is music of extremes, which is constantly reassessing its options and the directions it can take. The whole structure of Mural is tethered by a pair of slow movements – the churning, stringdominated canon that’s placed at the centre, and the finale, which opens vast, almost Brucknerian harmonic vistas as it proceeds.’ The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 4 August 2017

‘Febrile with imaginative ideas… it does not feel a minute too long.’ The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 8 August 2017

PHOTO: FRANCISCO COLL’S PAINTING OF THE SWISS ALPS HE MADE JUST AFTER COMPLETING MURAL.

Colin Matthews Selected forthcoming performances

Colin Matthews ‘Contraflow’

Three Interludes 17.11.17, The Forge, Camden, London, UK: Jacquin Trio

Contraflow 22.11.17, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; 25.11.17, St John’s Smith Square, London: London Sinfonietta/Martyn Brabbins

Night Music 7.12.17, Morley College, London, UK: Morley Chamber Orchestra/Charles Peebles

Grand Barcarolle 26.5.18, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Morley Chamber Orchestra/Charles Peebles

Arrangements Purcell XIII

– Fantasia

20.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: members of Britten Sinfonia

Mahler – Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen 20.11.17, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada: Uri Mayer/ University of Toronto Faculty Artists’ Ensemble/Darryl Edwards

Debussy – Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarme 13.1.18, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Stéphanie d’Oustrac/Nash Ensemble

Ravel - ‘Oiseaux tristes’ from Miroirs 26,28.4.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon

Malcolm Arnold Selected forthcoming performances Concerto for Clarinet No.2 29.8.17, City Halls, Glasgow, UK: Adam Lee/West of Scotland Schools Symphony Orchestra/James Lowe

A Flourish for Orchestra/The Return of Odysseus 14.10.17, Malcolm Arnold Festival, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, UK: Glasgow Philharmonia/Ross Gunning/Simon Toyne

Duo for Flute and Viola 14.10.17, Malcolm Arnold Festival, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, UK: Jack Lambert/Jenny and the Strange Quintet

Nash Ensemble premiere It Rains, Colin Matthews’s new Edward Thomas setting for baritone and ensemble was premiered at the Wigmore Hall in March by baritone Roderick Williams and the Nash Ensemble under Martyn Brabbins. The softly-spoken 5-minute work sets one of Thomas’s last pastoral poems, written shortly before he joined the trenches of WWI, and deftly brings out the full range of its melancholy emotions. The Nash Ensemble also performed Matthews’s Fuga for eight players (1988), a frenetic scherzo which is occasionally ruptured by three trios based on music written in late sixteenth-century Mexico by Fernando Franco. The 11-minute work is an instrumental version of Part III (‘Flight’) of The Great Journey, a narrative for baritone and ensemble which tells the story of the conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who between 1527 and 1536 was lost in the interior of Central America. ‘Exquisite in its understatement. The shoots of grass in Thomas’s verse grow clean and sweet in Matthews’s curling figures for oboe and flute, the syllables that describe them lightly and precisely touched by a singer whose diction is perfection… Fuga jolted sharply between parodies of conquistador cazonas and barbed counterpoint.’ The Times (Anna Picard), 24 March 2017

‘Concise and effective… It Rains gives a death march-like tread to the bittersweet pastoral poem that Williams sang with perfect guileless purity.’ The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 22 March 2017

‘Hidden Agenda’ A new 7-minute piano trio, entitled Hidden Agenda, was premiered at the Winchester Chamber Music Festival in April by the London Bridge Trio. Matthews now intends to add two more movements to this. The existing music in this, his second piano trio, contains everything from declamatory and forceful piano statements to gentle sequences of descending chords and more lyrical writing for the strings. PHOTO: COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL

12 tightly packed minutes of gritty, rhythmically pugnacious writing, Matthews’s Contraflow for 14 players (1992) is a study in musical impetus and transformation. Composed in the same year as the large orchestral scherzo Broken Symmetry, the work was premiered by the London Sinfonietta, who revive it in both London and Huddersfield this November as part of a 50th anniversary concert celebrating their most iconic commissions. Martyn Brabbins conducts. ‘Contraflow has nothing to do with motorways,’ its composer quips, ‘but it might be compared to a journey in which the return half is seen in a different perspective.’ Indeed, the piece’s ingenious design sees the jagged and hard-edged music of its opening countered with a slow reprise of the same material in reverse, exposing its many deep ramifications in the process. ‘A tour de force that, like all the best music, takes time by the scruff of the neck, stretching and squashing it at will.’ The Times (Stephen Pettitt), 17 June 1994

Looking ahead The coming months will see the premieres of a number of short works for solo instruments: Matthews has composed a solo flute work in memory of Bas Bell (flautist with the London Sinfonietta), a solo violin work for London Music Masters, and a solo recorder work commissioned by the City Music Foundation for Tabea Debus. Other projects include an orchestration of Debussy’s Images Book 1 and a chamber work for oboist Nicholas Daniel and members of Britten Sinfonia.

Malcolm Arnold Odysseus returns In October the Glasgow Philharmonia will open the 12th Malcolm Arnold Festival at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton with a performance of the cantata for chorus and orchestra The Return of Odysseus. Written in 1976, specifically with young performers in mind, the 30-minute work is very much in Arnold’s tradition of supplying his own brand of ‘music for use’. English poet Patric Dickinson sets the story of Odysseus returning to his homeland in unadorned prose and the concise musical setting offers the children’s choir some catchy and singable melodies, along with a brief moment of aleatoric speech when Odysseus slays Penelope’s hapless suitors. This year’s festival will also feature Arnold’s exhilarating A Flourish for orchestra.

Many Malcolm Arnold scores can be viewed on the Faber Music Online Score Library.

TUNING IN

John Woolrich John Woolrich Selected forthcoming performances A Farewell 18.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Guildhall School of Music and Drama Students/Richard Baker

The Turkish Mouse 15.10.17, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Sally Matthews/Thomas Adès

Three Pieces for Chamber Orchestra

Ulysses in Aldeburgh

Adès performs Woolrich in New York

Ulysses Awakes for viola and strings, John Woolrich’s popular reworking of Monteverdi, is the basis of an exciting new collaboration between the 12 ensemble, acclaimed contemporary dance choreographer Alexander Whitley (Royal Ballet, Rambert) and dancer Luke Crook. Developed during an Aldeburgh Residency in May 2017 with support from the Arts Council and The Carne Trust, the project was also presented at Southbank Centre as part of Rambert’s River Stage weekend. The choreography, an intimate solo which responds to the music’s every expressive nuance, was filmed on the Suffolk coast and will be released in late 2017.

Thomas Adès, a close supporter of Woolrich since his days as a member of the Composers Ensemble, will perform The Turkish Mouse from the Three Cautionary Tales at Carnegie Hall in October with soprano Sally Matthews. Setting a text adapted from a Turkish folk poem collected by Bartók, the characterful song also exists in a version for voice and ensemble of five players.

Ulysses Awakes is not the only time Woolrich has reworked the music of Monteverdi. His Favola in Musica II which receives a performance at the Royal Academy of Music in November is a ‘retelling’ of the madrigal ‘O sia tranquillo il mare’ for saxophone, oboe, and percussion, and explores a Monteverdian speciality: two-voice twinning now imitative, then in step; now in poignantly pressed discord, then in chains of sweet euphony.

Oboe Concerto All concertos are built from a mismatch of forces: the individual against the crowd, solo against tutti. Many composers have intensified this discrepancy by banishing the solo instrument from the orchestra, so that the colour of the solo and the tutti are as different as possible. John Woolrich, however, takes a different approach in his Oboe Concerto: rather than isolating the soloist, he has filled the orchestra with the mournful noise of its singing: the oboe is surrounded, figuratively in the music and literally on the stage, by the attendant group of three oboes and their more extrovert second cousin, the soprano saxophone. But the oppositions are still there – the drama and the poetry of the work flow from the contrast between the fragile keening of the oboe and the brutal power of a large symphony orchestra. The 26-minute work was premiered, and later recorded, by Nicholas Daniel, who revives it in January with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth.

19.10.17, Morley College, London, UK: Morley Chamber Orchestra/ Charles Peebles

Spalanzani’s Daughter 10.11.17, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Ubu Ensemble/Simon Wills

Ulysses Awakes 12.11.17, Portsmouth Cathedral, UK: Judith Busbridge/London Mozart Players/Jonathan Berman

The Three Cautionary Tales belong to a substantial body of songs which span the whole of Woolrich’s oeuvre and take in writers as varied as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Elvis Costello and Fernando Pessoa as well as Emily Dickinson, Stéphane Mallarmé and Laurence Sterne.

4.12.17, Caird Hall, Dundee; 5.12.17, Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh; 6.12.17, Wellington Church, Glasgow; 7.12.17, St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen; 8.12.17, Inverness Cathedral; 9.12.17, St John’s Kirk, Perth, UK: Scottish Ensemble

Noisy fanfares and distant chorales

Favola in Musica II

In October the Morley Chamber Orchestra and Charles Peebles will perform Woolrich’s newly-revised Three Pieces for Chamber Orchestra. After A Curtain Tune and an expressive Cantilena, the final piece, entitled Speed the Going, intercuts episodes of raucous unisons, noisy fanfares and rushing scales with more remote and spectral music: a melancholic flute, whispering strings and distant chorales.

Nicholas Maw Revisiting the Violin Concerto Nicholas Maw composed his sumptuous Violin Concerto in 1993 for Joshua Bell. Melody is spun almost continuously through the four distinct movements of the work, its sheer profusion of ideas, unerring sense of instrumental balance, and the continuous thread of song sustaining the listener’s interest over its vast 40-minute span. A glorious affirmation of Romantic ideals in contemporary form. ‘A concerto of extraordinary beauty, a union of vitality and reflection… Wonderful to listen to, inspired in language and in its palette of instrumental colourings.’

23.11.17, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK: Royal Academy of Music Students

Concerto for Oboe 31.1.18, BBC Hoddinott Hall, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, UK: Nicholas Daniel/BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Ryan Wigglesworth

The Theatre Represents a Garden: Night 3.5.18, Morley College, London, UK: Morley Chamber Orchestra/Charles Peebles

Nicholas Maw Selected forthcoming performances The Head of Orpheus 18.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Daily Telegraph (Geoffrey Norris), 23 October 1993

PHOTOS: ALEXANDER WHITLEY’S CHOREOGRAPHY TO ‘ULYSSES AWAKES’ ON ALDEBURGH BEACH © 12 ENSEMBLE, ELOISA-FLEUR THOM

George Benjamin Selected forthcoming performances

George Benjamin ‘Written on Skin’

Duet

After two sold out performances of Katie Mitchell’s original production on the Bolshoi’s New Stage in April, when Frank Ollu conducted the Bolshoi orchestra, Written on Skin will return to Russia for a semi-staged performance in St Petersburg by the Melos Sinfonia and their enterprising young conductor Oliver Zeffman. Jack Furness directs, and the Melos Sinfonia will also perform the work in London and Cambridge.

Irish premiere 14.9.17, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland: Vanessa Benelli Mosell/RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Jonathan Bloxham

At First Light 10.10.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Remix-Ensemble Casa da Musica/Ryan Wigglesworth 2.11.17, Stude Concert Hall, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA: Rice University/Jerry Hou

In February the opera receives four performances at Opera Philadelphia, with Corrado Rovaris conducting a cast including Lauren Snouffer as Agnès, Mark Stone as the Protector and Anthony Roth Costanzo as First Angel/Boy. Directed by Will Kerley, this will be the 6th original stage production of the opera since its premiere in 2012.

29.11.17, Silk Street Music Hall, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, UK: Ubu Ensemble/ Simon Wills

Dance Figures 14.10.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música/Ryan Wigglesworth Written on Skin 19.10.17, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, UK; 20.10.17, LSO St Luke’s, London, UK; 22.10.17, International Conservatoires Festival, Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall, St Petersburg, Russia: Melos Sinfonia/ cond. Oliver Zeffman/dir. Jack Furness 9-18.2.18, Academy of Music, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Opera Philadelphia/cond. Corrado Rovaris/ dir. Will Kerley

Shadowlines 27.10.17, Boulez Saal, Berlin, Germany: Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra 7.12.17, Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music, London, UK: RCM New Perspectives/ Timothy Lines 9.6.18, Musica Viva, Prinzregententheater, Munich, Germany: Chamber Orchestra of Europe/David Robertson

Upon Silence 24.1.18, Chapelle Corneille, Rouen, Haute-Normandie, France: Sarah Breton/SIT FAST

Into the Little Hill 25.1.18, Prinzregententheater, Munich, Germany: Sarah Aristidou/ Helena Rasker/Munich Chamber Orchestra/Clemens Schuldt 23.5.18, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, The Netherlands: Ensemble Insomnio/Ulrich Pohl

Dream of the Song 19.2.18, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin; 20.2.18, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Bejun Mehta/Berlin Staatskapelle/Zubin Mehta

A second recording of chamber opera A second recording of George Benjamin’s 2006 chamber opera Into the Little Hill has been awarded the Diapason d’or. Benjamin conducts Hila Plitmann, Susan Bickley and the London Sinfonietta. A lyric tale in two parts for soprano, contralto and ensemble of 15 players (coloured by bass flute, two bassset horns, mandolin, banjo and cimbalom), this strange retelling of the Pied Piper story was Benjamin’s first collaboration with Martin Crimp. The disc, released on Nimbus, also features the London Sinfonietta’s Principal Flautist Michael Cox playing Benjamin’s Flight, and another opportunity to hear the world premiere recording of Dream of the Song, with Benjamin conducting Bejun Mehta, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. ‘Plitmann and Bickley evince drama and intimacy aplenty in their multiple roles and Benjamin draws a superfine response from the London Sinfonietta… fastidious scoring.’ Gramophone (Richard Whitehouse), July 2017

‘This second recording of Benjamin and Crimp’s exceptionally concise reimagining is even tauter and a shade harder edged… First rate, conveying the power of this ancient tale that holds up an unforgiving mirror to contemporary society.’ BBC Music Magazine (Christopher Dingle), July 2017

2018 will see performances of Into the Little Hill in both Utrecht, with Ensemble Insomnio conducted by Ulrich Pohl, and in Munich, with the Munich Chamber Orchestra under Clemens Schuldt.

Gramophone award for NEOS disc A recently released account of Palimpsests from the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and George Benjamin, released on NEOS, has won a prestigious Gramophone Award. Vividly capturing the drama and intricate layering which makes the work so powerful, the disc was recorded live at Munich’s Musica Viva in 2012 and also features music by Ligeti and Murail. PHOTO: GEORGE BENJAMIN © RENSKE VROLIJK

The opera features substantially at the end of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s ‘Opera: Passion, Power and Politics’ exhibition, which runs until February.

A new recording of ‘Upon Silence’ French viol consort SIT FAST and mezzo soprano Sarah Breton have recorded Upon Silence, Benjamin’s masterful 10-minute setting of Yeats’s ‘The Long Legged Fly’ from 1990. More details will feature in the next newsletter.

‘Lessons in Love and Violence’ Expectation continues to grow ahead of the premiere of Benjamin and Crimp’s third opera Lessons in Love and Violence at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 10 May 2018. As with Written on Skin, Benjamin will conduct all performances at the Royal Opera House. The work will be directed by Katie Mitchell, with designs by Vicki Mortimer. The cast will feature baritone Stéphane Degout, soprano Barbara Hannigan, tenor Peter Hoare, baritone Gyula Orendt, tenor Samuel Boden, soprano Jennifer France, bass-baritone Andri Björn Róbertsson, and mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabó. Lessons in Love and Violence is co-commissioned and co-produced with Dutch National Opera (June 2018), Hamburg State Opera (April 2019), Opéra de Lyon (May 2019), Lyric Opera of Chicago (Autumn 2020), Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (March 2021) and Teatro Real, Madrid (April/May 2021).

Knighthood Faber Music is delighted to announce that George Benjamin has been awarded a Knighthood in the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Richard King, CEO of Faber Music, said: ‘We are completely thrilled, and offer George our heart-felt congratulations on this richly-deserved honour. Every new Benjamin work transports us to new places; his music continuously enlightens, thrills, surprises and delights audiences all over the world and we’re very proud to be the publisher of one of the most important living classical composers in the world. Congratulations, Sir George.’

TUNING IN

Julian Anderson Revisiting ‘Alhambra Fantasy’ Another highlight of the BBC’s Total Immersion day is sure to be the performance of Alhambra Fantasy. Scored for 16 players (and lasting as many minutes), the work is dedicated to the memory of Gérard Grisey and is a vivid display of Anderson’s outstanding gift as an instrumental colourist. One of his most popular pieces – with over 60 performances since its premiere in 2000 – this thrilling piece of ensemble writing, exuberant and dazzlingly detailed, will also be performed in Porto this October, with Ryan Wiggleworth conducting the Remix Ensemble.

Recording news

‘Poetry Nearing Silence’ Faber Music is excited to announce the publication of a new typeset edition of Julian Anderson’s Poetry Nearing Silence, his 1997 collection of eight engagingly quirky miniatures inspired by the work of artist Tom Phillips and 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. ‘Full of oddities – whirring ratchets, raucous offstage clarinets, wonky waltzes – that brilliantly capture the humour and nostalgia of the Tom Phillips drawings that inspired them.’ The Daily Telegraph (Ivan Hewett), 18 March 2005

Total Immersion In October 2017, the orchestra will explore music spanning Anderson’s entire output in one of their Total Immersion days. Featuring over ten works across three concerts, as well as talks and a film screening, the day will be the largest retrospective of Anderson’s music to date. The BBC Singers under Nicholas Kok will present a number of choral works, including the Four American Choruses, whilst students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (where Anderson is a Professor of Composition and also Composer in Residence) perform Poetry Nearing Silence and The Colour of Pomegranates. The day culminates in a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner – the conductor who oversaw the premiere of Thebans, Anderson’s critically acclaimed opera, back in 2014. Fantasias, his 23-minute orchestral showpiece abounding in vivid contrasts, will be heard alongside Eden, Imagin’d Corners, In lieblicher Bläue and Symphony.

PHOTO: JULIAN ANDERSON © MAURICE FOXALL

The second disc documenting Anderson’s time as the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer in Residence has won the 2017 BBC Music Magazine Premiere Award. It features recordings of Alleluia, The Stations of the Sun (the second account on disc) and his poem for violin and orchestra In lieblicher Bläue with Carolin Widmann as soloist. Meanwhile, the Choir of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge and their Music Director Geoffrey Webber have recorded a disc of Anderson’s choral music for Delphian. The disc will include the first commercial recording of the Bell Mass alongside O Sing Unto the Lord, My Beloved Spake, I Saw Eternity and the Four American Choruses (the latter should prove an interesting complement to the existing recording by the much larger forces of the CBSO Chorus under Simon Halsey). In other recording news, the PRS’s ground breaking Composers’ Fund has supported a project which will see both Anderson’s ballet The Comedy of Change and his oratorio Heaven is Shy of Earth released on disc. This will be the second Anderson portrait disc from the Ondine label, after the Gramophone Award-winning disc of orchestral and ensemble music back in 2007.

Music for piano With the recent BBC Proms premiere of Anderson’s piano concerto The Imaginary Museum – described as music of ‘immense refinement’ by the Guardian – what better time to revisit his Piano Études: four brilliant pieces which succeed through an intensity of expression that combines inner coherence with a brilliantly articulated surface. The first is a short two-part polymetric invention, whilst the second comprises material which was later elaborated in Anderson’s The Stations of the Sun. Subtitled ‘Pour les Arpèges Composées’, the third is an evocative double homage to Debussy and Britten which, like Poetry Nearing Silence, is inspired by lines from Tom Phillips’s ‘Humument’: ‘By and by, out of the white horizon, the long, low sea.’ The fourth, composed slightly later than the others in 1999, is a ‘misreading’ of Rameau.

George Benjamin Selected forthcoming performances (cont.) Ringed by the Flat Horizon 25.3.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

Viola, Viola 8.4.18, Mary Norton Hall, Old South Church, Boston, MA, USA: Scott Woolweaver/Mark Holloway

Lessons in Love and Violence World premiere 10-26.5.18, Royal Opera House, London, UK: Degout/Hannigan/ Orendt/Hoare/Róbertsson/France/ Szabo/Boden/The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/George Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell Dutch premiere 25.6-5.7.18, Dutch National Opera, Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Degout/Hannigan/ Orendt/Hoare/Róbertsson/France/ Szabo/Boden/Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/George Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell

Julian Anderson Selected forthcoming performances Alhambra Fantasy Portuguese premiere 10.10.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Remix-Ensemble Casa da Musica/Ryan Wigglesworth

Poetry Nearing Silence/The Colour of Pomegranates/ Alhambra Fantasy 21.10.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama/ Richard Baker

My Beloved Spake/O Sing Unto the Lord /Bell Mass/Four American Choruses 21.10.17, St Giles-withoutCripplegate, London, UK: BBC Singers/Nicholas Kok

Eden/Imagin’d Corners/Symphony/ Fantasias 21.10.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner

Book of Hours 22.11.17, Village Underground, London, UK: City of London Sinfonia/ Jessica Cottis

Pianists may also wish to explore Anderson’s Quasi una Passacaglia, an exquisite 3-minute set of variations written for Oliver Knussen’s 50th birthday. 19

Oliver Knussen Selected forthcoming performances

Oliver Knussen Revisiting ‘Océan de Terre’

...upon one note

I built a house in the middle of the ocean Its windows are rivers which flow out of my eyes Octopus stir all around its walls Listen to the triple beat of their hearts and their beaks which tap on the window panes...

8.9.17, George Enescu Festival, Studioul de concerte “Mihail Jora”, Bucharest, Romania: Mercury Quartet

Songs without Voices 12.9.17, Studio Ernest Ansermet, Geneva, Switzerland: Ensemble Contrechamps

Symphony No.3 14.9.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle 9.12.17, City Halls, Glasgow, Scotland, UK: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard

O Hototogisu! London premiere 16.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Marie-Christine Zupancic/Claire Booth/Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Oliver Knussen

...upon one note/ Songs without Voices 20.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Britten Sinfonia

Songs without Voices/Requiem* *Portuguese premiere 10.10.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Remix-Ensemble Casa da Musica/Ryan Wigglesworth

Flourish with Fireworks Portuguese premiere 14.10.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música/Ryan Wigglesworth 2.12.17, NTR ZaterdagMatinee, Grote Zaal, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Radio Filharmonisch Orkest/Ryan Wigglesworth

Nicholas Daniel records ‘Cantata’ The Britten Oboe Quartet has recorded Oliver Knussen’s Cantata for oboe and string trio on Harmonia Mundi. The third panel in a triptych comprising Autumnal for violin and piano and Sonya’s Lullaby for piano, this compact ten-minute work inhabits the same vivid harmonic world as the Third Symphony, and its title refers not only to the singing nature of the oboe lines, which are frequently suspended over rocking string chords or hyperactive scurrying, but also to the form of the work itself, in which recitative sections punctuate the more lyrical episodes. ‘One of the most striking and enduring of his early works, characteristically packing a vast amount of intricate instrumental detail into less than a quarter of an hour.’ The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 28 June 2017

‘Like a mini-opera without words: full of coiled energy, convulsions, acrobatic demands, and then a strange lullaby section with the oboe floating plaintive lines over a disembodied rocking motif.’ The Times (Richard Morrison), 4 August 2017

With O Hototogisu! receiving its London premiere in September, what better time to revisit an earlier Knussen work for voice and ensemble: Océan de Terre, his marvellous setting of Apollinaire for soprano and 7 players. Dedicated to Knussen’s teacher Gunther Schuller, it sets one of Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘Calligrammes’ (in French), the voice delicately interwoven into an instrumental texture of intricately worked cross-currents. Behind the music’s beguiling surface is a complex architecture based around two 12-note chords, which in the music’s final moments fan out in a way analogous to the watery imagery of the text. Eerie, surreal and powerfully atmospheric, this 12-minute piece would make an interesting pairing with Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé or Stravinsky’s Two Poems of Konstantin Balmont.

The Third Symphony On 14 September Knussen’s Third Symphony will feature as part of Sir Simon Rattle’s first concert as the new Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra. The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and to mainland Europe, Canada, and Asia on Mezzo TV. In December, the Symphony will be performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard. Composed in 1979 when Knussen was just 27 and the result of six years working, thinking, revising, and refining, this 15-minute tour de force 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.

Where the Wild Things Are 4.2-3.7.18, Opernhaus, Düsseldorf, Germany: Deutsche Oper am Rhein/ Duisburger Philharmoniker/Jesse Wong/dir. Philipp Westerbarkei

The Way to Castle Yonder 8.2.18, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: Hallé Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth

Horn Concerto 2.3.18, Concert Hall, Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland: Jukka Harju/ Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Oliver Knussen

PHOTO: OLIVER KNUSSEN © HANA ZUSHI-RHODES, ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC; EXCERPT FROM KNUSSEN’S ‘CANTATA’ © FABER MUSIC

TUNING IN

David Matthews ‘The Key of the Kingdom’ Having previously premiered Matthews’s Dawn Chorus at the 2015 Lichfield Festival (where he was Composer in Residence), later programming it again as part of their Birmingham series in 2016 and 2017, Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore will perform The Key to the Kingdom at the William Alwyn Festival in Blythburgh this October. This 7-minute work for SATB chorus and optional organ sets the anonymous poem ‘This is the Key’. ‘It’s a mysterious poem,’ says Matthews, ‘a kind of spell, or mandala. The poems cumulative lines gradually lead up to a discovery of a moment of stillness at its centre, before the spell goes into reverse.’

Three recordings of ‘Romanza’ Melancholy, bittersweet songs In May, soprano Gillian Keith and Orchestra Nova under George Vass gave the London premiere of David Matthews’s Three Housman Songs. Written between 1996 and 2010 and then brought together with strings in 2014 at Vass’s request, the songs begin with ‘Loveliest of trees’, with its talk of cherry blossom, in which Matthews creates a Japanese atmosphere. ‘Far in a western brookland’ is full of intense feelings of loss amidst the beauty of nature. The third song sets ‘In valleys green and still’, in which a pair of lovers hear a distant patrol of soldiers marching to the music of fife and drum (conjured with a solo viola playing on harmonics to a col legno accompaniment). ‘The diaphanous ‘Loveliest of Trees’ caught the ear amidst the melancholy, occasionally reminding of Britten’s Phaedra; ‘Far in a Western Brookland’ is a dark lullaby; and ‘In valleys green and still’ is bittersweet and heavy-hearted. I hope to hear this superb cycle again, and soon.’ Classical Source (Colin Anderson), 10 May 2017

Eighth Symphony revived Chosen as one of the top premieres of 2015 by Classical Music Magazine, Matthews’s Eighth Symphony will be performed by the Ulster Orchestra and Jac van Steen in April as part of the PRS Foundation’s Resonate scheme. Cast in three movements, this 26-minute work has at its heart a mournful Andante featuring a fugue – a form Matthews is obsessed by. Writing about his new work, the composer observes: ‘Perhaps I should say something about my light-hearted finale, with its use of melodic ideas that some might think naive. Of course I’m aware that I’m going very much against the zeitgeist, and that most major art today is pessimistic in tone – which, given the state of the world, is hardly surprising. Yet, shouldn’t it still be possible to express feelings of delight, love of life, elation?’ Expectation continues to grow around Matthews’s Ninth Symphony, which will be premiered by the English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods in May. PHOTO: DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA

David Matthews Selected forthcoming performances The Key of the Kingdom 13.10.17, William Alwyn Festival, Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh, Suffolk, UK: Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore

Romanza 25.10.17, Royal College of Music, London, UK: Madeleine Mitchell/ Nigel Clayton

Norfolk March 9.11.17: Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, UK: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Manze

Sonatina for violin and piano 18.12.17, Wells Cathedral School, Wells, Somerset, UK: Krysia Osostowicz/Daniel Tong

Violinist Harriet Mackenzie has recorded Matthews’s Romanza for violin and strings with the English String Orchestra and Kenneth Woods on Nimbus records. This lyrical and warm 12-minute work has also recently been recorded twice in the (later) version for violin and piano: Sara Trickey and Daniel Tong’s account is available on the Deux-Elles label, whilst Madeleine Mitchell and Nigel Clayton’s recording is available for download from Divine Art. The latter will be launched at the Royal College of Music in October. In other recording news, Toccata Classics have released the second volume of Peter Sheppard Skærved’s survey of Matthews’s music for solo violin.

Symphony No.8

‘Matthews has a gift for drawing new beauties from traditional mediums…’

Peter Sculthorpe Selected forthcoming performances

Gramophone (Richard Bratby), July 2017

‘Romanza is a curiously unsettling piece in which the soloist moves from moodily impressionistic rhapsody to enigmatic waltz… It spoke of youthful joys recollected into ruefulness, if not despair.’ The Times (Richard Morrison), 9 June 2017

Peter Sculthorpe Sculthorpe and dance With its inexorable rhythmic drive and ability to vividly conjure a sense of mood and place through the most economical of means, Peter Sculthorpe’s music has always proved attractive to choreographers. In September, one of Sculthorpe’s greatest works, Earth Cry, will be presented by Sydney City Youth Ballet and the Sydney Youth Orchestra, with choreography by Adam Blanch.

13.4.18, Ulster Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK: Ulster Orchestra

Symphony No.9 World premiere 9.5.18, St George’s, Bristol, UK: English Symphony Orchestra/ Kenneth Woods

Piano Trio No.2 1.7.18, St Mary the Virgin Church, Cratfield, Suffolk, UK: Leonore Piano Trio

Sun Music IV 9.9.17, St Mary’s Church, Penzance, UK: Orchestra of St Mary’s/Nigel Wicken

Port Essington 15.9.17, Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: VCA Secondary School/Lisa Grotman 6.10.17, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart; 7.10.17, Albert Hall, Launceston, TAS, Australia: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/ Douglas Boyd

Small Town 20.9.17, Town Hall, Adelaide, SA, Australia: Adelaide Symphony Orchestra/Guy Noble

Earth Cry 22-23.9.17, The Concourse, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney Youth Orchestra/Sydney City Youth Ballet/ Brian Buggy/chor. Adam Blanch

One of the most spectacular examples of Sculthorpe’s music being used in dance was the Australian Ballet Company’s evening based on the Sun Music series in the 1960s. Choreographed by Robert Helpmann with designs by Kenneth Rowell, and permeated with a flamboyant and often brooding obsession with sun worship, the work was described as a ‘turbulent tour de force of total theatre’ by the Sydney Morning Herald. 21

NEW WORKS Orchestral

Ensemble

THOMAS ADÈS

TANSY DAVIES

Powder Her Face Suite (1995/2017) large orchestra. 27 mins 3(III=picc).3.3(all=bcl).ssax.asax(=tsax).2.contraforte(=bsn) – 4.3.3.1 – timp – perc(3) – harp – pno – strings FP: 31.5.17, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle Powder Her Face Suite (2017) incorporates four newly-orchestrated sections of the 1995 chamber opera, interpolated between new orchestrations of the three existing Dances from Powder Her Face (2007)*, to make an extended, full-length symphonic suite. Powder Her Face Suite was co-commissioned by the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, and the St. Louis Symphony. *Dances from Powder Her Face (12 minutes) was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival, the Philharmonia Orchestra and The Cleveland Orchestra Score and parts in preparation

TOM COULT St John’s Dance (2017) orchestra. 6 mins picc.2.3.ebcl.2(II=bcl).2.cbsn - 4.4.2.btrbn.1 - perc(3) - harp - strings FP: 14.7.17, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 Score and parts for hire

TANSY DAVIES Dune of Footprints (2017) string orchestra. 15 mins FP: 30.7.17, Internationale Fredener Musiktage, Zehntscheune, Freden, Germany: Camerata Freden. Commissioned by Internationale Fredener Musiktage e.V., funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Score and parts for hire

ANDERS HILLBORG Aeterna (2017) soprano, chorus and orchestra. 90 mins. Text: Vocalise and Petrarch 3(all=picc).3(III=ca).duduk.3.3(III=cbsn) - 4.3.2.btrbn.0 - perc(3) - harp - pno - strings. FP: 23.8.17, Baltic Sea Festival, Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Sweden: Hannah Holgersson/Swedish Radio Choir/Hayk Hakobyan (duduk)/Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen. Commissioned by Fasad Productions to accompany the film Aeterna, directed by Jesper Kurlandsky and Fredrik Wenzel Score and parts in preparation

MORGAN POCHIN Elegy for a Lost Nation (2017) solo violin, piano and string orchestra. 4 mins Written for Rami Basisah’s debut album ‘My Journey’ (Decca Classics) Score and parts for hire, solo part and piano reduction on sale as a download

TORSTEN RASCH A Welsh Night (2017) mezzo-soprano and orchestra. 14 mins. Text: Alun Lewis (Eng) 3(III=picc.II=afl).2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn - 4.2.3.1 - timp - perc(2) - harp - cel - glass harmonica (optional) - strings (ideally 14.12.10.8.6) FP: 26.7.17, Three Choirs Festival, Worcester Cathedral, Worcester, UK: Susan Bickley/Philharmonia Orchestra/Frank Beermann. Commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival Score, vocal score and parts for hire

Antenoux (2017) mixed chamber ensemble of 10 players. 5 mins fl.cl(=bcl).trbn.electric gtr.bass gtr.perc(1): vib/small SD/congas/kick drum/BD/tam-t pno.vln.vla.vlc FP: 12.7.17, Outdoor location, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Ireland: Crash Ensemble Commissioned by Crash Ensemble with funds provided by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Score and parts in preparation

CARL DAVIS The High Sign (2017) orchestral score to the silent film directed by Eddie Cline and Buster Keaton. 20 mins 1(=picc).0.1(=ssax).1 - 0.1.1(=btrbn).0 - perc(3): flexatone/vib/xyl/t.bells/fire bell/tpl.bl/tgl/tamb/susp.cym/rivet.cym/ piatti/tam-t/plastic soap dish/timp/drum kit/SD/floor tom/small BD/swanee whistle - pno - steel-string acoustic gtr(=12string gtr/ukulele) - strings (11011) FP: 13.5.17, Philharmonie de Luxembourg, Luxembourg: Orchestre philharmonique du Luxembourg/Carl Davis Commissioned by the Cohen Film Collection Score and parts for hire

OLIVER KNUSSEN O Hototogisu! fragment of a Japonisme (2017) soprano, flute and large ensemble. 8 mins Text: Adapted by the composer from Haiku poems of the 17th and 19th century (Eng) fl.ob(=ca).cl.bcl.bsn - 2 hn.tpt.trbn - perc(2) - pno(=cel) - harp - solo flute - solo soprano - 4 vln/2 vla/2 vlc/db FP: 23.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Britten Studio, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Claire Booth/Marie-Christine Zupancic/Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Oliver Knussen Co-commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Snape Maltings with financial assistance from Arts Council England, John Feeney Charitable Trust, BCMG’s Sound Investors and the Jonathan Reekie Leaving Fund. Full score, vocal score and parts in preparation

COLIN MATTHEWS A Land of Rain (2017) medium voice and ensemble of 17 players. c.25 mins. Text: Charles Baudelaire (translated Nicholas Moore Eng) 1(=picc+afl).1(=ca).1(=ebcl).bcl.ssax.1(=cbsn) - 1.1(=fl.hn).1.0 - perc(1) - harp - pno - strings (1.1.1.1.1) 10.6.17, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK: Claire Booth/Birmingham Contemporary Music/Oliver Knussen Commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with financial assistance from the Arts Council England and the BCMG’s Sound Investment Scheme Full score, vocal score and parts for hire

Chamber CARL DAVIS Pride and Prejudice in Words and Music (2017) narrator, violin and piano. 90 mins. Text: Gill Hornby and Jane Austen (Eng) FP: 11.2.17, The Octagon, Yeovil, Somerset, UK: Hayley Mills/Matthew Trusler/Ashely Wass Commissioned by Matthew Trusler Exclusive to Matthew Trusler until 2018

COLIN MATTHEWS Hidden Agenda (Piano Trio No.2) (2017) Piano trio. 7 mins FP: 28.4.17, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester, Hampshire, UK: London Bridge Trio Commissioned by the Winchester Chamber Music Festival Score and parts in preparation

NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS DAVID MATTHEWS String Quartet No.14 Op.145 (2017) string quartet. 12 mins FP: 11.5.17, Deptford Town Hall, Goldsmith’s University of London, London, UK: Kreutzer Quartet Score and parts on special sale from from the Hire Library

MATTHEW HINDSON

New Publications

New Recordings

THOMAS ADÈS

GEORGE BENJAMIN

Arcadiana

Parts 0-571-55493-8

£17.99

Court Studies from ‘The Tempest’

Score and parts 0-571-56886-6

Lounge Music (2006/arr.2017) clarinet and piano. 7 mins Arrangement of the 3rd movement of the flute concerto, House Music. FP: 8.4.17, International House Celebration Concert, Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Deborah de Graaff/Tonya Lemoh. Piano score and part on special sale from the Hire Library, or from the Australian Music Centre

The Four Quarters

Odysseus and the Sirens (2017) flute and piano. 9 mins. FP: 30.6.2017, Australian Flute Festival, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia: competition finalists. Commissioned by the 2017 Australian Flute Festival. Piano score and part on special sale from the Hire Library, or from the Australian Music Centre.

Poetry Nearing Silence

CARL VINE

JONATHAN HARVEY

The Arrival of Implacable Gifts (2017) piano four hands. 4 mins FP: 14.9.17, Music on the Heights, Zakopane, Poland: ZOFO Duet Commissioned by the ZOFO Duet with generous support from the Van Dyke Family Foundation Score in preparation

Forms of Emptiness

String Quartet No.6 ‘Child’s Play’ (2017) string quartet. 20 mins FP: 10.8.17, Perth Concert Hall, Perth, WA, Australia: Takács Quartet Commissioned by Musica Viva Australia with support from Michael and Frédérique Katz, The Seattle Commissioning Club, and Carnegie Hall Score and parts in preparation

Brass Quintet

Strutt Sonata (2017) cello and piano. 15 mins FP: 23.11.17, Huntington Estate Music Festival, Mudgee, NSW, Australia: Julian Smiles/Ian Munro Commissioned by Musica Viva Australia with support from Josephine Strutt Score and part in preparation

Peacock Tales

MORGAN POCHIN

Score and part 0-571-53972-6

Elegy for a Lost Nation (2017) violin and piano. 4 mins Written for Rami Basisah’s debut album ‘My Journey’ (Decca Classics) Solo part and piano reduction on sale as a download

Score 0-571-54011-2 Parts 0-571-54012-0

£14.99 £19.99

Libretto 0-571-53969-6

£9.99

JULIAN ANDERSON

Score 0-571-51970-9

£19.99

FRANCISCO COLL Four Iberian Miniatures

Score 0-571-54014-7

£24.99

£6.50

Plainsongs for Peace and Light

£3.50

ANDERS HILLBORG

Score 0-571-53991-2 Parts 0-571-53992-0

£19.99 £24.99

The Peacock Moment

Score and part 0-571-53990-4 Score 0-571-54041-4

£9.99 £34.99

Sirens

Full Score 0-571-53993-9

£35.00

Tampere Raw

COLIN MATTHEWS

NIGEL HESS

Score 0-571-54009-0

Nocturne (2015) solo piano (left hand only). 6 mins Commissioned by Nicholas McCarthy for his debut album ‘Solo’ (Warner Classics). Score on special sale from the Hire Library, and in a digital version from the Faber Music online store

CARL VINE

MATTHEW HINDSON

Score 0-571-57219-7

Prayer Bell Sketch Florence Millet Cybele CF001

DAVID MATTHEWS Adonis/Aria/Romanza Sara Trickey/Daniel Tong Deux-Elles DXL1172 Ein Celloleben Guy Johnston Kings College KGS0026 Music for Solo Violin, Vol.2 Peter Sheppard Skærved Toccata Classics TOCC0309

PETER SCULTHORPE

£7.99

Five Hallucinations

Score 0-571-54010-4

Cantata Nicholas Daniel/Britten Oboe Quartet Harmonia Mundi HMM907672

£19.99

Ten Pig Songs

String Quartet No.3 Emerson Quartet Decca Gold B0026509-02

Romanza Harriet Mackenzie/English String Orchestra/Kenneth Woods Nimbus NI6295

Three Nocturnes

Suite No.3 for solo cello (trans. viola) Ellen Nisbeth BIS BIS2182

£14.99

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Full Score 0-571-53959-9

Quatre chansons françaises Christiane Karg/Bamberger Symphoniker/David Afkham Berlin Classics B06WP3DJVB

OLIVER KNUSSEN

Score 0-571-54013-9 Score 0-571-52214-9

Into the Little Hill/Flight/Dream of the Song Hila Plitmann/Susan Bickley/London Sinfonietta/George Benjamin; Michael Cox; Bejun Mehta/Nederlands Kamerkoor/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/George Benjamin Nimbus NI 5964

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

The Exterminating Angel

Instrumental

Funeral Oration (2017) solo trumpet. 2 mins Written for Corrado Palleschi in memory of Nick Searle Score on special sale from the Hire Library, or from the Australian Music Centre

£15.99

Upon Silence Sarah Breton/SIT FAST Evidence Classics EVCD034

£24.99

Four Little Pieces for piano duet Viney–Grinberg Piano Duo ABC Classics ABC4814591

JOHN WOOLRICH A Farewell Gerald Hacke/Werner Dickel/Florence Millet Cybele CF001

CARL VINE

Ring Out, Wild Bells

£2.99

Sonata for Piano Four Hands Viney–Grinberg Piano Duo ABC Classics ABC4814591

Vocal MATTHEW HINDSON Saviour of the Heathens (Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland) (2017) solo tenor, cello and chamber organ. after a Chorale Hymn Tune. 6 mins Text: Martin Luther (Ger) FP: 10.06.2017, Yellow House Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia: The Song Company. Score on special sale from the Hire Library, or from the Australian Music Centre. COLIN MATTHEWS Ten Pig Songs (2017) unison and two-part voices and piano. 11 mins. Text: Wendy Cope (Eng) FP: April 2017, Magdalen Farm, Winsham, UK: Singers of Magdalen Farm Strings Score 0-571-54009-0 on sale

Media & Film Paul Englishby

John Harle

Faber Music is pleased to announce a representation and publishing deal with award winning film, television, dance and theatre composer Paul Englishby. An EMMY award-winning composer, who has received numerous Ivor Novello and BAFTA award nominations, Paul is best known for his scores for the BBC’s Luther and The Musketeers, as well as the Oscar-nominated film An Education. His recent credits include BBC One primetime dramas The Witness for the Prosecution and Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall (starring Jack Whitehall, Eva Longoria and David Suchet).

Composer of more than 50 concert works, including four BBC Proms commissions, John has written two operas and recently penned the score for Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Arcadia. His ‘Terror and Magnificence’ album, with Elvis Costello, was Grammy-nominated and reached No.1 in the US Billboard charts. More recently, he collaborated with Soft Cell’s Marc Almond on the progressive rock drama The Tyburn Tree.

Paul is also prolific in theatre, and is Associate Artist with the RSC. His new ballet Pinocchio, a collaboration with choreographer Will Tuckett, for the National Ballet of Canada premiered earlier this year in Toronto.

The signing follows Faber Music’s publication of John’s comprehensive guide to saxophone technique: The Saxophone: The Art and Science of Playing and Performing.

Guitar Classics

A Reissue from Faber & Faber

The Classical Guitar Collection is an anthology of 48 classical guitar solos, featuring many of Julian Bream’s original arrangements of wellknown masterpieces for intermediate to advanced level players. Pieces by the likes of Mozart, Purcell and J.S. Bach, sit alongside works by modern masters: Faber Music House Composers Malcolm Arnold, Nicholas Maw, and Peter Sculthorpe. Also including many Spanish favourites, like Romance, Asturias and La Catedral, this varied collection is an indispensable resource for any enthusiastic guitarist.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

‘This large and attractive book gives prodigious value.’

‘Burton has written a book worthy of a great man.’

Music Teacher Magazine, February 2017

The Classical Guitar Collection is available to buy now is available to buy now in music shops and online ISBN: 0-571-53879-7 | £16.99 24

Faber Music is also delighted to have signed a general publishing agreement with the acclaimed saxophonist and composer John Harle. As a composer for film and TV, John has over 100 credits (perhaps the best known of which is his theme for the BBC’s long-running Silent Witness), and is the recipient of an Ivor Novello Award and two Royal Television Society Awards.

by Humphrey Burton With a new introduction by the author ‘Burton’s style is spare and unobtrusive: the picture he paints is a vivid one. So much energy. So much intelligence… It is a book of exceptional quality.’ The Times

‘This book brings Bernstein’s exuberant vitality to the page.’ Gramophone

Daily Telegraph

Paperback | ISBN 9780571337934 Publication 16 November 2017 | £14.99

Jessica Curry ‘Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’ Jessica’s BAFTA-winning music for acclaimed PS4 title Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (atmospherically set in a deserted Shropshire village) was named Soundtrack of the Year by MOJO magazine and sat in the Top 10 of both the Official and Classic FM charts for several weeks. The score won Best Score at the Emotional Games Awards, won four GANG awards in San Francisco, including Best Soundtrack and also won Best Audio and Best Performer as well as Best Music at the 2016 BAFTAs. The Guardian praised her ‘gorgeous orchestral score’ and it was voted into the Classic FM Hall of Fame in 2016. ‘A phenomenal score… Magnificent choral arrangements punctuate key moments, and we couldn’t help but stop and bask in their glory.’ Faber Music is thrilled to announce the signing of an exclusive publishing agreement with BAFTA-winning British composer, Jessica Curry. Best-known for her choral music and for her music for computer games, Jessica is also co-founder of the renowned games company, The Chinese Room.

Game Trailers (Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture)

A suite for choir and orchestra from Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is also regularly performed in concerts in Europe and the USA.

‘Dear Esther’

The Washington Post has described Jessica’s music as ‘stupendous’ and it has been performed in major venues across the world including The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Sydney Opera House; The Barbican; MOMI New York; and Sage Gateshead. It is often staged in unusual spaces too, most notably when her Perpetual Light: Requiem for an Unscorched Earth launched in London’s Old Vic Tunnels. Jessica’s music receives extensive airplay on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, where she is also a presenter, hosting ‘High Score’, a Saturday night show about video game music. The show has had an astounding response and is the most listened to show on Classic FM’s catch-up service. In March 2016 Jessica was awarded a place on the British Council’s Film, Archive and Music Lab week. In conjunction with PRS for Music Foundation, HOME and BFI, the British Council. In 2016 she was named as one of Gamesindustry.biz’s People of the Year and has recently been named one of the Top 30 Women in Games by MCV. She was also a finalist in the 2017 Women in Games awards in the Creative Impact category, and a finalist in the Hospital Club awards in the Games and Creative Industry categories. In 2016 she won the coveted MOSMA award at the Malaga Film Festival. Looking ahead, 2017 sees the launch of a new game, So Let Us Melt, featuring Jessica’s original choral soundtrack performed by London Voices.

‘The Durham Hymns’ The recipient of a PRS Foundation Women Make Music grant, Jessica’s large scale choral and brass band work, The Durham Hymns, (a collaboration with Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy to mark the centenary of The Battle of the Somme) premiered at Durham Cathedral in July 2016. She has also enjoyed recent choral commissions from the London Gay Men’s Chorus and by Glasgow Madrigirls. PHOTOS: JESSICA CURRY; A LIVE PERFORMANCE OF ‘DEAR ESTHER’

Jessica wrote the music for the Hebridean-set, genre-defying game Dear Esther, which won awards for Best Audio at The Independent Games Developers’ Association, a Game Audio Network Guild award and nominations for Best Audio at the BAFTAs. The music went on a worldwide orchestral tour as part of ‘Replay: Symphony of Heroes’. The sold-out Dear Esther Live, where the game was played real-time alongside musicians and BAFTA-nominated actor Oliver Dimsdale premiered at The Barbican in 2017 to great acclaim. Dear Esther Live embarks on a UK tour later this year, with 12 performances commencing in Glasgow on 3 November.

Other Works by Jessica Curry Perpetual Light: Requiem for an Unscorched Earth (2011) A stunning choral work with film and installation ‘Rich and ethereal throughout. An exquisite mix of atonal and tonal music, Perpetual Light was a dark, tormented piece, punctuated by moments of brightness. Curry’s music did more than dig up the ghosts of our past; it shed light and hope upon the future of humanity.’ Alison Karlin, Bachtrack

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013) This soundtrack was multi-award winning and was described as ‘quite spectacular’ by the games press.

and London’s Royal Festival Hall, in June and July. Gerry Cornelius conducted Southbank Sinfonia in performances broadcast on BBC Radio 3. It will be released on the NMC label later this year.

Sigurðsson’s masterful ‘Dissonance’

Online Opera Martin Ward’s Road Memoir is a rather unique thing: a podcast opera. It combines a solo soprano, spoken text, music and sound design and tells the fictional story of an individual’s journey from normal civilian to displaced refugee. Part of a collaboration with Tête à Tête Opera, the podcasts began to be released on 24 July in a series of 12 weekly instalments.

Bermel’s ‘Mango Suite’ in Chautauqua Derek Bermel’s latest orchestral work, Mango Suite, for soprano and orchestra, is a 45-minute setting of vignettes from the acclaimed novel ‘The House on Mango Street’ by American writer Sandra Cisneros. The result of a co-commission from The Chautauqua Institution, Columbus Symphony, and Princeton Symphony, it premiered in Chautauqua (NY) on 22 July this year. Rossen Milanov conducted the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra with vocal soloists Tiffany Townsend and Lindsey Reynolds. There was also an added dance element, with choreography by Sasha Janes and dancers from Charlotte Ballet. The 1984 debut novel by Cisneros is perhaps her best-known work and is a coming-of-age novel telling of a Latina girl growing up in an impoverished 80s Chicago and hoping for a better life. It’s been taught in schools throughout the US and Canada, whilst also attracting controversy as a result of its adult themes. ‘There were many moments of subtly seething undercurrents, some sections with Latin beats and occasional tender, lovely moments. The writing for the singers was very skilful without standout arias, as both women expressed the stresses of Esperanza’s coming of age — gaining and losing friends, belonging, sprouting hips and discovering boys.’ The Chautauquan Daily (Tom Di Nardo), 23 July 2017

Nigel Hess’s Piano Concerto in Romania Commissioned by HRH The Prince of Wales and recorded by Lang Lang, Nigel Hess’s Piano Concerto has established itself as one of the most popular piano concertos of the 21st century. Voted into Classic FM’s Hall of Fame annually since its premiere in 2007, it is now to receive two performances at the prestigious George Enescu Festival in Romania. The soloist will be Vassilis Varvaresos and Cristian Lupes will conduct the Bacău Philharmonic Orchestra.

‘Beatboxer Concerto’ released on NMC Anna Meredith’s ground-breaking Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra has been championed in Prague and across the UK in recent months. Orchestr BERG presented it at the Prague Spring Festival on 1 June, before the PRS Foundation’s New Music Biennial staged performances in Hull (UK City of Culture 2017)

Dissonance is Valgeir Sigurðsson’s fourth studio album and was released on the Bedroom Community label in April this year. His first release since 2012, it combines traditional Western music with Sigurðsson’s unique methods of electronic sound manipulation. It features premiere recordings of three works: No Nights Dark Enough for chamber orchestra and electronics, Eighteen Hundred and SeventyFive for orchestra and electronics, and the title track, Dissonance for viola da gamba and electronics. The latter extends 90 seconds of Mozart’s eponymous quartet into a single 23-minute movement. ‘One listens to the album and feels they’ve lived a few more lifetimes, having voyaged Sigurðsson’s terrain of despair and hope and history and anticipation and wonder.’ Drowned in Sound (Erin Lyndal Martin), 8 May 2017

‘The work of an artist who manipulates sound and expression with cerebral precision.’ The Line of Best Fit (Slavko Bucifal), 27 May 2017

‘Dissonance is a masterful piece of work.’ BBC Radio 6 (Mary Anne Hobbs), 9 March 2017

‘By harnessing complete control over his soundworld (like Goya did in oils with his disturbing Black Paintings), Sigurðsson possesses the power to wield darkness into a singularly mesmerizing art.’ NPR Music (Tom Huizenga), 25 April 2017

Sigurðsson is now touring a live version of the album, together with viola da gamba player, Liam Byrne, with dates announced in London and Manchester. Another recent release on the Bedroom Community label, ‘Ghosts’, featuring the Crash Ensemble of Dublin under Alan Pierson, includes premiere recording of two Sigurðsson compositions. The title track is scored for 10 instruments and electronics, whilst Past Tundra is an arrangement of part of his film soundtrack Dreamland for 9 instruments and electronics.

Bigham’s multi-screen ‘Staffa’ at EIF Staffa is an 11-minute work for orchestra and three large screens by composer Ned Bigham, created in collaboration with BAFTA and visual artist Gerry Fox – the film depicting evocative scenes of the celebrated Hebridean isle. A highlight of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, where it was premiered on 27 August by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins as part of the Festival’s 70th Anniversary Celebration Concert, was also shown as a three-screen installation piece with quadraphonic sound in the National Library of Scotland. Staffa is also the title track on Bigham’s second orchestral album, just out on the Aruna label. In performances by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Jean-Claude Picard the disc also includes his two sets of Archipelago Dances and Two Nightscapes.

‘There Will Be Blood’ in Melbourne The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has become the latest ensemble to take up the challenge of performing the live film version of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning film, There Will Be Blood. Presented on 5 August as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, the MSO were conducted by Hugh Brunt (who also gave the premiere performance of the live version in 2014). ‘The immense power of Greenwood’s arrangements was evident as the MSO stalked Plainview over hills in the California desert. Almost subconsciously, the strings snaked their way into a scene and worked their ways over the murky contours of his face. Brahms’ Violin Concerto, a triumphant and unwieldy tune that ends the film… ably reiterated the joyous irony of Anderson’s masterpiece.’ Sydney Morning Herald (David Estcourt), 7 August 2017

Somme reaches 100 performances We’re thrilled to announce that the Somme 100FILM tour reached its target 100th performance on 22 July this year, with a performance in Gloucester’s Guildhall. That’s 100 live screenings of Laura Rossi’s 75-minute orchestral score together with the iconic 1916 documentary film – all taking place in just over a year! An incredible achievement. It’s been taken up by orchestras across the UK, in France, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Ireland and Holland. Many of the performers were amateur or youth orchestras and had never performed to film before. It’s not too late to join the project either, contact us for more details, musicfornow@fabermusic.com. 2017 sees the centenary of The Battle of the Ancre, and we are able to offer discounted rates on Laura Rossi’s 65-minute orchestral score for that film too, from July 2017 to November 2018.

Amiina’s ‘Fantõmas’ – ‘quietly spooktacular’ Fantõmas is the latest album from Icelandic band, Amiina. Originally written as the score for a live screening of Louis Feuillade’s celebrated 1913 film, it’s now been released by the eclectic group of musicians on the Mengi label. ‘This is a darker, more serious side to the quintet… The 11 tracks fuse violin, cello, drums, percussion, metallophone, table harp, ukulele and electronics into a kind of contemporary classical, post-rock cocktail… Gorgeous textures, smart leitmotifs, intricate details and underlying aura of mystery. Quietly spooktacular.’

Morgan Pochin pen ‘Elegy for a Lost Nation’ ‘My Journey’ is the debut album by Syrian refugee violinist Rami Basisah, who fled Homs in 2015 travelling across the Middle East and Europe with his violin wrapped in cling-film before he found refuge with a musical family in Germany. Produced and orchestrated by the husband-wife team, Morgan Pochin, the Decca album also includes the world premiere of a work the pair have written especially for Rami: Elegy for a Lost Nation, now available from the Faber Music Store.

‘Wassail!’ With Christmas repertoire never far from a choral director’s mind, Faber Music delighted to announce that Alexander L’Estrange has penned a new choral cycle, Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy. Wassail! has been commissioned by the educational charity United Learning and is a 40-minute sequence of 12 uplifting folk-inspired Christmas songs for children and adult choirs and a band of 6 instrumentalists. It explores both sacred and secular aspects of the festive season and features songs such as ‘The Sussex Carol’, ‘Gaudete’ and ‘The Holly and the Ivy’. The latest addition to L’Estrange’s ongoing series of community choral works, Wassail! premieres in London, Manchester and the USA in November. The vocal score will be published on 5 September and is available for general performance from 29 November onwards.

500th performance of ‘Eternal Light’ June saw the Cambridge Community Chorus in Massachusetts give the 500th live performance of Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light: A Requiem. It’s a fantastic achievement for this much-loved choralorchestral work. Eternal Light was first performed in November 2008 as a Rambert Dance production, commissioned by London Musici, touring the UK with local choirs joining them in each venue. Since then it has travelled the world with performances by choirs on five continents, has been released on EMI Classics, and secured Goodall a Composer of the Year Award at the Classical Brits. It had its Carnegie Hall debut in November 2016.

The Irish Times (Brian Keane), 24 November 2016

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The Four Quarters Adès’s second work for string quartet was written for the Emerson Quartet and was premiered by them at Carnegie Hall in 2011. The winner of the 2012 British Composer Award for Chamber Composition, the 20-minute work charts the progress of a day. Glassy harmonics typify the opening movement ‘Nightfalls’, whilst playful pizzicati abound in ‘Serenade – Morning Dew’. A sombre third movement, ‘Days’, is underpinned by a searching ostinato before the work breaks free from conventional time in ‘The Twenty-Fifth Hour’, the glittering finale which swings and dances in the unusual time signature of 25/16. ‘Though brief these four movements have a striking weight and presence.’ The Sunday Times (Paul Driver), 17 April 2011

Score | 0-571-54011-2 | £14.99 Parts | 0-571-54012-0 | £19.99

USA & CANADA

Violin Concerto Adès’s Violin Concerto, written in 2005, is one of the most performed additions to the violin concerto repertoire since Ligeti’s. Cast in three contrasting movements – each linked by a preoccupation with circling musical figures – the concerto, subtitled ‘Concentric Paths’, now occupies a place in standard concert programmes. Two lithe, rhythmically driven movements – ‘Rings’ and ‘Rounds’ – bookend ‘Paths’, an intensely emotional and gritty exploration of passacaglialike sequences which peaks in a lyrical outpouring of exceptional beauty.

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‘In just 20 minutes, this three-movement piece does something magical. The way it swirls ethereally in the first movement, exerts a tragic and vice-like grip in the chaconne-like second part and finally propels you into the uninhibited flight of the finale is like being spun into an infinite space.’

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Financial Times (David Murray), 22 November 2005

Score | 0-571-53105-9 | £29.99

The Exterminating Angel Adès’s third opera premiered at the Salzburg Festival in July 2016. Based on Luis Buñuel’s surrealist classic, the opera sees a collection of society’s grandees inexplicably trapped in a room. The libretto, adapted from the original Buñuel-Alcoriza screenplay by the composer together with the director Tom Cairns brilliantly captures their descent into anarchy. Featuring a jaw-dropping 15 principals (who remain on stage for the majority of the piece), The Exterminating Angel is a true ensemble opera, and the skill with which Adès delineates the many intricacies and undercurrents present over its densely-packed span (just under two hours plus interval) is breathtaking. Libretto | 0-571-53969-6 | £9.99

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