Fortissimo Spring 2017

FABER MUSIC NEWS — spring 2017

fortissimo! francisco coll ‘Could Coll be the composer Spain has long been waiting for?’

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE, MARCH 2014

Plus ‘Reflection’ – a new work from Oliver Knussen Tansy Davies wins British Composer Award for ‘Between Worlds’ ‘Written on Skin’ returns to Covent Garden

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

Francisco Coll Since signing with Faber Music in 2011, Spanish composer Francisco Coll has gone from strength to strength. In his recent work, which takes in everything from huge orchestral statements to intricate miniatures, one finds an extraordinary maturity and versatility. Here is a composer with both a singular artistic vision and the sophisticated craft with which to realise it.

Dear colleagues, In reading through this issue of fortissimo, I am struck by the energy and creativity which pours out of composers, so often balanced by enthusiastic reception from the public. It is simply not true that contemporary music puts off audiences. I don’t need to highlight or repeat what is inside these pages, or the successes scored by contemporary composers from other publishers. Highly prominent of course is the acceptance, interest, and yes, enthusiasm, regularly displayed from large audiences at the BBC Proms to music which is as modern as it is diverse.

But there is an anomaly inside the world of television, however.

Two brilliant and recent documentaries on artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney using new material and footage culled from years of archive showed what can be done. Why no comparable films on our leading composers?

My concern is that time is running out to capture appropriate footage and there may not be archive material to draw on. For example, the last UK film on George Benjamin was in 1987, the last on Thomas Adès (Channel Four/LWT) was in 1999.

Many other composers have nothing on record. The figures of Humphrey Burton, Dennis Marks and Barrie Gavin all active in the BBC in the 1980s and 90s, are indeed sorely missed: they filmed most of the important composers of their day. We need the major broadcasters to wake up and notice the explosion of talent we are enjoying in the UK, and to celebrate our diverse living composers so that we can learn about them, and so that posterity will have some record of what they were like. I don’t believe there has ever been a time of such musical creativity and one that so engaged the public.

Meanwhile we at Faber Music are grateful for the vision of opera houses, orchestras, concert halls and performers all around the world, as well of course of BBC Radio 3, in their tireless pursuit of and interest in the best of what our composers do.

Thank you all, readers of fortissimo, for your input into the vibrant world of contemporary music.

With each passing year Coll is championed by an ever increasing number of high-profile conductors and soloists, the latest being violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. After having been presented with one of Coll’s Hyperludes after a rehearsal in Valencia, she went on to play it as an encore that evening, and has since programmed the work in recitals. Plans for a new project are already taking shape…

A concerto with a twist Taking its title from René Magritte, Coll’s delightfully bizarre Ceci n’est pas un Concerto for soprano and ensemble is a fake Piano Concertino, in which the soprano is the real soloist. The text, written

by Coll, is a scene played out as an ‘absurdist’ dialogue between the singer and another character, represented by the pianist, who remains verbally silent. Premiered in December by Elizabeth Atherton with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group under Thomas Adès, the 18-minute tragi-comedy displays the same dark wit which animated Coll’s chamber opera Café Kafka. ‘When I write music,’ says Coll, ‘I need to say something about our way of living, and I felt comfortable translating my social concerns into music.’

‘Surreal, expressionist and sometimes rather unsettling…’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 12 December 2016

‘Mural’ Thrilling, audacious and weighty, Coll’s Mural was premiered by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno in September. The 24-minute orchestral work is an extraordinary achievement, handling vast forces with an impressive singlemindedness to create a five-movement work of stark and unsettling poetry.

In Mural, Coll says, 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.’

The work receives its Spanish premiere in April with the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana under George Pehlivanian, then tours the UK this summer with Thomas Adès conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.

Two works for Cuarteto Casals

Sally Cavender Performance Music Director/Vice Chairman, Faber Music

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In April Cuarteto Casals – arguably Spain’s finest quartet – will premiere Coll’s Concerto Grosso for string quartet, harp and string orchestra in Madrid with the Orquesta Nacionales de España under David Afkham. Later that month, they will also premiere Cantos, a 5-minute quartet based on his Hyperlude V for solo violin, which has been commissioned by the Semana de Música Religiosa de Cuenca.

Highlights

Francisco Coll Selected forthcoming performances Four Iberian Miniatures 15.3.17, KKL Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland: Noa Wildschut/Lucerne Symphony Orchestra/James Gaffigan

Concerto Grosso World premiere 31.3,1.4.17, Auditorio Nacional de Música, Madrid, Spain: Cuarteto Casals/Orquesta Nacionales de España/David Afkham

Mural Spanish premiere 6.4.17, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, Spain: Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana/George Pehlivanian

‘Chanson et Bagatelle’

‘Four Iberian Miniatures’ in Lucerne

Premiered in November by Peter Moore and Richard Uttley, Coll’s Chanson et Bagatelle for trombone and piano was commissioned jointly by BBC Radio 3 and the Royal Philharmonic Society. With this masterful 8-minute work, Coll – a trombonist himself – has created a major addition to the instrument’s repertoire. The Chanson is almost Bergian with its dark harmonies and slow-burning passion, unfolding as a song without words whose broad lines exploit the whole compass of the instrument, from pale heights to gritty depths. The angular Bagatelle which follows could not be more contrasted, drawing much of its characteristic mood and colour from the use of the harmon mute.

Having been described by the Observer as ‘glittering with sharp Andalusian light’ after their performance at the BBC Proms in 2016, Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures will receive their Swiss premiere in March, with James Gaffigan conducting the 12-minute work with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Noa Wildschut, a protégé of Anne-Sophie Mutter. Wildschut is the third violinist to tackle the flamenco-influenced work, the others being Pekka Kuusisto and Augustin Hadelich.

After Victoria 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 work which inspired it.

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.

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

A concerto for Mahan Esfahani Having commissioned the Four Iberian Miniatures in 2015, Britten Sinfonia was prompted to ask Coll to write a harpsichord concerto for Mahan Esfahani. Coll has long been fascinated with the instrument (it plays an important role in his Piano Concertino), and the resultant 10-minute work for harpsichord and ensemble is a veritable tour de force. Premiered in February as part of a programme which also included the de Falla concerto, it begins with a curt ‘Toccata’ before opening out in the work’s heart – an introspective Lento containing music of unblinking honesty and emotional depth. As with the Four Iberian Miniatures, flamenco is a strong influence, particularly in the closing ‘Fandango’, though here the traces are even more splintered and ghostly.

UK premiere 3-9.8.17, Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London, UK: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain/Thomas Adès

Cantos World premiere 10.4.17, Semana de Música Religiosa de Cuenca, Spain: Cuarteto Casals

Vestiges Spanish premiere 4.5.17, Sala Berlanga, Madrid; 5.5.17, Alhambra, Granada, Spain: Eduardo Fernandez 21.5.17, Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, UK: Richard Uttley

Lacrimae world premiere 7.6.17, Ensems International Festival of Contemporary Music, Valencia, Spain: Orfeó Universitari de València/ Francesc Valldecabres

new work for guitar and ensemble world premiere 14.12.17, Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden: Jacob Kellerman/Norrbotten NEO/Christian Karlsen

‘With a solo part that’s hyperactive in the outer movements, dark and inward in the central Lento, which is linked to the finale by the briefest of retrospective cadenzas, it has all the characteristics we’ve come to associate with Coll’s works. The disruptive and unstable rhythms, abrupt switches of mood and direction, and intricate, slightly brittle meshing of the harpsichord and the orchestra kept the music constantly on the move, never staying in one place for too long. Even its ending seems provisional.’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 5 February 2017

PHOTO: francisco coll © judith coll

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Reflection - a new work from Oliver Knussen

The premiere of a new work by Oliver Knussen is always a major occasion, with each meticulously created statement the hard-won prize of a ceaseless creative perfectionism. The composer’s first work since Ophelia’s Last Dance in 2010, Reflection was unveiled by its dedicatees Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins on 3 October at Birmingham Town Hall. This ravishing 8-minute work for violin and piano is made up of various kinds of musical reflection: melody reflected in its inversion; a six-note mode reflected in its complement; and the relationships between the three main parts of the piece, which are in a way varied reflections of each other.

There are some reflections in water, too, and the work’s opus number (31a) suggests a relationship to Knussen’s as yet unfinished Cleveland Pictures: ‘The main melody began as a response to Gauguin’s painting of a Breton woman swimming’, he says, ‘and there is also, perhaps, an echo of the lonely underwater world of an ondine, eventually breaking the surface at the end of the piece.’

Reflection was commissioned by Town Hall, Symphony Hall and the European Concert Hall Organisation in memory of Lyndon Jenkins.

It is currently being toured to many of Europe’s most prestigious halls as part of the ECHO Rising Stars series.

‘This beautifully crafted work is made of tiny aural brushstrokes suggesting water: ripples mirroring each other and bursting out in expression and ecstatic high lines.’

The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 27 February 2017

‘Much more substantial than its short duration might suggest… Knussen’s writing has a marvellous fluidity.’

The Daily Telegraph (John Alison), 22 February 2017

‘This short piece has it all… compelling concision.’

Die Welt, 1 February 2017

Reflection will also feature at the 2017 Aldeburgh Festival, which has also announced another new work by Knussen, O Hototogisu, which will be premiered by Claire Booth and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by the composer on 23 June.

A tribute to Stephen and Jackie Newbould (the former directors and creative spirits behind BCMG), the work is a setting of haiku in the composer’s own translations for soprano, solo flute and ensemble.

The work will receive its London premiere on 16 September at Milton Court.

Between Worlds wins a British Composer Award Described as a ‘resonant and multi-layered work’ after its premiere in April 2015, Tansy Davies’s critically acclaimed opera Between Worlds received the British Composer Award for Stage Work at a ceremony at the BFI Southbank in December 2016.

A bold and highly individual response to the events of 9/11, Davies’s operatic debut opened at the Barbican Theatre, London on 11 April 2015. Co-commissioned by English National Opera and the Barbican, it saw Davies collaborating with librettist Nick Drake and the renowned director Deborah Warner. Gerry Cornelius conducted a cast including Andrew Watts and Susan Bickley.

For the BASCA jury, the opera showed ‘an extra ambition and adventure that merited the award’, and employed ‘an impressive range of musical resources to create a work of eerie beauty’. Davies is currently at work on an orchestral suite of music from the opera, to be premiered in 2018.

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images: Excerpt from ‘reflection’ by oliver knussen © Faber Music; tansy davies at the basca ceremony © MARK ALLEN

Highlights

Written on Skin - a masterpiece returns to Covent Garden

After the 2012 premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin in Aix-en-Provence, spectators reached for superlatives, with its arrival at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden the following spring prompting similar reactions. Since then the opera has travelled the world, with the extraordinary critical response which followed its London revival in January – with many calling it a masterpiece – confirming it is well on its way to becoming part of the repertoire.

The composer conducted a star cast including Iestyn Davies, Mark Padmore, Christopher Purves and Victoria Simmonds in Katie Mitchell’s original production, whilst American soprano Georgia Jarman shared the role of Agnès with Barbara Hannigan, who here sang the part for the final time.

For the recently-announced details of Benjamin and Crimp’s next opera, Lessons in Love and Violence, please see page 14.

‘Benjamin’s score constantly discloses more and more marvels. I was mesmerised even more by the impression of ancestral voices exhumed in a 21st-century soundworld: a musical approach which mirrors the story. And also struck by the sheer originality of the textures Benjamin creates with such economical means (every word uttered by the singers came across). Time and again, I found myself thinking: how the blazes did he do that? Truly a 21st-century masterpiece.’

The Times (Richard Morrison), 16 January 2017

‘Musical history in the making’ ‘I remain convinced that it will come to rank as one of the operatic masterpieces of our time – a hauntingly resonant and subtle drama, conveyed through music of profound expressive force and authentic originality… Musical history in the making… Benjamin’s music is both eerily precise and weirdly elusive in its quietness and restraint… the audience was palpably enthralled throughout, transported by operatic art of the highest degree.’

‘A subtle and fascinating score… whose overall delicacy and restraint alternating with sheer dramatic punch surely mark it out as a modern masterpiece.’

The Stage (George Hall), 14 January 2017

‘There’s a passage in Crimp’s impeccable text that describes a page of illuminated manuscript. The ink, he tells us, stays forever wet – alive with moist, fleshy, indecent human reality rather than dried into decorous fixity. As a metaphor for storytelling, it’s potent; as a description of Benjamin’s score, it’s close to literal. Nearly five years after its Aix premiere, the music still shifts and shudders with awkward emotional truths, buckling with characters who refuse to be pinned in place, hunching with musical tension that refuses to release.

It’s a singular score, as well as a singularly beautiful one, and this latest revival only confirms its power.’

The Artsdesk (Alexandra Coghlan), 14 January 2017

‘A dazzling clash of the medieval and modern… Crimp’s seeming artifice in having the protagonists narrate themselves ends by achieving more resonance and intensity than any mere appeal to emotions could manage.’

The Independent (Cara Chanteau), 15 January 2017

‘Its status as a contemporary operatic masterpiece is assured… replete with preternaturally beautiful sonorities.’

The London Evening Standard (Barry Millington), 16 January 2017

‘The subtle, beautifully coloured, constantly shifting orchestral music flows continuously, like a subterranean river, its long lines carrying singers and listeners into a world of emotions that are powerfully presented but ambiguous in meaning… The composer conducted with a simple clarity, making every glistening point of sound, every musical gesture count in his chamber-like score. The world of Written on Skin is a beautiful yet haunting place, one that I found it difficult to leave, even after the final curtain had fallen.’

Opera (Jonathan Cross), March 2017

The Telegraph (Rupert Christiansen), 14 January 2017 PHOTO: WRITTEN ON SKIN PRODUCTION IMAGE © ROH, STEPHEN CUMMISKEY

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Martin Suckling 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.

‘falling, and falling, and falling’ Suckling’s Piano Concerto, premiered as part of his ongoing association with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, is in many ways his most ambitious piece to date. Each of the vibrant and hugely contrasting six movements explores new ground, whilst the overall shape of the work seems to expand exponentially. Lyrical, energetic and uncompromisingly modern, the concerto was unveiled in October with Tom Poster and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Thierry Fischer.

Flute concerto a ‘sonic feast’ Premiered on 3 February 2017 by Katherine Bryan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Arild Remmereit, Martin Suckling’s flute concerto The White Road (after Edmund de Waal) received a rapturous reception. A work of great subtlety and delicacy, it is also a fine showcase for Bryan, who gave the premiere from memory. 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.

Commissioned by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the 15-minute concerto takes its title from The White Road, De Waal’s 2015 memoir-cum-travelogue-cumhistory of porcelain. Suckling had previously responded to de Waal’s work in his Psalm for harp and three spatialised ensembles, composed for Aurora Orchestra in 2015.

‘A sonic feast, seething with microtones and ear-baffling orchestral sonorities but held together by a firm but eloquent structure that set Bryan in a succession of ritualistic conversations with the orchestra. There was a definite Japanese tinge to her shakuhachi-like note-bending and the sudden cracks and thuds from percussion… A thrillingly dramatic performance even seeming to spit her instrument out in passages of sudden violence.’

The Scotsman (David Kettle), 6 February 2017

‘Candlebird’ 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 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 well6

Photo: martin suckling © maurice foxall

The central movements form a sequence of three linked Intermezzi, each of which take a small fragment of material and explores it to an extreme. Hammered semiquavers run continuously through the second, whilst the third expands bell-like chords into gentle microtonal waves of imagined resonance. After a percussive fourth movement, the finale sees a return of melody: begun by the piano and gradually taken up by the entire orchestra. Underpinning the flowing music of this song, an almost-passacaglia spirals – falling, and falling, and falling.

Shortlisted for a Scottish Award for New Music, the 30-minute work very much reflects how well Suckling has got to know the orchestra through his tenure with them, never more so than in the mosaic-like first movement which presents the piano in energetic counterpoint with various personalities from within the orchestra: cor anglais; clarinets, oboes and horns; piccolo and violin; claves; and, finally, a solo for the SCO’s wonderful principal viola Jane Atkins.

‘Many moments of sheer beauty… Suckling is on to a winner with this work, for that there is no doubt.’

Dundee Courier and Advertiser (Garry Fraser), 15 October 2016

‘Highly original… there is tremendous rhythmic writing for the pianist, with music of bracing immediacy.’

The Herald (Michael Tumelty), 17 October 2016

Looking ahead Suckling’s current projects include a work to mark the 1918 Armistice for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a large orchestral piece, and a second collaboration with the Aurora Orchestra and Poet in the City.

TUNING IN

Benjamin Britten ‘Musically, many treasures await. Broken choruses, shrewd duets and a parodistic diversity of style.’

Frankfurter Neue Presse (Bettina Boyens), 11 October 2016

‘A most intelligent satirical evening of opera!’

Bachtrack (Miriam Zeh), 11 October 2016

‘A discovery – It’s time to do this work justice and to discover its special qualities… Britten’s music appears to be creeping in and out of the simple, tonal, folk-like style, but then evades with dark, mysterious insistence.’

Frankfurter Rundschau (Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich), 10 October 2016

Benjamin Britten Selected forthcoming performances Curlew River 15-19.3.17, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City, NY, USA: Mark Morris Dance Company 9.6.17, Peterskirche, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany: MDR Sinfonieorchester/Risto Joost

Death in Venice 19.3-28.4.17, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin, Germany: Deutsche Oper Berlin/cond. Donald Runnicles/dir.

Graham Vick 7.5-19.7.17, Opernhaus, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany: Staatsorchester Stuttgart/cond. Kirill Karabits/dir. Demis Volpi

String Quartet No. 3 20.4.17, Musica Viva, Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Elias String Quartet

America is what you do America is I and you America is what you choose to make it

10.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Belcea Quartet

Having previously staged both Owen Wingrave and Death in Venice under its intendant Bernd Loebe, Oper Frankfurt continued its exploration of the operas of Benjamin Britten in October with a rare performance of his first stage work Paul Bunyan. Brigitte Fassbaender directed a new production which garnered adulation from the critics and featured a dazzling scenic concept by set designer Johannes Leiacker which ingeniously referenced American Pop Art. Britten created Bunyan with W. H. Auden in 1941 during his self-imposed American exile, and sought to capture the spirit of the booming, forward-looking country around them with a mixture of affection and irreverence. Auden’s lyrical, subtle satire interweaves with a score that sees the young Britten at his most playful and inventive: folk, blues and Broadway are incorporated into a musical language that remains distinctively his.

Telling the story of Paul Bunyan, the mythic lumberjack who cleared America’s forests and made way for the industrial age, Britten’s charming opera is ultimately an ambivalent meditation on the soul of America. An apt time, then, for this unjustly neglected work to be revived!

‘A feisty piece, with care-free style. Sparkling, cheeky, as gripping as a musical… a joy. Great fun.’

Bild Frankfurt (Josef Becker), 11 October 2016

‘For all its simplicity, the music sounds surprisingly fresh, its rarely dissonant harmony surprisingly colourful… As an example of how European artists fled in 1940 before the catastrophe, seeking their salvation in the New World only to be frustrated, Bunyan still remains symptomatic, as well as aesthetically an attractive special case.’

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Gerhard R. Koch), 11 October 2016

PHOTO: OPER FRANKFURT’S ‘PAUL BUNYAN’ © BARBARA AUMÜLLER

Suite on English Folk Tunes 13.5.17, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA: Virginia Symphony Orchestra/Benjamin Rous

Paul Bunyan

‘A valuable musical discovery’

26-27.5.17, Mumford Theatre, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK: Anglia Ruskin University Musicians/ Paul Jackson

The Golden Vanity

‘A valuable musical discovery… Not an operetta in the classical sense, but rather a hybrid between contemporary opera and musical.’

Concerti (Kirsten Liese), 9 October 2016

17.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Cambiata/Greg Hallam/ Scott Price/Jubilee Opera/Cardinal Vaughan School/dir. Denni Sayers/ cond.Ben Parry

Owen Wingrave

Nicholas Maw Nicholas Maw’s The Head of Orpheus (1992) features in a programme curated by Thomas Adès performed by students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama at Milton Court on 18 September.

A 6-minute setting of the American poet Robert Kelly for high voice and two clarinets, the score is prefaced by a chord from Act III Scene 4 of Berg’s Wozzeck and it is this source that provides the work with much of its harmonic and melodic material. Like Orpheus himself the vocal line wanders in an almost detached manner around the predominantly arabesque-like clarinet lines (the Maenads of the myth). Displaying a keen sense of drama, as well as extreme economy, the work would make a fascinating pairing with Webern’s Five Canons Op. 16, Stravinsky’s Berceuses du Chat and Elegy for J.F.K, or Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Nenia: The Death of Orpheus.

(Chamber Reduction arr. D Matthews)

9-16.9.17, Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick, Ireland: Opera Collective Ireland/Irish Chamber Orchestra/ cond. Stephen Barlow/dir. Tom Creed

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

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

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Oliver Knussen Selected forthcoming performances

Oliver Knussen Revisiting ‘Autumnal’

Where the Wild Things Are

With Knussen’s violin and piano duo Reflection receiving performances across Europe, what better time to revisit Autumnal Op. 14, his earlier work for the same instrumentation. Composed in 1977, this tense and detailed work forms the first panel of Knussen’s Triptych (the other two being Sonya’s Lullaby, for piano, and the Cantata, for oboe and string trio). Lasting around 8 minutes, Autumnal is dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Britten, who died while Knussen was composing it, and its restrained and austere movements are named after two of his song cycles, Nocturne and Serenade.

3.3-5.7.17: Theater Duisburg, Duisburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany: Deutsche Oper am Rhein/ Duisburger Philharmoniker/ dir. Philipp Westerbarkei/cond.

Jesse Wong

Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh 9.3.17, Concert Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland, UK: students from the Royal Conservatoire

Rattle conducts the Third Symphony

Reflection Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese premieres 17.3.17, Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden; 9.4.17, Philharmonie, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany; 19.4.17, L’Auditori, Barcelona, Spain; 14.5.17, Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal: Tamsin Waley-Cohen/Huw Watkins (James Baillieu in Barcelona)

Flourish with Fireworks 2.4.17, Équilibre, Fribourg; 23.4.17, Temple du Bas, Switzerland: Ensemble Symphonique de Neuchâtel/Alexander Mayer

The Way to Castle Yonder 20-22.4.17, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Robert Spano

Horn Concerto 11-12.5.17, The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Felix Dervaux/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth

Four Late Poems and an Epigram of Rainer Maria Rilke/Songs without Voices 10.6.17, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK: Claire Booth; Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Oliver Knussen

Reflection/Ophelia’s Last Dance 15.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Britten Studio, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Tamsin Waley-Cohen/Huw Watkins

O Hototogisu World premiere 23.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Britten Studio, Snape, Suffolk; 16.9.17 Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Claire Booth/ Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Oliver Knussen

Stockholm focus In November the music of Knussen was the subject of the prestigious Stockholm International Composer Festival, with an impressive 16 works performed over four days.

In the event’s 30-year history, Knussen is only the third Briton to be featured there (Sir Michael Tippett and Thomas Adès are the other two).

Knussen himself conducted The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme that included the Third Symphony and his Violin and Horn Concertos, whilst Andrew Gourlay and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra were joined by Claire Booth for performances of Songs and a Sea Interlude and the Whitman Settings.

Christian Karlsen and members of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic presented Knussen’s Ophelia Dances Book 1 and Requiem alongside a selection of his chamber pieces.

‘Each completed score is hard-won and precious.’

‘His output is fairly small, intricate, chiselled… Each completed score is hard-won and precious. The opening concert featured The Way to Castle Yonder (1990), a “potpourri” of orchestral interludes from the opera Higglety Pigglety Pop!, full of deep, glowing colours unique to Knussen’s aural treasury.

Clio Gould was soloist in the Violin Concerto (2002), in which the orchestra, too, act as soloists while the violin, elegant and febrile, soars and arcs ethereally high above. It’s a beguiling piece that should be in every violinist’s repertoire. The ghostly, antiphonal Music for a Puppet Court and the Symphony No. 3, full of elusive colours, especially the mix of celesta, guitar and harp, completed the concert, an evening of variety and depth, warmly received by the audience.’

The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 4 December 2016‘

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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. The concert is part of the Barbican’s 10-day festival ‘This is Rattle’ that will also include the London premiere of Knussen’s new work for soprano and ensemble O Hototogisu.

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.

‘The music’s surfaces move with a captivating shimmer and dazzle, but each time you listen you will take a new pass through the work’s musical currents and undercurrents, finding new layers of poetry and technical-expressive alchemy in its crystalline construction. That’s the paradox about this supposedly “short” piece: it’s music that creates its own kind of time.’

The Guardian (Tom Service), 8 July 2014

‘Songs without Voices’ On 10 June the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will present two Knussen works involving text – though only one of them contains a singer. Soprano Claire Booth performs his unaccompanied Four Late Poems and an Epigram of Rainer Maria Rilke, whilst Knussen conducts his Songs without Voices, a collection of four short, selfcontained compositions for flute, cor anglais, clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello and piano. Three of the pieces are, literally, songs without a voice – that is, a complete poem is ‘set’ syllable by syllable for instruments in the course of a movement – whilst the closing ‘Elegiac Arabesques’ is built around a lyrical cor anglais melody that Knussen wrote after the death of the Andrzej Panufnik.

PHOTO: OLIVER KNUSSEN CONDUCTING AT THE 2016 ROYAL STOCKHOLM PHILHARMONIC COMPOSER FESTIVAL © JAN-OLAV WEDIN

TUNING IN

David Matthews Recordings of ‘Romanza’ Violinist Harriet Mackenzie has recorded Matthews’s Romanza for violin and strings with the English String Orchestra and Kenneth Woods, for release on Nimbus records in June. 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 will be released this summer on the Deux-Elles label, whilst the first recording of the work is now available for download from Divine Art, featuring violinist Madeleine Mitchell and pianist Nigel Clayton who gave the first performances of both versions back in 2012.

A trio of trios

Piano Concerto in New York After performances in London and Stratford-upon-Avon last summer, American pianist Thomas Nickell and the Orchestra of the Swan gave the US premiere of David Matthews’s Concerto for Piano on 26 February to a sold out Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York.

This charming 20-minute work eschews the rhetoric and grand scale of the nineteenth-century concerto – there are no large cadenzas and Matthews’s piano writing is almost Mozartian in conception. After an opening sonata form movement, Matthews writes a tango (which seems an ideal substitute for the Classical minuet), a slow elegiac blues written in memory of Sue Skempton (wife of Matthews’s composer friend Howard Skempton) and a deliberately upbeat finale.

Eighth Symphony revived Chosen as one of the top premieres of 2015 by Classical Music Magazine, Matthews’s Eighth Symphony will be feature in the Ulster Orchestra’s 17/18 season as part of the PRS Resonate scheme. Cast in three movements, like the Sixth Symphony, 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: ‘While I no longer feel the need to defend my use of tonality, since it seems obvious now that non-tonal music has not replaced it, 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?

They will inevitably be mingled with other, darker moods.

But if we cannot contrast one with the other, then surely we are not fully human.’

Photo: david matthews © clive barda

The Leonore Piano Trio has recorded Matthews’s three Piano Trios for a disc on Toccata Classics which also includes their cellist, Gemma Rosefield, performing Journeying Songs. ‘It has been an enormous pleasure for me to hear the Trio play these pieces,’ writes Matthews. ‘Their performances seem to me definitive.’

Spanning over three decades, Matthews’s trios are a major addition to the genre. The earliest, from 1983, includes a transcription of a setting of Kathleen Raine’s visionary nature-poem ‘Bright Cloud’, from Matthews’s song cycle The Golden Kingdom. A decade later, the Second features a slow barcarolle written as a memorial piece for Matthews’s partner of ten years, the novelist Maggie Hemingway.

Composed in 2005, the final trio sets out to explore fully a principle already outlined in his Fourth Symphony: to build a movement out of a single melodic line, which passes between the instruments.

Hampson records song transcriptions In 2014 the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and Thomas Hampson toured twelve major European concert halls with a programme of new arrangements by Matthews of songs

by Brahms, Schubert and Wolf. These intimate, perfectly judged transcriptions for baritone have now been released on Channel Classics.

‘Matthews adds texture and illumination to already radiant songs, refreshing these lilies without gilding them. Intertwining violins make Wolf’s Anakreons Grab magical; squeaking strings conjure up the rodents in Der Rattenfänger… Brahms finds Matthews drawing on darker sonorities.’

The Guardian (Erica Jeal), 23 February 2017

Peter Sculthorpe ‘Sun Music II’ In August, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra under Marko Letonja revive Peter Sculthorpe’s Balinese-inspired Sun Music II (1969). Masterfully invoking the impression of a harsh, blistering landscape which seems at times on the point of eruption, this arresting 6-minute work will make an exciting and ear-catching concert opener.

David Matthews Selected forthcoming performances String Quartet No. 8 2.4.17, Quaker Meeting House, London, UK: Villiers Quartet

Sunrise World premiere 28.4.17, St Werburgh’s Catholic Church, Chester, UK: Onslow Quartet

Three Housman Songs World premiere 10.5.17, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Gillian Keith/Orchestra Nova/George Vass

Dawn Chorus 20.6.17, St Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham, UK: Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore

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

Arrangements Bach – Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 547 30.3-1.4.17, Concert Hall, Korundi House of Culture, Rovaniemi, Finland: Chamber Orchestra of Lapland/Jutta Seppinen

Chopin – Two Nocturnes (Op.37 No. 2) 31.5.17, Caird Hall, Dundee; 4.6.17, Theatre Royal, Dumfries; 6.6.17, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness; 7.6.17, Glasgow, UK: Scottish Ensemble

Peter Sculthorpe Selected forthcoming performances String Quartet Nos. 12, 14, 16 and 18 16.3.17, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH; 18.3.17, Akron, OH, USA: Del Sol String Quartet/Stephen Kent

String Quartet No. 18 15.6.17, Town Hall, Hobart, TAS; 18.6.17, Independent Theatre, Sydney, NSW; 20.6.17, Hawthorn Arts Centre, Melbourne; 23.6.17, Peninsula Community Theatre, Mornington, VIC, Australia: Flinders Quartet

Sun Music II 4.8.17, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, TAS, Australian: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Marko Letonja

Port Essington 6.10.17, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart; 7.10.17, Albert Hall, Launceston, TAS, Australia: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/ Douglas Boyd

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Thomas Adès Selected forthcoming performances

Thomas Adès Wigmore Hall day

Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face for two pianos

On 25 March London’s Wigmore Hall hosted a day devoted to the music of Adès. The Calder Quartet performed both Arcadiana and The Four Quarters, whilst Nicolas Hodges and Adès himself gave the London premiere of the duo version of the Concert Paraphrase from Powder Her Face. The second of the day’s two concerts also included a rare performance of Concerto Conciso by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Timothy Redmond.

UK premiere 20.3.17, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, UK: Anderson and Roe

Dances from Powder Her Face/In Seven Days 24.3.17, Helsinki Music Centre, Paavo Hall, Helsinki, Finland: Laura Mikkola/Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon

Concerto Conciso/ Arcadiana/The Four Quarters/Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face for two pianos/Piano Quintet 25.3.17 Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Thomas Adès/Calder Quartet/Nicolas Hodges/Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Timothy Redmond

Powder Her Face 26.3.17, Theater Aachen, Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany: Theater Aachen/Sinfonieorchester Aachen/cond. Justus Thorau/dir.

Ludger Engels 3.5.17, Theatre Reduta, Brno, Czech Republic: National Theatre Brno/ cond. Marko Ivanovic/dir. Tomáš Studený

Violin Concerto 2.4.17, Koerner Hall, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, ON, Canada: Véronique Mathieu/Espirit Orchestra/Alex Pauk 22.6.17, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Wei Lu/Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Robin Ticciati

The Exterminating Angel UK premiere 24.4.17, Royal Opera House, London, UK: The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/cond. Thomas Adès/ dir. Tom Cairns US premiere 26.10-21.11.17, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York City, NY, USA: The Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera/cond. Thomas Adès/dir. Tom Cairns

Polaris 5.5.17, Koningin Elisabethzaal, Antwerp, Belgium: Royal Flemish Philharmonic/James MacMillan 18.5.17, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Centre, New York City, NY, USA: Juilliard School/Thomas Adès

‘The Exterminating Angel’ 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 ’, The Exterminating Angel receives its UK premiere on 24 April at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The composer himself conducts a stellar cast. The opera then travels to the Metropolitan Opera, New York (October 2017) and the Royal Danish Opera (early 2018).

Adès’s third opera, The Exterminating Angel is based on Luis Buñuel’s surrealist classic El ángel exterminador, and sees a collection of society’s grandees inexplicably trapped in a room. The libretto, adapted from the original BuñuelAlcoriza 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), this 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.

Dances of Death in LA In February Adès continued his close relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, conducting the US premiere of the recent orchestral version of Lieux Retrouvés with Steven Isserlis in a programme which also included his gloriously macabre Totentanz with soloists Simon Keenlyside and Christianne Stotijn.

‘Adès has become an essential composer… In Totentanz the orchestra rushes in with a whoop.

Throughout, Adès marvellously distorts the Dies Irae motif. Death and his victims alike are masters of tricky rhythms… On the surface, Lieux Retrouvés is another side of Adès. The lyricism here really is Schubertian. The orchestration adds ravishing colors but blessedly changes little… but it does make the music all the more irresistible.’

LA Times (Mark Swed), 12 February 2017

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photo: thomas Adès © brian voce

Written for BCMG in 1997, and scored for the unusual ensemble line up of solo piano, clarinet, baritone saxophone, trumpet, trombone, tuba, percussion, 3 violins and double bass, the work casts the pianist in the deliberately restricted role of musical director, with a semi-soloistic continuo part (though it is now often performed with a conductor). In contrast to Adès’s expansive previous work Asyla, which fills out larger and larger spaces, here the governing tendency is centripetal – a mass of ideas crammed together to create 8 minutes of vertiginous, wild music.

Dublin festival From 2-4 March, the National Concert Hall, Dublin hosted a festival twinning the music of Adès alongside that of Gerald Barry. Adès conducted Simon Keenlyside, Christianne Stotijn and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in the Irish premiere of his epic vocal masterpiece Totentanz whilst long-time Adès collaborator, conductor Timothy Redmond led the Crash Ensemble in the Irish premiere of Living Toys. In the opening concert Adès performed his Mazurkas before being joined by Barry to perform a selection of piano duets.

‘Powder Her Face’ After almost 22 years, and a dozen or so productions worldwide, Powder Her Face, Adès’s camp and risqué treatment of the scandal surrounding Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, is already established as part of the repertoire. In January, the chamber opera to a libretto by Philip Hensher received a new production mounted jointly by Northern Ireland Opera and Dublin’s Opera Theatre Company.

Antony McDonald directed, whilst players from the Ulster Orchestra and a cast led by soprano Mary Plazas were conducted by Nicholas Chalmers.

‘Adès’s opera has become a modern classic.’

The Times (Richard Morrison), 29 January 2017

‘Adès’s snazzy score sounded as fresh as ever.’

The Sunday Times (Hugh Canning), 12 February 2017

Meanwhile, Sir Simon Rattle has commissioned an extension to Adès’s Dances from Powder Her Face as one of a string of new works to mark the end of his 16-year tenure with the orchestra. Commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Carnegie Hall, the 17-minute Suite from Powder Her Face will be premiered in May 2017.

TUNING IN

Matthew Hindson Australian Ballet tour ‘Faster’ 2017 sees Matthew Hindson’s orchestral ballet Faster staged by The Australian Ballet in both Sydney and Melbourne, with over 30 performances in March and April, all with live orchestra conducted by Nicolette Fraillon. The 35-minute score was originally commissioned

by Birmingham Royal Ballet and David Bintley, and was inspired by the Olympic motto ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’.

It toured the UK in 2012 to tremendous acclaim, and in 2014 was recreated with New National Theatre Ballet in Tokyo.

LSO records orchestral triptych Though they were conceived independently and intended as stand-alone pieces, Adès’s three large-scale orchestral works form a trilogy of sorts. Having performed Asyla, Tevot and Polaris with the composer last March, the London Symphony Orchestra has now released the performances on their own label LSO Live, alongside a performance of Brahms with baritone Samuel Dale Johnson. In September, the orchestra will perform Asyla once again as part of Sir Simon Rattle’s inaugural concert as their Music Director.

‘The journey from the brittleness and brilliance of Asyla, to the majestic harmonic rotations of Polaris, is an utterly compelling one… Tevot’s irresistible weight and beauty, its shining descents and dark upwellings, combine with an absolute refusal to rush or take any shortcuts through the musical argument. It’s a score that knows the space and time it needs, and its pacing is totally sure… If Tevot is the real revelation here, 20 years on it’s also good to be reminded of the very different brilliance of Asyla, and how fresh that still sounds.

As a first large-scale orchestral score, its assurance is dazzling. The pieces share extra-musical associations but what links them more importantly is the sheer mastery of their orchestral writing.’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 23 February 2017

Analysing ‘Asyla’ Routledge has published a new book-length study of Adès’s Asyla as part of its ‘Landmarks in Music since 1950’ series.

Written by Dr. Edward Venn from the University of Leeds, the insightful guide – the first of its kind be dedicated to the analysis of Adès’s music – also deftly places the seminal work in the context of the composer’s broader output.

‘In an era when new works are too often performed once and never heard again, the fact that Asyla received its one-hundredth performance less than a decade after its premiere is outstanding… Even before the Grawemeyer Award announcement Asyla had become a landmark in contemporary music.’

Edward Venn in ‘Thomas Adès: Asyla’ (Routledge)

‘What Hindson is doing with Bintley, as Julian Anderson and Gavin Higgins have done with Mark Baldwin, is generating an exhilarating new revival of serious music in the dance theatre, fascinating for the audience and challenging to the dancers.’

The Arts Desk (Ismene Brown), 28 June 2012

‘Odysseus and the Sirens’ Hindson has recently completed a new work for flute and piano, a set piece for all finalists in the Australian Flute Festival’s open competition – taking place at Griffith University, Brisbane on 30 June this year. Odysseus and the Sirens was written at the request of the festival’s Artistic Advisor, distinguished soloist Virginia Taylor, who gave the Australian premiere of Hindson’s flute concerto House Music in 2013. The 9-minute work will be available to non-AFF participants from 1 July onwards.

50th birthday Hindson will celebrate his 50th birthday on 12 September 2018. He is perhaps best-known for his vibrant, colourful orchestral scores which have been commissioned and performed around the world from North America, Europe, and Asia, to throughout Australia and New Zealand. Many of his scores can be viewed on our Online Score Library.

‘Headbanger’ in UK and US The rumbustious concert opener, Headbanger, is to be given its US premiere by Simone Young as part of the Grant Park Festival in Chicago this summer, with performances on 14 and 15 July. It has also recently been taken up by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, who performed the work under Timothy Redmond on 12 February.

Enthusiasm continues for Schubert remix The Rave and the Nightingale for string quartet and string orchestra, Hindson’s witty take on Schubert’s final string quartet (No. 15 in G Major, D. 887), continues to travel widely with performances in Japan (Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra), Germany (Saarländisches Staatsorchester) and Australia (Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra) in recent months.

photos: Mary Plazas as the Duchess in ‘powder her face’ © Patrick Redmond

Thomas Adès Selected forthcoming performances (cont.)

Suite from Powder her Face World premiere 31.5-3.6.17, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle UK premiere 11.4.18, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Thomas Adès

In Seven Days 1.6.17, Das Meininger Theater, Meiningen, Thüringen, Germany: Teo Gheorghiu/Meininger Hofkapelle/ Philippe Bach

Blanca Variations UK premiere 27.6.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Inon Barnatan

Piano Quintet 1.7.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Alasdair Beatson/Doric String Quartet

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

Three Studies from Couperin 15,19.10.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: London Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink

Matthew Hindson Selected forthcoming performances Faster 7-26.4.17 (20 performances), Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW, Australia: The Australian Ballet/ch.

David Bintley/cond. Nicolette Fraillon

The Rave and the Nightingale 7.4.17, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia: Australian String Quartet/Tasmanian SO/Johannes Fritzsch Japanese premiere 21-22.4.17, Nagoya, Japan: Verus String Quartet/Nagoya PO/Nicholas Milton

Odysseus and the Sirens World premiere 30.6.17, Australian Flute Festival, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia: Festival finalists

Headbanger US premiere 14-15.7.17, Grant Park Festival, Chicago, IL, USA: Grant Park Festival Orchestra/Simone Young

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Tansy Davies Selected forthcoming performances

Tansy Davies ‘Forest’

grind show (electric) 2.3.17, Ewart Memorial Hall, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt: The Egyptian Contemporary Music Ensemble/Peter Tilling

Streamlines Swedish premiere 5.4.17, Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Sweden: Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Ben Gernon

Nature 20.4.17, Auer Performance Hall, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN, USA: David Dzubay/Indiana New Music Ensemble

Troubairitz 22.4.17, Hay Festival, St Mary’s Church, Hay-on-Wye, Wales, UK: Sara Stowe/Chris Brannick

Forest US premiere 27, 29.4.17, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City; 28.4.17, Tilles Center, Long Island University, Brookville, NY, USA: New York Philharmonic/Esa-Pekka Salonen

Forgotten Game 2/Loopholes & Lynchpins/Aquatic/ Dark Ground/grind show (electric)/ Troubairitz/Iris 13.5.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: RNCM Students and New Music Ensemble

Song of Pure Nothingness 12.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Aldeburgh Parish Church, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK: Andrew Watts/Ian Burnside

‘Streamlines’ in Stockholm Filled with intricate details and sleek architectural shapes, Streamlines, Davies’s dazzling 2006 orchestral work receives its Swedish premiere in April, with Ben Gernon conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Inspired by the extraordinary close-ups of plants by German photographer Karl Blossfeldt, the work begins with what Davies calls a ‘point of arrest’, where a sudden growth spurt appears from nowhere and a line starts to emerge. Forceful interruptions continue throughout, carving out openings for new strands and patterns which in turn are jettisoned as the music unfolds.

Wigmore Hall day Following the successful two-day festival devoted to the music of Davies in Manchester later last year, students from the Royal Northern College of Music will bring a selection of the works featured there – including the arresting percussion solo Dark Ground and the Goya-inspired grind show (electric) – to London’s Wigmore Hall on 13 May. Also featured are Davies’s Loopholes & Lynchpins, a set of five inventions for piano, which takes material from the Sonatas by Scarlatti and puts it through processes of warping which act as if black holes have been placed upon Scarlatti’s music. These processes allow the notes to slip up or down a semitone in the right hand and left hand respectively, so that the Scarlatti originals have been literally pulled apart.

Aldeburgh residency In December, Davies was in residence at Aldeburgh Music, laying the foundations for a new project which will see her performing and improvising as well as composing. She was joined in Snape by vocalist Elaine Mitchener and horn player Christine Chapman (from Musikfabrik), together with choreographer Dam Van Huynh, dancer Tomasso Petrolo and the artist and textile designer Brenda Mayo.

Davies is also at work on a solo horn piece for Chapman, to be premiered in Cologne later this year.

Davies’s own instrument, the horn, has always occupied a special place in her music – buzzing away abrasively in her Falling Angel, or crying out with yearning in her orchestral labyrinth Wild Card – but it is especially spotlighted in her latest project, a concerto for four horns and orchestra entitled Forest. Co-commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the Warsaw Autumn Festival (where Davies’s trumpet concerto Spiral House was received with acclaim in 2014) the 20-minute work was the brainchild of Esa-Pekka Salonen (a horn player himself ), who conducted Forest in Basingstoke, London and Madrid. The Philharmonia’s current principal horns, Katy Woolley and Nigel Black, were joined by two of their predecessors, Richard Watkins and Michael Thompson.

Teeming with what the Guardian called an ‘inventive energy’, Forest pits the quartet of soloists against a vast tapestry of orchestral sound. ‘The four horns represent the most human element of the work, and the journey of the piece is a growing dialogue between the soloists and the orchestra – or forest – that surrounds them,’ says Davies.

Whilst much of the music is visceral and almost violent, there are moments of dreamlike repose, too. In the words of Davies: ‘We arrive at a point of absolute stillness and rest there for a long time. Something has melted and there is a fusion between the forest and the horns, at which point the horn players start playing only natural harmonics.’ The music culminates in one final raucous dance – marked ‘crisp and funky’ – before dissolving away into shimmering strings.

‘A striking addition to that niche repertoire… The writing for the solo quartet is generally less about individualism and extrovert display than using them as a group to counterbalance rather than dominate the orchestra… The horn writing regularly alludes to the instrument’s traditional associations, though never in an obvious, anecdotal way; the calls and riffs of the quartet thread themselves through the orchestral busyness as part of that soundworld while keeping their separateness.’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 22 February 2017

‘Bright, supple and fleet-footed. The performance directions barely hint at the physical heft of this concerto, or the extremes of temperature it suggests. Hot slaps of colour from vibraphone, marimba and glockenspiel and frigid slitherings from trilling violins kick-start refracted fanfares.

Instead of indulging in the horn’s lyrical voice, Davies keeps the quartet hard-edged and boxy, stamping the figures in close overlap. Raw mouthfuls of what sound like Mahler are bitten and spat out. This is not polite, deferential music, but as a retort to Schumann’s pine-scented Konzertstück it has grit and wit.’

The Times (Anna Picard), 27 February 2017

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photo: tansy davies © Rikard Österlund

TUNING IN

Tom Coult ‘It was as if the composer had put her head to the ground and recreated the roars and crackles of the forest.’

Tom Coult Selected forthcoming performances new work for string quartet world premiere 29.5.18, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Arditti Quartet

‘Davies showed her affinity for the instrument… The soloists, playing mainly in consort, stride whooping, signalling, calling, through their own sonic landscape. Delicate tissues of sound, with glissandi and rapid trills across the entire ensemble, were offset by tangy percussion – drums and bells, tin cans, cabasa and rattle. It was as if the composer had put her head to the ground and recreated the roars and crackles of the forest.’

The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 27 February 2017

‘Two Games and a Nocturne’ Having previously performed Coult’s whimsical Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux, Manchester’s specialist new music ensemble Psappha commissioned a new work, Two Games and a Nocturne, from him for its 25th anniversary season.

Supported by the Britten-Pears Foundation and the Ernst von Siemens Muzikstiftung, the 11-minute piece for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and cello was premiered in Manchester in February and will soon be available to watch online on the Psappha website.

‘Tension-filled and incident-packed’ ‘It was Forest which stole the show… what a piece.

Davies has created a compelling opus concerning creation, nature and renewal, which might be heard as more urban than naturalistic, for this is a wailing woodland – sinister, nightmarish – in which the large orchestra and the soloists vie for supremacy or act as a lavishly detailed and active combo. In terms of references, Benjamin (finesse), Birtwistle (legend) and Ligeti (whimsy) came to mind occasionally without being dominant. Davies has composed a tension-filled and incident-packed piece that goes beyond the potential showmanship of the title; indeed it is deep and thoughtprovoking. Forest sustains its twenty-three minutes compellingly and with satisfaction… hopefully it will soon be recorded.’

Classical Source (Colin Anderson), 23 February 2017

For more information about Tansy Davies’s upcoming projects, and to obtain recordings of recent works, please contact: promotion@fabermusic.com

The first two movements (the ‘games’) have a sense of play – the first alternating skittish piano solos (involving a sophisticated combination of normal playing alongside strumming the strings) with moments of absolute stasis, before the whole ensemble joins in what Coult described as a ‘bluesy, insectoid jamboree’. In the second game, an initially ominous trudge in marimba and piano is incrementally disrupted and sped up to become a fast and volatile rush to the finish.

The nocturne that ends the piece is more sombre, its spacious atmosphere recalling the last of Coult’s Études for solo violin. Chiming octaves in the glockenspiel and piano are surrounded by gently swaying chords and astringent contributions from piccolo, as the music drifts towards its conclusion.

Looking ahead Coult has been continuing to develop a chamber opera with the award-winning young playwright Alice Birch as part of their Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship supported

by Aldeburgh Music. Aldeburgh has been providing the pair with two years of support in the form of bursaries, workshops, mentoring and showcases as they develop their project. Birch’s recent work includes Ophelia’s Zimmer, a co-production between London’s Royal Court Theatre and the Schaubühne Theater Berlin directed by Katie Mitchell.

Other projects include a work for the Arditti Quartet to be premiered at London’s Purcell Room in May 2018.

photo: Michael Thompson, Nigel Black, Katy Woolley, Richard Watkins and tansy davies after the london premiere of ‘forest’ © philharmonia orchestra; tom coult © maurice foxall

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George Benjamin Selected forthcoming performances

George Benjamin A New Recording of ‘Palimpsests’

Antara 3.3.17, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, York, UK: Chimera Ensemble/John Stringer

Vividly capturing the drama and intricate layering which makes Benjamin’s Palimpsests so powerful, a recently released account of the work from the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks on NEOS continues to garner critical acclaim. Recorded live at Munich’s Musica Viva in 2012, the disc features Benjamin conducting his own work alongside music by Ligeti and Murail.

Octet 9.3.17, Concert Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland, UK: Students from the Royal Conservatoire

Dream of the Song

‘Like all the best music, Palimpsests makes up its own structural rules as it goes along, defining its aims and achieving them with total success.’

15, 17.3.17, Philharmonie, Gasteig, Munich, Germany: Andrew Watts/ Women of the Munich Philharmonic Chorus/Munich Philharmonic Orchestra/Kent Nagano

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 8 September 2016

Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra 17.3.17, Philharmonie, Paris, France: Ensemble Intercontemporain (1st Invention only) 17, 19.3.17, Rudolf-Oetker-Halle, Bielefeld, Germany: Bielefelder Philharmoniker/Alexander Kalajdžic

Viola, Viola 1.4.17, Salle Cortot, Paris, France: Members of l’Orchestre de chambre de Paris 25.4.17, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Players from the LA Philharmonic

Written on Skin Russian premiere 22, 23.4.17, New Stage, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, Russia: Orchestra of the Bolshoi/cond. Franck Ollu/dir.

Katie Mitchell 9-18.2.18, Academy of Music, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Philadelphia Opera/cond. Corrado Rovaris/dir.

Will Kerley

Shadowlines 7.3.17, Birmingham Conservatoire; 24.4.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Louis Lortie 28.4.17, Park Lane Group Series, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Philip Sharp 23.6.17, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Zubin Kanga

Olicantus 29.4.17, Majestic Theater, Gettysburg, PA, USA: Gettysburg College/Vimbayi Kaziboni

Three Miniatures for Solo Violin 30.4.17, Badenweiler, BadenWürttemberg, Germany: Isabelle Faust

Upon Silence 19.5.17, Église des Billettes, Paris, France: Emilie Renard/SIT FAST

Dance Figures 1.6.17, Auditorium, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France: Orchestre National de France/David Robertson

At First Light 14.7.17, Cheltenham Music Festival, Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham, UK: Ensemble Court-Circuit/Daniele Rosina

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Details of new opera announced The Royal Opera has announced the world premiere of George Benjamin’s new opera, Lessons in Love and Violence, which will be presented in May 2018.

Inspired by Elizabethan drama, this new opera considers what space, if any, exists for love and human affection inside the dangerous machinery of power. The story centres around a king, compelled to choose between love and political hard-headedness. His decisions allow his country to slide into civil war, and set his own wife and son against him. When his son in turn is given bruising lessons in realpolitik, he performs – albeit with the object of restoring peace – a terrifying act of violence in front of his mother.

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 (July 2018), Hamburg State Opera (April 2019), Opéra de Lyon (May 2019), Lyric Opera of Chicago (2020/21 Season), Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (March 2021) and Teatro Real, Madrid (April/May 2021).

KCL Award In January Benjamin was awarded the Fellowship of King’s College London in recognition of his exceptional service rendered to the College. The ceremony took place at the Barbican Centre in London and was presented by the Chairman of King’s. Since 2001, Benjamin has been Henry Purcell Professor of Music at King’s and has made an outstanding contribution to the College’s programme of undergraduate and graduate training, including supervisions with individual composers and running workshops, seminars and discussion groups.

‘Gripping, with multi-layered textures of varying speeds and characters colliding, merging, or bouncing off each other…’

BBC Music Magazine (Christopher Dingle), September 2016

‘Palimpsests comes off well, and again the Bavarians’ playing is special. Take the opening moments of Palimpsest I, when the brass, caustic and stark, smack at winding, indeterminate clarinets, or the snarling, nasty layering at the climax of the darker Palimpsest II. This is some of Benjamin’s most forthright writing.’

Gramophone (David Allen), November 2016

‘Dream of the Song’ Following performances in Amsterdam, Tanglewood and London, Benjamin’s Dream of the Song for countertenor, female chorus and orchestra received its French premiere on 28 September at the Paris Philharmonie as part of the Festival d’Automne. Daniel Harding conducted the Orchestre de Paris, SWR Vokalensemble and Bejun Mehta in two performances, one of which was filmed for broadcast on Mezzo TV, directed by Julien Condemine.

‘Enchanting beauty… It follows a path from a frenetic, violent and intense first movement to a conclusion whose poetic force is overwhelming… a masterpiece.’

Le Monde (Renaud Machart), 30 September 2016

In January, Mehta gave the work’s German premiere, with the MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig and Dresdner Philharmoniker under Joana Mallwitz, followed in February by performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Lorelei Ensemble conducted by Andris Nelsons at Symphony Hall, Boston and Carnegie Hall, New York. The 20-minute work now travels to Munich in March, with two performances by Andrew Watts, the Women of the Munich Philharmonic Choir and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Kent Nagano.

‘The piece did not so much end as recede, as the colors of a dream do once sunlight hits the eyes, and the unshakeable feeling of having witnessed something magical lingered.’

The Boston Globe (Zoë Madonna), 11 February 2017

PHOTO: GEORGE BENJAMIN CONDUCTING A PERFORMANCE OF ‘WRITTEN ON SKIN’ WITH BARBARA HANNIGAN © A BOFILL

TUNING IN

Torsten Rasch ‘A Welsh Night’ Described as ‘gripping’ by critic Roderick Dunnett after its premiere at the 2015 Three Choirs Festival, A Welsh Night, a 14-minute song cycle setting poems by the Second World War poet Alun Lewis, will receive its London premiere in April with mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton performing it at the Wigmore Hall as part of a Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert.

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.’

‘Written on Skin’ travels the world Since its premiere in 2012, Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin has been heard more than 80 times around the world, with recent performances in Italy, Spain and the UK. In one of the most successful new operas of recent times, Benjamin harnesses an array of diverse instruments – including glass harmonica, bass viol and steel drums – in a strikingly beautiful and rich score that responds to every nuance of Martin Crimp’s resonant, finely chiselled text.

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 left 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.

George Benjamin Selected forthcoming performances (cont.)

Lessons in Love and Violence World premiere 10-26.5.18, Royal Opera House, London, UK: The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/cond. George Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell

Arrangements Bach – Canon & Fugue from The Art of Fugue 14.7.17, Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain: Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria/Clemens Schuldt

Purcell – Fantasia VII 8.9.17, George Enescu Festival, Studioul de concerte “Mihail Jora”, Bucharest, Romania: Mercury Quartet 20.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Britten Sinfonia/Jacqueline Shave

In October, the work received its South American premiere at the Teatro Argentino, La Plata, Argentina in a new production by Cristian Drut.

Rasch is now at work on an orchestral version of the song cycle, which will be premiered by Connolly on 26 July at the 2017 Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. Frank Beermann will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Torsten Rasch Selected forthcoming performances

‘A model of its genre.’

Madly melancholic colours

London premiere

La Nación (Pablo Gianera), 16 October 2016

‘A major event… this opera has an immediate psychological impact and a harmonious melodic architecture with exquisitely balanced textures and sounds. Its unique soundworld represents perhaps a new music for the 21st century.’

Opera Magazine (Carlos Ernesto Ure), March 2017

‘Probably the first operatic masterpiece of our century… a phenomenon.’

La Nación (Luciano Marra de la Fuente), 30 October 2016…

April sees the work’s Russian premiere, with Katie Mitchell’s original production taking to the New Stage of The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, conducted by Franck Ollu. Whilst the original Aix production continues to move and fascinate audiences, the musical and textual richness of this opera continue to inspire new productions, too. 2018 will see Opera Philadelphia stage a new production of the work by Will Kerley, conducted by Corrado Rovaris.

George Benjamin celebrates his 60th birthday in 2020. If you are interested in marking this occasion and would like to find out more, please contact promotion@fabermusic.com

photo: tom coult © maurice foxall

Last year Rasch’s dramatic Violin Concerto ‘Tropoi’ was premiered by Wolfgang Hentrich and the Dresden Philharmonic under Leo McFall. The substantial fourmovement work – the composer’s first concerto – was inspired by Helmut Krausser’s captivating 1993 novel Melodien, in which myth, magic, music, and madness interact in a dark, and increasingly disturbing narrative.

A Welsh Night 10.4.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Sarah Connolly/Joseph Middleton World premiere of orchestration 26.7.17, Three Choirs Festival, Worcester Cathedral, Worcester, UK: Sarah Connolly/Philharmonia Orchestra/Frank Beermann

Unfolding over 20 minutes, this weighty statement is everything we have come to expect from Rasch: a large orchestra is masterfully handled with an incredible lightness of touch, whist the hefty solo part, with its many knotty twists and turns, offers violinists numerous opportunities to showcase their technical – and interpretative – virtuosity.

‘So distinctly clear and yet dense and complex…

The concerto descends from the highest heights through a soundworld which is unique… As a listener one is taken onto a dazzling voyage and experiences, a roller-coaster of emotions, as for example in the third movement, where Rasch, with perfectly judged orchestration, conjures up madly melancholic colours… The echoes of tradition do not interfere, they enrich, and point the thoughts to past things in order to interpret anew.’

Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, 19 April 2016

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Julian Anderson Selected forthcoming performances

Julian Anderson Second Quartet in Boston

Alhambra Fantasy

In January, the Callithumpian Consort at Boston’s New England Conservatory featured a number of Anderson’s chamber works in a concert organised to coincide with the US premiere of his latest orchestral work Incantesimi.

Alongside The Colour of Pomegranates for alto flute and piano, the students also performed Anderson’s String Quartet No.2: ‘300 Weihnachtslieder’.

7.4.17, Zürcher Hoschule der Künste, Zürich, Switzerland: Zürcher Oberland Music College

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

My Beloved Spake/O Sing Unto the Lord/ Four American Choruses on Gospel Texts/Bell Mass 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

Total Immersion The BBC Symphony Orchestra has long been a supporter of Julian Anderson, last performing his Heaven is Shy of Earth back in 2010. 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 first opera, back in 2014. Imagin’d Corners, his theatrical concerto for four horns and orchestra, will be heard alongside, Fantasias, In lieblicher Bläue and Symphony.

Revisiting ‘Symphony’ One of the highlights of the BBC’s Total Immersion day is sure to be the performance of Symphony. The largest work Anderson wrote as Composer in Association to the CBSO and their Principal Conductor Sakari Oramo, the 18-minute movement takes inspiration from a painting by the Finnish artist Axel Gallen entitled ‘Morning by a lake’ in which, with a great economy of means, the artist manages to suggest to the viewers that the lake is actually unfreezing before their eyes.

Thus, the principal musical notion of the piece is that of ‘unfreezing’. An initial sense of near-immobility progressively dissolves until the music gathers speed and momentum to such an extent that it reaches the limits of playability. A score of breathtaking accomplishment, this is Anderson at his most masterful and engaging.

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PHOTO: JULIAN ANDERSON © MAURICE FOXALL; an excerpt from ‘the colour of Pomegranates © faber music

Anderson’s most ambitious exploration of unconventional tuning systems to date, and drawing much of its character from the rich sonorities of church bells which also underpin his orchestral works, Symphony and Eden, this seven-movement quartet also draws on a wealth of traditional German Christmas songs. The 17-minute work begins with each of the instruments tuned conventionally, but, as it develops, scordaturas are employed to lend certain passages specific hues. In the last three movements, the cello (like in Schumann’s Piano Quartet) tunes its C string down a tone, further expanding the resonant possibilities of the ensemble and thus enabling visceral, weighty climaxes. This is music of startling concentration: at times, the texture is so complex that bowing position, pressure and changes all require notation on separate staves.

Premiered and dedicated to the Arditti Quartet, the work has also enjoyed the advocacy of the FLUX Quartet, who recently gave its broadcast premiere of BBC Radio 3.

‘The Colour of Pomegranates’ Faber Music is pleased to announce a new edition of one of Anderson’s most performed chamber works, The Colour of Pomegranates for alto flute and piano. A 7-minute nocturne for the work unfolds as a slow, lyrical melody played by the alto flute, while the piano provides an accompaniment of bell chords. The piece uses few special effects, save overblowing to produce chords of harmonics towards the close.

The new typeset score, which was prepared by Edward Nesbit clarifies many details of the original manuscript, is available online from the Faber Music Store: ISBN 0-571-56155-1

TUNING IN

John Woolrich

Carl Davis

‘An ingenious Jesting with Art’

‘Alice in Winter Wonderland’

Sharing Scarlatti’s love of playing with small musical widgets, lopsided forms and wry humour, John Woolrich is the perfect composer to arrange the keyboard sonatas.

Having previously arranged a number of them for Britten Sinfonia to perform with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, Woolrich has now arranged three more for a chamber ensemble of 10 players.

Scarlatti described his numerous keyboard sonatas as ‘an ingenious Jesting with Art’, and Woolrich’s characterful, pungent, transcriptions of K433, K37 and K199 communicate this playful spirit with aplomb.

‘The liberties taken by Woolrich’s arrangements paid off brilliantly. We missed the technical keyboard dazzle, but the dramatic contrasts which make these pieces so enchanting were intensified by being translated into instrumental contrasts – oboe and piccolo, marimba and strings. Woolrich has made a discovery.’

The Independent (Michael Church), 6 February 2017

Beyond ‘Ulysses Awakes’ Whilst many will be familiar with Woolrich’s Ulysses Awakes – an achingly beautiful reworking of Monteverdi for viola and strings, fewer may know his The Theatre Represents a Garden: Night for chamber orchestra.

A 19-minute journey through memories and discoveries of Mozart, which Woolrich describes as ‘a necklace of fragments, transcriptions and recompositions’ the work was composed in 1991 for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Frans Brüggen. All the material comes, in one way or another, from Mozart (principally unfinished or sketched pieces) which Woolrich artfully stitches together, twisting the classical harmonies to relate to each other in sly modern ways, teasing out extra beats in the bar, and slipping in ‘wrong’ chords and improbable orchestrations.

A fascinating example of the art of creative transcription, The Theatre Represents a Garden: Night is an ideal work for adventurous ensembles looking to reanimate the past.

Carl Davis spent Christmas in The Hague this year with De Dutch Don’t Dance Division, conducting Het Residentie Orkest in his ballet score Alice in Wonderland.

As a result of the spectacular wintry production which fused elements of Carroll’s much loved book with the art of M.C. Escher, Davis added new material to his score, a beautiful confection based on the music of Tchaikovsky.

Davis described the show as ‘the best, funniest and most beautiful thing I’ve ever done in the dance world’ and with seven sold out performances, ideas are already circulating for a collaboration with DeDDDD on his ballet A Christmas Carol in 2019.

In 2017, the original version of Davis’s Alice in Wonderland will receive performances in the UK and Brazil.

‘Charlie’s Flea Circus’ Composed for one of the world’s leading saxophonists, John Harle, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Davis’s Charlie’s Flea Circus is a delightful 5-minute work for alto saxophone (doubling sopranino) and piano. Taking in waltzes and mazurkas, this characterful and witty work makes a wonderful addition to the repertoire.

Premiered in Liverpool by Harle and Steve Lodder, the work travels to London in March as part of a launch concert for Harle’s compendious new study of the saxophone published by Faber Music (see page 24 for more details).

A new silent film score In May Davis will conduct his much-loved silent film scores to The Thief of Bagdad and Behind the Screen with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. The Luxembourg performances will also include the world premiere of Davis’s new score to The High Sign. A 1921 American short comedy starring comedian Buster Keaton, the film features a thrilling final sequence – a wild chase through a house filled with secret passages – which will no doubt offer Davis a chance to delight us once again with his indefatigable musical imagination.

photos: john woolrich © maurice foxall; ALICE IN WINTER WONDERLAND © STUDIO OOSTRUM; 2016 THE M.C. ESCHER COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. WWW.MCESCHER.COM

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

Carl Davis Selected forthcoming performances Charlie’s Flea Circus London premiere 17.3.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: John Harle/Steve Lodder

Alice in Wonderland (Ballet) 22-25.3.17, Civic Theatre, Chelmsford, Essex, UK: Chelmsford Ballet Company Portuguese premiere 1.4.17, Teatro Municipal da Covilhã, Covilhã, Portugal: Escola Profissional de Artes da Covilhã/cond. Rogério Peixinho

One A.M./The Adventurer 30, 31.3.17, Ritz Cinema, Vaasa, Finland: Vaasa City Orchestra/ James Lowe

Behind the Screen French premiere 12-14.4.17, Nouveau Siècle, Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France: Orchestre National de Lille/Frank Strobel

The Thief of Bagdad/ Behind the Screen/ The High Sign* *World premiere 12, 13.5.17, Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg: Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/Carl Davis

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Jonathan Harvey Selected forthcoming performances

Jonathan Harvey ‘Sprechgesang’

Death of Light, Light of Death

After featuring Harvey’s Tranquil Abiding and Death of Light, Light of Death as part of their ‘Music and Faith’ theme last year, Cologne’s Acht Brücken Festival will present Sprechgesang as part of its 2017 festival, which explores the relationship between music and language.

MusikFabrik and conductor Peter Rundel with soloist Peter Veale – with whom Harvey worked closely on the formation of the solo part.

3.3.17, Maison de la Musique, Nanterre, Île-de-France, France: Ensemble TM+/Laurent Cuniot 15.3.17, Opéra de Lille, Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France: Ictus/ Georges-Elie Octors

Bhakti 29.3.17, Temple Farel, La ChauxdeFonds, Neuchâtel; 31.3.17, Festival Archipel, Alhambra, Geneva, Switzerland: Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain/Lorraine Vaillancourt

Pre-echo for JeanGuihen 8.4.17, Konzerthaus, Dortmund, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany: Jean-Guihen Queyras

Sprechgesang 2.5.17, Festival Acht Brücken, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany: Musikfabrik/Peter Rundel

Messages Portuguese premiere 4-5.5.17, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian , Lisbon, Portugal: Gulbenkian Choir/Gulbenkian Orchestra/Susanna Mälkki Ricercare una melodia 6.5.17, Kings Place, London, UK: Tim Gill (London Sinfonietta)

Madonna of Winter and Spring 23.6.17, Grand Auditorium, Maison de Radio France, Paris, France: Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Gergely Madaras

…towards a pure land 7.7.17, Herkulessaal, Residenz, Munich, Bavaria, Germany: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Matthias Pintscher

String Quartets Nos. 1-4 8.7.17, Musica Viva, AllerheiligenHofkirche, Residenz, Munich, Bavaria, Germany: Arditti Quartet

‘An outstanding choral composer’ In September 2016 the BBC Singers presented a concert surveying the whole breadth of Jonathan Harvey’s choral output, from the rapt simplicity of his anthem I Love the Lord to the exotic and elaborate textures of Forms of Emptiness and How could the soul not take flight.

Conducted by Martyn Brabbins, the concert also included Harvey’s Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco alongside Marco Blaauw performing Other Presences for solo trumpet and electronics. This radiant 10-minute work loops and harmonises trumpet melodies inspired by arresting openair ceremonial music which Harvey witnessed on a visit to monasteries at and near Rajpur, Tibet – sounds which also open the 2006 orchestral work Body Mandala.

‘A timely reminder of what an outstanding choral composer he was, who invariably managed to say something fresh and deeply personal, whether writing pieces still unmistakably rooted in the Anglican choral tradition, or exploring other faiths in works that made use of the latest musical technology.’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 26 September 2016

Song Offerings

Further plaudits for St John’s disc

14.7.17, Cheltenham Music Festival, Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK: Ensemble Court-Circuit/Daniele Rosina

Deo, a new all-Harvey release from the choir of his alma mater, St John’s College, Cambridge, has been nominated for a prestigious Gramophone Award.

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

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

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 Putnins

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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 also includes two works for organ: Laus Deo (1969) and the astonishing (yet rarely heard) Toccata for organ and tape (1980). In the latter work, developed at IRCAM, an agile, brilliant organ part is set against an almost moto perpetuo stream of electronic sound.

PHOTO: JONATHAN HARVEY © j. shircliff

Composed in 2007, this work for oboe (doubling cor anglais) and chamber ensemble of 13 players belongs to that fascinating clutch of works composed around the time of Harvey’s final opera, Wagner Dream, which contain musical allusions to Wagner. At the midpoint of the 10-minute work Harvey makes reference to a moment of awakening and healing in Parsifal, after which comes the birth of long lyrical lines for the cor anglais. In Harvey’s words ‘the birth of song from the meaningless chatter of endless human discourse.’

Harvey would develop the ideas explored here further just a year later in his visionary Speakings for orchestra and electronics, the second movement of which is concerned with the frenetic chatter of human life in all its expressions of domination, assertion, fear and love.

The Inner Light trilogy at 40 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the completion of Harvey’s Inner Light trilogy. An ‘expanding cycle’ of three works – from Inner Light I for seven players and tape to Inner Light III for large orchestra (with Wagner tubas) and tape – it is a pivotal work which makes the transition from his expressionistic early work and his later scores, which centre on his work with electronics, principally at IRCAM and Stanford.

Harvey composed the central panel, Inner Light II for five singers, ensemble of 12 players and tape, last and in many ways it can be seen as the trilogy’s highpoint. An homage to Rudolf Steiner, it explores what he described as the ‘illuminated’ world of children, incorporating a reading of Kipling’s short story ‘They’, extracts from T. S. Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’, St John’s Gospel, the work of William Blake and Steiner’s own writings. With live and electronic elements that interact subtly throughout its 36-minute span, this unfailingly intense, compelling work deserves to be rediscovered.

‘Messages’ One of Harvey’s most beautiful late works, Messages, receives its Portuguese premiere in May, with the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra conducted by long-time supporter Susanna Mälkki. Setting a text that consists entirely of the names of Judaic and Persian angels, the 25-minute work for chorus and orchestra sees Harvey employing an ensemble rich with bells, percussion, harps, pianos, celesta and even a cimbalom to create a glowing, iridescent soundworld.

TUNING IN

Carl Vine ‘The Anne Landa Preludes’ Vine’s twelve brief and highly contrasted Anne Landa Preludes were recently praised by the LA Times after a performance by Joyce Yang. From the opening ‘Short Story’ to the concluding ‘Chorale’, these inventive works (lasting a total of 22 minutes, though also performable separately) offer a fantastic showcase for any pianist.

A Sixth Quartet Crowning Vine’s substantial body of chamber music are his string quartets, a remarkably rich collection of pieces that span over 45 years of composition.

‘Although works by Schumann, Debussy, Granados and Ginastera received exciting treatment, it was Yang’s kaleidoscopic rendition of the program’s centerpiece, Vine’s electrifyingly eclectic Anne Landa Preludes, that proved even more extraordinary… These 21st-century masterpieces are by turns whimsical, texturally dense and jazzy.

Introducing the set, Yang compared Schumann’s penchant for dynamic and emotional extremes with Vine’s ‘‘super schizophrenic’’ miniatures.’

LA Times (Rick Schutz), 25 January 2017

The definitive guide to Vine

Having previously premiered Vine’s dark and pensive String Quartet No. 4, the Takács Quartet will premiere his Sixth Quartet as part of a Musica Viva tour in August 2017. A US premiere is scheduled at Carnegie Hall (who co-commissioned the piece together with Musica Viva and The Seattle Commissioning Club).

Mulcahy gives the work’s Australian premiere on 5 April, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.

Choral Symphony In June, Vine’s Choral Symphony will be revived by the Canberra Choral Society and National Capital Orchestra in a programme that also includes Wonders, his recent setting of Whitman.

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

Five Hallucinations Australian premiere 5-6.4.17, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Michael Mulcahy/Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Mark Wigglesworth

Choral Symphony/ Wonders 3.6.17, Llewellyn Hall, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia: Canberra Choral Society/ National Capital Orchestra/Leonard Weiss

String Quartet No. 6 World premiere 10-28.8.17, Perth Concert Hall, Perth, Australia: Takács Quartet (9 performances at venues across Australia as part of a Musica Viva tour) US premiere 12.10.17, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Takács Quartet

Malcolm Arnold Selected forthcoming performances Concerto for Viola 11.3.17, Cathédrale Sainte-Croix-desArméniens, Paris, France: Rupert Bawden

‘Five Hallucinations’ Inspired by Oliver Sacks’s fascinating exploration of atypical mental states Five Hallucinations, Vine’s Trombone Concerto 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.’

Carl Vine Selected forthcoming performances

Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra 18.3.17, St Bartholomew’s Church, Bath, UK: Bath Concertino/Michael Robb

Professor Rhoderick McNeill from the University of Southern Queensland, has written a comprehensive analysis of most of Carl Vine’s music. An encyclopaedic guide to Vine’s concert music composed from 1973 to 2016, this study – the first book devoted entirely to the composer’s work – is available from Wildbird Music.

The study is the fourth volume of Wildbird’s Australian Composers series, which also includes John Peterson’s guide to the music of Peter Sculthorpe.

Malcolm Arnold US premiere of choral ‘Peterloo’ After being unveiled at the 2014 BBC Proms, the new choral version of Arnold’s dramatic Peterloo Overture with lyrics by Sir Tim Rice receives its US premiere in March at Carnegie Hall, New York. Performed there by the Cross Campus Chamber Choir and Half Hollow Hills High School East Symphonic Band, the overture powerfully portrays the terrible events of the Peterloo Massacre but, after a lament, it ends with hope and triumph.

Peterloo (choral version) US premiere 22.3.17, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Cross Campus Chamber Choir/Half Hollow Hills High School East Symphonic Band/Danielle M. McRoy/Robert J. U. Belanich

A Flourish for Orchestra/Symphony No 7 1.4.17, St James’s Church, Sussex Gardens, London, UK: Sinfonia Tamesa/Tom Hammond

Anniversary Overture 20.5.17, Bel Air High School, Bel Air, MD, USA: Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra/Sheldon Bair

Rinaldo and Armida 3.7.17, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Kensington Symphony Orchestra/Russell Keable

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Colin Matthews Selected forthcoming performances

Colin Matthews 2018 anniversaries

Fuga/It Rains*

As the Hallé Orchestra’s Composer in Association, Matthews spent five years making orchestral versions of all 24 of Debussy’s Preludes for piano – a remarkable achievement. The upcoming centenary of Debussy’s death next year offers a great opportunity to programme these pieces, as well as Matthews’s orchestration of the finale to Debussy’s early Symphony in B minor and his own Monsieur Croche, composed as a postlude to the set and named after the pseudonym Debussy adopted when he worked as a music critic in the 1900s. Matthews is currently at work on an orchestration of the first book of Debussy’s Images, to be premiered by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg early next year.

*world premiere 21.3.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Roderick Williams/Nash Ensemble/ Martyn Brabbins

Figures, suspended world premiere 8.4.17, Erin Arts Centre, Port Erin, Isle of Man

String Quartet No. 5 26.4.17, Park Lane Group Series, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Solem Quartet

new work for piano trio world premiere 27.4.17, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester, Hampshire, UK: London Bridge Trio

Three Interludes 27.4.17, Park Lane Group Series, St John’s Smith Square, London; 17.11.17, The Forge, Camden, London, UK: Jacquin Trio

A Land of Rain world premiere 10.6.17, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK: Claire Booth/Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Oliver Knussen

Un Colloque Sentimental 12.6.17, Aldeburgh Festival, Aldeburgh Parish Church, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK: Andrew Watts/Ian Burnside

Arrangements Mahler – Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen world premiere 9.4.17, Stadthaus, Winterthur, Zürich; 10.4.17, Kirche St Peter, Zürich, Switzerland: Ian Bostridge/ Musikkollegium Winterthur

Purcell XIII

– Fantazia

20.9.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Britten Sinfonia/Jacqueline Shave

Settings of Edward Thomas Colin Matthews has composed a setting of Edward Thomas’s ‘It Rains’, to be premiered at the Wigmore Hall on 21 March by baritone Roderick Williams and the Nash Ensemble conducted by Martyn Brabbins. Lines from the Thomas poem have also lent a title to Figures, suspended, a 5-minute oboe solo Matthews has composed for the 4th Barbirolli International Oboe Festival and Competition.

Meanwhile, Thomas’s ‘The Trumpet’ was one of a number of texts featured in Voices of the Air, for soprano, chorus and chamber orchestra, commissioned to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Festival Chorus and premiered in Battersea in November. (It’s not the first time Matthews has been drawn to the work of Thomas, having previously set his Out in the Dark in a 2006 NMC Songbook commission.)

The Nash Ensemble concert also includes 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.

A second Piano Trio On 27 April the London Bridge Trio will premiere a new piano trio by Matthews as part of the Winchester Chamber Music Festival. This will be Matthews’s second piano trio, the first being the 14-minute Nowhere to Hide. Written for the Schubert Ensemble, with whom Matthews has worked for thirty years, Nowhere to Hide is perfectly-paced and displays a panoply of vivid characters and colours. The music is also cut-through with sadness, a tender elegy to the late Elliott Carter pervading much of its material.

Explore the Music of Colin Matthews on our Online Score Library: scorelibrary.fabermusic.com

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photo: colin matthews © maurice foxall

2018 also marks the centenary of the end of the First World War – a perfect time to revisit Matthews’s No Man’s Land, a powerful 27-minute setting of poems

by Christopher Reid for baritone, tenor and chamber orchestra from 2011. Here a dialogue takes place between two soldiers/ghosts hanging on barbed wire whilst period songs and gramophone honky-tonk reminiscences are spun into music of great poignancy.

‘A Land of Rain’ Matthews has composed a new work for soprano Claire Booth and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Oliver Knussen, to be premiered in Birmingham on 10 June. 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 poems embrace a vast stylistic diversity – sometimes serious, more often parodistic – an approach which Matthews has mirrored in his settings.

Mahler arrangement A new arrangement of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen for 12 players will be premiered by Ian Bostridge at Musikollegium Winterthur, Switzerland on 9 April.

Since discovering the Mahler’s work together with his brother David in the composer’s centenary of 1960, and later working with Deryck Cooke to create a performing edition of the Tenth Symphony, Matthews has long been obsessed with it.

In 2013 Matthews incorporated Mahler’s own music into his scores, in his case a fragment of the Tenth Symphony (unused in the completion) which makes a ghostly appearance in his 21-minute symphonic palimpsest Traces Remain. A melancholy tangle of spectral allusions to a host of lost or unfinished pieces, the work also includes an imagined wisp of Beethoven’s Adelaide orchestrated by Schoenberg, a tender lute song by Robert Johnson and fragments of Sibelius’s Eighth Symphony.

TUNING IN

Anders Hillborg Fleming records ‘The Strand Settings’ A new recording of The Strand Settings, Hillborg’s four atmospheric settings of poems by Mark Strand, by Renée Fleming and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Sakari Oramo has been released on Decca to great acclaim. The work sees Hillborg sustain an intense – often brooding – lyricism for over 23 minutes, with supple vocal writing set against drifting clouds of divided strings.

‘A ghostly atmosphere, with especially effective use of shimmering string clusters… tailor-made for Fleming, with opportunities galore for her to soar above the stave like some majestic ocean liner riding the gentle swell supplied by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic.’

The Times (Richard Morrison), 6 January 2017

Violin Concerto No. 2 Composed for Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, Anders Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No. 2 was premiered in October 2016 by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Sakari Oramo. The Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig and Alan Gilbert gave the German premiere a week later, with performances by the concerto’s other co-commissioners, the Minnesota and Seoul Philharmonic orchestras, to follow in 2017. The BBC Symphony Orchestra gives the UK premiere in November.

The 24-minute work alternates between moments of melancholy, almost glacial, calm and driving passages of extraordinary muscle and bite, giving Batiashvili ample opportunities to showcase her considerable talent. ‘‘[Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No. 1] redefined the relationship between the individual and the collective, allowing the music’s main thread to freely wander between soloist and orchestra… Here, Hillborg turns things around almost totally. The orchestral accompaniment is mostly so remarkably easy, that all light is now directed to the soloist…’

Hufvudstadsbladet (Wilhelm Kvist), 21 October 2016

‘Directly speaking, timeless beauty’ ‘So fresh and skilfully constructed… virtuosic – unbelievably exciting. It progresses with a directly speaking, timeless beauty.’

Leipziger Volkszeitung (Peter Korfmacher), 31 October 2016

‘Batiashvili is just as dazzling as one could imagine in a part that is partly incredibly difficult, partly built on meditations suited for her singing but firm sound.’

Svenska Dagbladet (Erik Wallrup), 21 October 2016

‘Clamorous glissandi, strange mists of sound, extended harmonic shifts… Tight, coherent music.’

Expressen (Gunilla Brodrej), 21 October 2016

photo: anders hillborg © MATS LUNDQVIST

‘The Strand Settings share a Nordic spareness with late Sibelius… Some moments have cinematic shifts in instrumental colour as the words veer between imagination and hallucination, and go from night-time darkness to bleach-out sunlight…

Hillborg, alone is worth the price.’

Gramophone (David Patrick Stearns), February 2017

‘Hillborg shows how well music can enter this dream-like world where emotions and nature intertwine. At once alluring and uneasy, the songs are a gift for Fleming, whose siren-like soprano draws the listener on to the unknown.’

The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 6 January 2017

‘Hillborg’s settings are genuinely beautiful and their cumulative effect is powerful.’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 11 January 2017

Manchester focus In January the Royal Northern College of Music and the BBC Philharmonic hosted a two-day Hillborg festival.

With four concerts and eight works, it was the largest UK retrospective of his music to date. Students performed a selection of chamber and ensemble works, whilst a studio concert from the BBC Philharmonic under Clark Rundell included a stunning rendition of …lontano in sonno… by Swedish soprano Hannah Holgersson.

Bach Materia A new 15-minute work for violin and chamber orchestra, entitled Bach Materia will be premiered by Pekka Kuusisto and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard in early March. Part of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s project to commission companion pieces to J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, the work contains numerous opportunities for the soloist to improvise, the spirit of which fits well with the third concerto, whose central Adagio consists of just two chords upon which the soloist elaborates.

Anders Hillborg Selected forthcoming performances Bach Materia World premiere 2.3.17, Konserthuset, Örebro; 4.3.17, Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden; Pekka Kuusisto/Swedish Chamber Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard

Mouyayoum 2-7.3.17, Zimmerman Recital, Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA, USA: The Eric Whitacre Singers (4 concert US tour) 13.5.17, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Netherlands Radio Chorus/Eric Whitacre 7.7.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: BBC Singers/Eric Whitacre

Kongsgaard Variations/ Heisenberg Miniatures/Tampere Raw/The Peacock Moment/Peacock Tales (Millennium)/ Close Up/Corrente della Primavera/ Duet/ Primal Blues/ Opening Fanfare/ Brass Quintet 9.3.17: Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, USA: Calder Quartet and others

…lontana in sonno…

30.3.17, Aula, Universitetet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway: Tora Augestad/ Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Karen Kamensek

Scream Sing Whisper*/Piano Concerto *Swedish premiere 27.4.17, Konserthuset, Västerås, Sweden: Henrik Måwe/Västerås Musiksalskap/Christian Karlsen

King Tide Hungarian premiere 10.5.17, ArTRIUM, Budapest, Hungary: Hungarian Radio Orchestra

Beast Sampler Finnish premiere 19.5.17, Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo

Cold Heat US premiere 23.7.17, Aspen Music Festival, Benedict Music Tent, Aspen, CO, USA: Aspen Festival Orchestra/ Andrey Boreyko

Violin Concerto No.2 Asian premiere 3.11.17, Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul, South Korea: Viviane Hagner/ Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra/ Thierry Fischer UK premiere 29.11.17, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: Lisa Batiashvili/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo

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NEW WORKS Stage Works CARL DAVIS Alice in Winter Wonderland (2016) ballet for orchestra after Tchaikovsky. 78 mins.

3(III=picc).2.ca.2.2 – 4.4.3.1 – timp – perc(3) – cel – harp – strings.

FP: 25.12.16, Zuiderstrandtheater, Den Haag, Netherlands: De Dutch Don’t Dance Division/Residentie Orkest/Carl Davis.

The original ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was commissioned by English National Ballet.

Score and parts for hire.

Orchestra FRANCISCO COLL Concerto Grosso ‘Invisible Zones’ (2016) string quartet, harp and string orchestra. 18 mins.

FP: 31.3.17, Auditorio Nacional de Música, Madrid, Spain: Cuarteto Casals/Orquesta Nacionales de España/David Afkham.

Commissioned by the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España.

Score and parts in preparation.

TANSY DAVIES Forest (2016) concerto for four horns and orchestra. c.20 mins.

2.picc.3(III=ca).3(II=ebcl).2.cbsn – 0.3.3.1 – perc(3) – harp – strings.

FP: 21.2.17, The Anvil, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Richard Watkins/Katy Woolley/Nigel Black/Michael Thompson/ Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen. Jointly commissioned by Esa-Pekka Salonen for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s 70th Anniversary, New York Philharmonic: Alan Gilbert, Music Director and International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn’s 60th Anniversary.

Score and parts in preparation.

ANDERS HILLBORG Violin Concerto No. 2 (2016) violin and orchestra. 24 mins.

2(=picc).2(II=ca).2.1.cbsn – 4.2.2.0 – perc(2) – strings (large section).

FP: 20.10.16, Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden: Lisa Batiashvili/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo.

Commissioned by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Minnesota Orchestra (Osmo Vänskä, Music Director) and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

Score and parts in preparation.

Genesis Project (2015) clarinet, girls choir and orchestra. Duration 10 mins. solo cl – solo vln - girls choir - picc.1.2.2(II=bcl).1.cbsn – 2.2.0.0 – pno – strings.

Jointly commissioned by Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, International Chamber Music Festival, Stavanger, Norway, Oslo Philharmonic, and St Paul Chamber Orchestra FP: 3.12.15, Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden: Martin Fröst/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra Score and parts for hire.

Bach Materia (2017) violin and strings (8.6.5.4.3). 16-20 mins.

FP: 2.3.17, Konserthuset, Örebro, Sweden: Pekka Kuusisto/Swedish Chamber Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard.

Commissioned by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra.

Score and parts in preparation.

Second Movement for J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3 (2017) strings. 1 min.

FP: 2.3.17, Konserthuset, Örebro, Sweden: Swedish Chamber Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard.

Commissioned by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra Score and parts in preparation.

COLIN MATTHEWS Voices of the Air (2016) soprano, chorus and chamber orchestra. c.18 mins. Text: Edward Thomas – The Trumpet, Emily Dickinson – I would not paint — a picture —, Rabindranath Tagore – Sing the song of the moment, Katherine Mansfield – Voices of the Air, adapted from Longfellow – The Day is Done (English).

2.2.2(II=bcl).2 – 2.2.0.0 – timp – harp – strings (4.4.3.3.2 players minimum).

FP: 26.11.16, St Luke’s Church, Battersea, London, UK: Katy Hill/Festival Chorus/Andrea Brown. Commissioned by the Festival Chorus for their 40th anniversary with financial support from Wandsworth Borough Council, and donations from Julian and Annette Armstrong, Antony Lewis-Crosby, Peter and Ilana Dannheisser, Andrew Purkis and Ferelith Hordon.

Full score, vocal score and parts for hire.

Piano Concerto (2016) piano and chamber orchestra. 28 mins.

2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2(I=ebcl).2(II=cbsn) – 2.2.0.0 – timp(=claves) – strings (8.6.4.4.2 players).

FP: 12.10.16, Younger Hall, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK: Tom Poster/Scottish Chamber Orchestra/ Thierry Fischer. Commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with generous support from The Idlewild Trust, Britten-Pears Foundation, RVW Trust, Cruden Foundation and The Hope Scott Trust.

Score and parts for hire.

The White Road (2017) a concerto for flute and orchestra after Edmund de Waal. c.14. mins 2(II=picc).2.2(I=ebcl).2 – 0.2.2.btrbn.0 – perc(2) – strings.

FP: 3.2.17, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, UK: Katherine Bryan/Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Arild Remmereit. Commissioned for Katherine Bryan by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, Music Director.

Kindly supported by RSNO donors.

Score and parts for hire.

CARL VINE Wonders (2016) SATB divisi and orchestra. 15 mins. Text: Walt Whitman – Wonders (English).

3.3.3.3 – 4.3.3.1 – timp – perc(2) – 2 harp – strings.

FP: 22.9.16, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney Philharmonia Choirs/Sydney Youth Orchestra/Brett Weymark. Commissioned by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.

Score and parts for hire

Ensemble MATTHEW HINDSON This Year’s Apocalypse (2016) ensemble of 14 players. 12 mins.

1.0.ca.1.ssax.1 – 1010 – perc(1): BD/tam-t/cym/wdbl/c.bell/rototoms – pno – 2vln.vla.vlc.db Written for the Verbrugghen Ensemble, ensemble in residence at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

FP: 4.10.16, Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Verbrugghen Ensemble/John Lynch Score and parts for hire

GUSTAV MAHLER arr. COLIN MATTHEWS Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (2016) transcription for tenor and chamber ensemble of 12 players. c.17 mins.

Text: Gustav Mahler (German). 1.1.1.bcl.0 – 2.0.0.0 – harp – strings (1.1.1.1.1) FP: 9.4.17, Stadthaus, Winterthur, Zürich, Switzerland: Ian Bostridge/Musikkollegium Winterthur. Commissioned by Musikkollegium Winterthur.

Score and parts for hire.

COLIN MATTHEWS It Rains (2017) baritone and ensemble of 11 players. c.5 mins Text: Edward Thomas (English). fl(=picc).ob.bcl – hn –- pno.harp – 2 vln.vla.vlc.db.

FP: 21.3.17, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Roderick Williams/Nash Ensemble/Martyn Brabbins.

Full score, vocal score and parts for hire.

Chamber DEREK BERMEL Intonations (2016) string quartet. 21 mins FP: 23.5.16, NY Phil Biennial, 92nd St Y, New York, NY, USA: JACK Quartet.

Score and parts in preparation Over Algiers (2016) violin and piano. 9 mins FP: 24.9.16, Classix-Kempten, TheaterinKempten, Kempten, Germany Score and part in preparation.

JOHN BULL arr. COLIN MATTHEWS Pavan: St Thomas Wake! (2016) 7 players. 3 mins afl.bcl.pno.harp.vla.vlc.db.

FP: 4.11.16, Kings Place, London, UK: members of the English Chamber Orchestra. For Max. Score and parts for hire.

RAVEL arr. COLIN MATTHEWS

FRANCISCO COLL

La Vallée des Cloches (2016) c.6 mins picc.1.afl.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 4.2.3.1 – timp – perc(3) – 2 harp – cel – strings.

FP: 13.1.17, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Nicholas Collon. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3.

Score and parts for hire.

Cantos (2017 string quartet. c.5 mins FP: 10.4.17, Iglesia de San Miguel, Cuenca, Spain: Cuarteto Casals. Commissioned by Semana de Música Religiosa de Cuenca for Cuarteto Casals.

Score and parts in preparation.

DOMENICO SCARLATTI arr. JOHN WOOLRICH Scarlatti Sonatas Set 2 (2016) Scarlatti, orchestrated for chamber orchestra. 15 mins.

1(=picc).1.1.bcl.0 – 1000 – mar – strings.

FP: 3.2.17, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Britten Sinfonia.

Score and parts for hire.

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MARTIN SUCKLING

TOM COULT Two Games and a Nocturne (2016) chamber ensemble of 6 players. c.11 mins. fl(=picc).cl.perc(1): mar/glsp/2 wdbl/optional crot – pno.vln.vlc.

FP: 16.2.17, Hallé St Michael’s, Ancoats, Manchester, UK: Psappha. Commissioned by Psappha with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Britten-Pears Foundation.

Score and parts in preparation.

NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS New Publications

New Recordings

alto saxophone (=sopranino saxophone) and piano. 5 mins FP: 15.2.17 Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, UK: John Harle/Steve Lodder.

Written for John Harle on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.

(Exclusive until October 2017)

george benjamin

THOMAS ADÈS

OLIVER KNUSSEN

jonathan harvey

CARL DAVIS Charlie’s Flea Circus (2016)

Dream of the Song

Full score 0-571-53887-8

£29.99

Reflection (2016) Op. 31a

Ricercare una melodia (trombone version)

violin and piano. c.8 mins FP: 3.10.16, Town Hall, Birmingham, UK: Tamsin Waley-Cohen/Huw Watkins.

Commissioned by Town Hall Symphony Hall (Birmingham) and the European Concert Hall Organisation, in memory of Lyndon Jenkins.

Score and part in preparation.

Playing score 0-571-53979-3

DAVID MATTHEWS

Close Ups (Närbilder)

A Song for Max (2016) Op. 143 flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. 4 mins FP: 4.11.16, Kings Place, London, UK: English Chamber Orchestra.

Score and parts for hire.

Solo flute 0-571-53980-7

Variations on a theme of Haydn (2016) Op. 144 piano 4 hands. c.17 mins.

FP: 8.7.17, Cheltenham Festival, Cheltenham, UK: Joseph Tong/Waka Hasegawa.

Commissioned for Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa with funds from the John S Cohen Foundation, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust, the Radcliffe Trust, and the Cheltenham Music Festival.

Score in preparation.

Sunrise (2016) Op.145a string quartet. c.5 mins FP: 28.4.17, St Werburgh’s Catholic Church, Chester, UK: Onslow Quartet.

Commissioned by the Onslow Quartet: Craig Clewley and Andrew McCaddon (violins), Tim Rowland (viola) and Tom Teague (cello).

Score and parts in preparation.

Choral FRANCISCO COLL Stella (2016) A reflection on Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella. SATB a cappella choir in 8 parts. 5 mins Text: Ave Maris Stella (Latin). Commissioned by ORA100 for Suzi Digby OBE and the singers of ORA. Score in preparation.

anders hillborg Violin Concerto No. 1

carl vine

benjamin britten Cello Suites Nos. 1-3 Quirine Viersen Globe Records GLO5259

O Light of Light (premiere recording) ORA Singers/Suzi Digby.

Harmonia Mundi

Jonathan harvey

Concerto for Cello

Full Score 0-571-57213-8 Cello and piano 0-571-56963-3

£24.99 £14.99

Concerto for Oboe

Solo oboe part 0-571-57215-4

£10.99

Concerto for Orchestra

Full Score 0-571-57231-6

£24.99

Piano Concerto No. 1

Full score 0-571-57216-2

£29.99

Piano Concerto No. 2

Full score 0-571-57217-0 Two pianos 0-571-57218-9 Solo piano part 0-571-57230-8

£24.99 £19.99 £10.99

Sonata for Piano (four hands)

Score 0-571-57220-0

£14.99

String Quartet No. 5

Solo piano 0-571-57224-3

£12.99 £19.99

Symphony No.7

Score 0-571-57223-5

Fantômas Danish String Quartet Amiina. Mengi06CD & LP

HARRY ESCOTT

£14.99 £19.99

HARRY ESCOTT

Love Came Down at Christmas (2016) Carol for unaccompanied SATB chorus. 2 mins.

Text: Christina Rossetti (Eng). Commissioned by BBC Music Magazine FP: 11.12.16, ‘Carols for Carers’, Tewkesbury Abbey, Tewkesbury, UK: Octavo/Rachel Bowen Score in preparation.

£8.99

Score 0-571-53970-X Parts 0-571-53971-8

Score 0-571-57221-9 Parts 0-571-57222-7

ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGE

£30.00

Kongsgaard Variations

Lacrimae (2017) SATB a cappella choir in 8 parts. 6½. mins Text: Stabat Mater (Latin).

FP: 7.6.2017, ENSEMS Contemporary Music Festival of València, Spain: Orfeó Universitari of València/Francesc Valldecabres.

Commissioned by the University Choir of Valencia.

Score in preparation.

O Light of Light (2016) Reflection on ‘O nata lux’ by Thomas Tallis for unaccompanied SATB chorus.

2 mins.

Commissioned by ORA100 for Suzi Digby OBE and the singers of ORA FP: 19.5.16, First Presbyterian Church, Austin, TX, USA: ORA Singers/Suzi Digby Score on special sale from the Hire Library.

AMIINA

£19.99

Full score 0-571-53979-3

Asyla; Brahms; Polaris; Tevot Samuel Dale Johnson/London Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Adès LSO Live LSO0798

£24.99

Toccatissimo

Song of June Tenebrae/Nigel Short Signum SIGCD904

anders hillborg The Strand Settings Renée Fleming/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo Decca B01MDTVUL1

MORTEN LAURIDSEN Prayer: The Songs of Morten Lauridsen Jeremy Huw Williams/Paula Fan/etc.

Cowlitz Bay Recordings E-3599

DAVID MATTHEWS Piano Trios Nos. 1-3; Journeying Songs Leonore Piano Trio/Gemma Rosefield Toccata Classics TOCC0369 Romanza Madeleine Mitchell/Nigel Clayton Divine Art (download) Arrangements of songs by Brahms, Wolf and Schubert Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Thomas Hampson Channel Classics CCS 38917

£9.99

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON

£9.99

Dissonance; No Nights Dark Enough; Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Five Bedroom Community HVALUR28 (release 7 Apr 2017)

Full score 0-571-57226-X Violin and piano 0-571-57227-8

£24.99 £14.99

The Tree of Man

Vocal score 0-571-57225-1 Violin Concerto

XX

Full score 0-571-57228-6 Solo violin part 0-571-57229-4

£9.99 £7.99

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John Harle: The Saxophone Paul Harris wins Award for Excellence

John Harle: The Saxophone

On 9 February 2017, The Music Teacher Awards for Excellence presented educational composer Paul Harris with the prize for Best Music Education Product. Launched at last year’s Music Education Expo, Harris’s Simultaneous Learning Practice Starters were an immediate hit with music teachers and students alike, providing a truly unique and inventive way to kick-start music practice sessions and lessons. Teachers and pupils pull out a card from a pack of 52 colourful and wonderfully designed cards, follow the instructions and start making music. Although this sounds like a fairly simple concept to begin with, the cards are based on Harris’s Simultaneous Learning approach and aim to connect and develop all areas of musical learning in a fun and imaginative way. By covering topics including scales, theory, listening, performing, improvisation and much more, the Practice Starters create a holistic practice and learning experience.

Launched at a celebratory concert at London’s Milton Court on 17 March, John Harle: The Saxophone is a one-of-a-kind publication by the legendary saxophonist and Ivor Novello Award-winning composer.

What teachers have to say about the cards: ‘Fabulous!’

‘I use these every day!’

‘Music lessons will never be the same again! Thanks Paul’ ‘These are proving very popular with pupils…they even ask to use them!’

Paul Harris: Simultaneous Learning Practice Starters | 0-571-53943-2 | £4.99

Drawing on Harle’s experience and expertise, and with photography, diagrams and new practice tools throughout, this two-volume box set explores resonant tone production, breathing, fluent articulation, relaxation and performance techniques. New concepts such as ‘The Reed Fan’, ‘The Cathedral of Resonance’ and ‘The Engine Room’ help students to visualise and understand aspects of playing in a completely new way.

‘This book has been my absolute obsession over the last six years. As it took shape, I realised that it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever done – it’s my life’s work and experience in saxophone playing, presented in written form.’

John Harle

John Harle: The Saxophone | 0-571-53962-9 | £48.00

Media & Film Carl Davis – Ethel and Ernest

Carl Davis – Napoléon Although he conducted the live premiere back in 1980, it took Carl Davis until 2016 to record his score for Abel Gance’s 5 ½ hour epic film Napoléon. The digitally restored film was released by the BFI in selected cinemas last Autumn and is now available on DVD. The recording is available on Davis’s own label The Carl Davis Collection.

Dan Jones – My Scientology Movie BAFTA and Ivor Novello Award winning Dan Jones has composed the score for Louis Theroux’s feature documentary, My Scientology Movie, which was released in UK cinemas last October. Suffused with humour but in many ways stranger than fiction (while Theroux is making a film about the Church of Scientology, it transpires that the Church is making a film about him), the film garnered considerable press attention and sizeable audiences. The US release took place in March.

Charmingly scored by Carl Davis, the feature-length animated film Ethel and Ernest, based on the picture book by Raymond Briggs and directed by Roger Mainwood, was released in UK cinemas last Autumn. Screened on BBC Television on 28 December (with an audience of roughly 3.5 million viewers), the film also featured a closing song written and sung by Sir Paul McCartney, which Davis arranged and orchestrated – a revival of the working relationship they formed for McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio.

24

photos: still from ‘ethel and ernest’ © Ethel & Ernest Productions Ltd 2016

…and Television Jones also composed the music for the BBC1 primetime drama SS-GB. Based on the novel by Len Deighton set in a bleakly-imagined London following German victory in the Battle of Britain, the series was executive-produced by Sally Woodward Gentle, who was also behind Channel 4’s Any Human Heart, also scored by Jones. Other recent high-profile dramas with music by Faber Music Media composers include the second series of Channel 4’s hit drama Humans (scored by Sarah Warne), and the Dr Who spin-off Class (music by Blair Mowat).

Anna Meredith electronics is combined with extracts from Vivaldi’s original and video installations by her sister, Eleanor Meredith. The 60-minute project, presented by the Scottish Ensemble, premiered at Spitalfields Festival, London in June before performances in Edinburgh and Glasgow in November: ‘More than anything else Meredith has done, Anno blends her classical and club personas and proves that the fusion can work.’

The Guardian (Kate Molleson), 14 November 2016

2016 was quite a year for Anna Meredith. Her genre-defying debut album, ‘Varmints’, garnered plaudits internationally, with 4 and 5-star reviews across the board following its March release on the Moshi Moshi label. It scooped the prestigious Scottish Album of the Year Award, was Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Music’ for 2016 and Loud and Quiet’s Album of the Year. Anna was also voted No 1 in The List’s Hot 100 (of Cultural Contributors to 2016).

‘ A jaw-dropping debut…’

The Line of Best Fit Anna toured ‘Varmints’ with her 6-piece band throughout much of 2016, taking in dates at Glastonbury, Latitude, The Great Escape, Celtic Connections and many other UK festivals, as well as dates throughout Europe from Portugal to Slovakia, and Spain to Iceland.

The band also gave sell-out headline shows at the ICA and Scala in London. In the coming weeks they travel stateside to make their US debut tour with dates at SXSW (Austin), the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville), Los Angeles, San Diego and New York.

‘Anno’ and other premieres Elsewhere, 2016 saw the premiere of several new works from Meredith, not least, Anno, her stunning reimagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, in which her own new music for string orchestra and

Other 2016 premieres included Tripotage Miniatures for the Aurora Orchestra, Tuggemo for the Kronos Quartet and Studies for Big Band for the Mike Fletcher Jazz Orchestra. In November and December, her orchestral work Fringeflower was taken up by both the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir James MacMillan and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Robin Ticciati.

Looking Ahead And the good news is that 2017 promises to be just as abundant with musical activity. In March the massed body percussion piece, Handsfree, received its German premiere in Hamburg’s stunning new Elbphilharmonie, with two sell-out performances by the NDR Youth Symphony Orchestra. There’s a new commission from the Barbican Centre for their Sound Unbound weekend on 29 April, and then in May the recorder concerto Origami Songs receives its Australian premiere by Erik Bosgraaf and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

As part of the PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music Biennial 2017, Meredith’s Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra will receive two UK performances in June and July by Southbank Sinfonia - in London’s Southbank Centre, and also in Hull (UK City of Culture 2017).

Further afield the Beatboxer Concerto will also be staged at the Prague Spring Festival on 1 June, by Berg Orchestra conducted by Peter Vrábel, and soloists Peter Strenáčik and vocal group SKETY. And the Malmö SO and Jessica Cottis give the Swedish premiere of Fringeflower on 16 November.

photos: anna meredith © kate bones; anna meredith and her band at Transmusicales © Gwendal Le Flem

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New signing - Neil Brand

London Contemporary Orchestra to tour Greenwood’s ‘There Will Be Blood’ Live Greenwood’s iconic score to the Oscar-winning film ‘There Will Be Blood’ has toured the UK in recent months. Hugh Brunt and the London Contemporary Orchestra brought the much-praised live film version to London, Birmingham, Brighton and Bristol between 30 January and 7 February. It’s a thrilling experience – the complete film with all the dialogue left in and the soundtrack played by a live orchestra.

The composer joined the LCO on ondes Martenot in the London performance. Elsewhere, that role was taken up by acclaimed soloist Cynthia Millar. ‘There Will Be Blood’ Live was last heard in London as part of David Byrne’s Meltdown festival in August 2015, when The Times commented:

Faber Music is delighted to announce a new publishing agreement with UK composer, writer and broadcaster, Neil Brand, in respect of his concert works for actors, singers and orchestra. To date Neil has created two such works, both live adaptations of radio dramatisations, for which he has written both script and music.

A Christmas Carol is a 75-minute adaptation of Charles Dickens’s masterpiece and is perfect festive concert-hall fare. Neil has scored his version for 10 actors, a chorus of 24 singers and orchestra. It was originally commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and 4, and recorded in 2014 in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers – with Robert Powell playing Scrooge. It was later broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

In December 2016 a live concert version was revived by the same forces (with Philip Jackson taking the role of Scrooge), conducted by Martin André, performances taking place in London’s Barbican Hall, and in Saffron Hall.

The Wind in the Willows was also originally commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and 4, and first broadcast on Radio 4 in 2013, again with the BBC SO and BBC Singers. The cast included Philip Jackson, Claire Skinner and Stephen Mangan. This 64-minute adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s classic Edwardian idyll is scored for 10 actors, 8 singers and orchestra.

Looking ahead, Neil is working on a new concert commission, The People’s Guide to the Orchestra, to be launched in the Royal Albert Hall on 8 May by the Merton Music Foundation.

A Christmas Carol 10 actors, 24 singers and orchestra.

75 minutes. 2222 - 2221 - timp - perc(2) - harp - strings

The Wind in the Willows 10 actors, 8 singers and orchestra 64 minutes. 2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2.2 - 4221 - timp - perc(4) - cel - harp - strings

Kristjan Järvi and Greenwood Leipzig focus In January Kristjan Järvi conducted an all-Jonny Greenwood portrait concert in Leipzig, part of the MDR Sinfonieorchester’s innovative ‘Ideal Chaos’ festival. The programme featured the German premiere of Greenwood’s Water for chamber orchestra, together with 48 Responses to Polymorphia (for 48 solo strings), and the 16-minute Suite from ‘There Will Be Blood’. Harpa hall. André de Ridder will conduct the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with cellist Bryndís Halla Gylfadóttir.

26

photo: neil Brand © james betts

‘The mournful soundtrack is almost a star in its own right… as essential to the film’s sense of dread as the music of Ligeti and Penderecki is to Kubrick’s The Shining.’

Other orchestras are now taking up live screenings. The Melbourne SO will give the Australian premiere of There Will Be Blood as part of their ‘MSO at the Movies’ series. The performance takes place in Hamer Hall on 5 August.

Sigurðsson to release ‘Dissonance’ album

Released on the Bedroom Community label on 7 April, Valgeir Sigurðsson’s fourth studio album, ‘Dissonance’, features premiere recordings of his two most recent orchestral works No Nights Dark Enough and Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Five, alongside and a 23-minute ‘explosion’ of a single moment from Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ Quartet K465. Sigurðsson’s first solo release since 2012, it sees him continue to explore Western tradition alongside his own methods of electronic sound manipulation.

Sigurðsson’s recording process, using a technique developed over some years, involves recording each of the orchestra sections separately, layer upon layer. A handful of instruments are multiplied to create a full orchestral sound in a way that allows complete control over the material, and creates a truly unique ensemble sound that also facilitates further electronic manipulation. This elastic palette of sound also provides the basis for a live performance version of Dissonance (with Liam Byrne on strings, and visuals from the Antivj collective) which Sigurðsson intends to take to the stage in 2017.

Someone much more closely associated with the viola da gamba is the English composer John Dowland, whose songs and consort music are marked by longing and melancholy. Asked by Robin Rimbaud (of Scanner fame) to create a new piece in honour of

Dowland for the City of London Sinfonia, Sigurðsson created No Nights Dark Enough for chamber orchestra and electronics, with movement titles drawn from Dowland’s ‘Flow My Tears.’ Eighteen Hundred & Seventy-Five was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for the 125th celebration of the Icelandic settlement in Canada. The piece narrates the treacherous journey undertaken by the settlers in the 1800s, and the hardships they endured.

Live films for WWI Centenary The Somme100FILM tour is going from strength to strength, with audiences around the world enjoying the rare opportunity to see orchestras performing Laura Rossi’s score live to the iconic WWI documentary film ‘The Battle of the Somme.’

Amateur groups, in particular, have played a huge part in the success so far, with many orchestras performing live to film for the first time. The tour now stands at 95 performances, almost now at the magical figure of 100 live performances in the centenary year (July 2016-July 2017). It’s not too late for your orchestra to take part!

The Imperial War Museum are offering the film hire free of charge until 15 July, and Faber Music is offering heavily discounted hire rates for performing materials and licence. Somme100 FILM are also able to support orchestras with marketing, PR, digital resources and programme material and pre-concert talks.

Goodall’s ‘Eternal Light’ at Carnegie Hall Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light: A Requiem received a triumphant New York premiere in Carnegie Hall on 20 November 2016, an event presented by DCINY (Distinguished Concerts International New York). The performance was given by a massed choir of 270 singers from across the USA and the UK, all conducted by Jonathan Griffiths. There was a standing ovation for Goodall himself, there in person and who had earlier given an insightful talk about the work (now approaching its 500th live performance).

‘A journey of beauty, heartache, and in the end, hope... one of the more moving things I have heard in some time.’

New York Concert Review (Jeffrey Williams), 23 November 2016

ORA premiere Escott’s Tallis homage

Looking ahead, 2017 is the centenary of ‘The Battle of the Ancre’ film – a little-known masterpiece of British non-fiction cinema and the acclaimed sequel to the famous Somme film. It contains haunting images of trench warfare. A live film tour is now being planned for this too – some Somme orchestras are already lined up to perform this. The IWM are offering their 65-minute film free of charge from July 2017-Nov 2018 to orchestras performing Laura Rossi’s accompanying orchestral score. Faber Music will again be offering discounted rates for that period. For more information, contact musicfornow@fabermusic.com

Nishat Khan: Aldeburgh Festival focus Founded in only 2014, the ORA Singers (under the leadership of their Founder and Artistic Director Suzi Digby) are already being talked about as one of the UK’s leading professional chamber choirs.

Their latest album is an homage to former Greenwich resident, Thomas Tallis, and was launched at a son et lumière event in that borough, at London’s historic Cutty Sark.

Sitar maestro Nishat Khan is to give two concerts at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, both offering what promise to be rather unique listening experiences. On 15 June he is joined by the St Ephraim Male Choir from Budapest, for a performance of his Meeting of Angels. It’s a full-evening union of ancient plainchant and sitar improvisation that promises to explore the beautiful acoustic and architectural properties of Blythburgh Church.

On 17 June, Khan will give three solo concerts throughout the day in the beautiful space of Orford Church. Starting at 8am and concluding at 10.30pm, his raags will explore and respond to the day and the night, and to the light and the atmosphere of that unique part of East Anglia.. photos: Nishat Khan ; ORA at the cutty sark © Nick Rutter

‘Tallis and the Tides of Love’ will feature seven world premieres, all inspired by works of Tallis. One of these is by Faber composer, Harry Escott, perhaps best-known as a highly successful film and TV composer (Shame, Hard Candy, The Face of an Angel, River) but who started out as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral before training at the Royal College of Music and Oxford University. His exquisite O Light of Light, is inspired by Tallis’s beautiful anthem O Nata Lux.

Alexander L’Estrange’s ‘Song Cycle’ Commissioned to mark the Yorkshire Grand Départ of the Tour de France in 2014, Song Cycle is Alexander L’Estrange’s choral homage to the humble bicycle. Premiered by over 400 singers in York Minster, it’s a 45-minute, 10-movement work for SATB choir and jazz quintet. And it’s now available to community groups who have risen to the challenge of the composer’s successes Zimbe! and Ahoy!, as he’s added an optional unison children’s part to Song Cycle, too. It’s premiered on 4 March in Markyate with The Lea Singers with the choir of Beechwood Park School, before further outings in Cheltenham and Storrington. For more info, visit songcyclevlv.com 27

Jonathan Harvey Scores from Faber Music HEAD OFFICE

Ricercare una Melodia for trombone and electronics

Faber Music Ltd Bloomsbury House 74–77 Great Russell St London WC1B 3DA www.fabermusic.com

In Ricercare una melodia, an ingenious work for solo instrument and tape delay from the mid-1980s, Jonathan Harvey takes the literal meaning of ricercare – ‘to seek’ – as the inspiration for a roving, linear structure. It unfolds as two five-part canons – the first frenetic, twittering and rowdy, the second (where the canon is progressively augmented) more luminous and contemplative.

Promotion Department: +44(0)207 908 5311/2 promotion@fabermusic.com

Sales & Hire FM Distribution Burnt Mill Elizabeth Way Harlow, Essex CM20 2HX Sales: +44(0)1279 82 89 82 sales@fabermusic.com Hire: +44(0)1279 82 89 07/8 hire@fabermusic.com

Faber Music is proud to announce the publication of a new standardised edition of this masterpiece from one of the visionaries of Electro-Acoustic Music, beginning with the version for solo trombone.

Playing Score | 0-571-52215-7 | £8.99

USA & CANADA

Advaya for cello, electronic keyboard and electronics

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In Harvey’s Advaya live electronics are used to explore the liminal areas in which different kinds of sounds meet, be it the boundaries between pizzicato, tapping the instrument and the juddering sound of heavy bowing, or between a singing cantabile line and almost literal simulation of the human voice. The work remains first and foremost a showcase for the cello, however, with the fantastic landscapes around the instrument being reflections or projections of it.

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

‘The interplay between cello and the extra electronic voices and sounds are sensationally effective. Harvey’s wild ingenuity left us awestricken.’

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

by Sam Wigglesworth with contributions from Tim Brooke and Rachel Topham Designed by Sam Wigglesworth cover image: francisco coll © judith coll

Financial Times (David Murray), 22 November 1994

Playing Score & Cello Part | 0-571-51727-7 | £19.99 Playing Score | 0-571-51888-5 | £9.99

Valley of Aosta for ensemble and electronics A snowstorm, avalanche and thunderstorm: an explosion of energy and diffracted light, virtually without any figurative reference. Inspired by a dramatic J. M. W. Turner’s painting of Alpine weather, this brilliant and incisive ensemble work from 1989 channels torrents of energy into 14 dazzling minutes, where colours shift and identities blur.

Scored for 13 instruments – including pairs of harps and synthesizers, each with one tuned a quarter-tone higher – this music is often very rapid and fragmented. Gestures are atomised in fluid sequences, suggesting a kind of spray in which the musical ideas are swept along.

‘A sustained burst of post-impressionistic colour sprays, rapid in movement and brilliant in impact.’

The Financial Times (Max Loppert), 26 June 1989

Full Score | 0-571-51446-4 | £24.99

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