Fortissimo Spring 2018 by Faber Music

FABER MUSIC NEWS — SPRING 2018

fortissimo! TANSY DAVIES Announcing a residency at the Concertgebouw, and her new music theatre work ‘Cave’

Plus Remembering Donald Mitchell ‘The Exterminating Angel’ at the Met Oliver Knussen manuscripts acquired by Sacher Foundation George Benjamin and Tom Coult featured at the Holland Festival ‘Music for Now’ signs Danny Elfman’s Violin Concerto

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

Donald Mitchell (1925-2017) Faber Music is sad to announce the death of Dr Donald Mitchell CBE, our inspirational founder. Mitchell was an extraordinary person whose expertise stretched far and wide, and established him as a world expert in the music of Gustav Mahler and, of course, Benjamin Britten. The founding of Faber Music in 1965 was one of Mitchell’s most profound achievements, and the company would not be as it is today without his vision and energy. He was the first Managing Director, then Chairman from 1977 to 1988, after which he assumed the role of President until 1995. Oliver Knussen once said to Mitchell ‘you may not be a composer, but you think like one’, and it was the sheer depth of his musical understanding that set him apart from others in his field. Mitchell was also heavily involved in the work of PRS, becoming chairman in 1990.

Dear colleagues, We have dedicated this issue to the memory of Dr Donald Mitchell – the founder of Faber Music – in gratitude and admiration. I well remember arriving at Queen Square, after nearly 10 years at Boosey & Hawkes, and meeting him for the first time. He had trod a similar path, as have several others since. It was immediately obvious to me that Faber Music was a very different organisation. Led from the top, by Donald himself and the indefatigable Martin Kingsbury, there was a palpable can-do spirit. Enthusiasm, commitment and engagement were the hallmarks of Donald’s style which was communicated to all who came into contact with him. One also enjoyed his wry and often wicked sense of humour, his intelligence, warmth and loyalty. With the extraordinary support of the Faber family, this was a publisher for whom the bottom line was less important than the nature of what we were doing. Donald was cultured in the broadest sense, a sense which gave his musical choices space to breathe. I never felt or heard anything from any of our composers other than respect and affection for him. Those contracted then were Peter Sculthorpe, Malcolm Arnold, George Benjamin, Colin and David Matthews, Jonathan Harvey, Nicholas Maw and Oliver Knussen… What a range of talent! A range surely encouraged by Benjamin Britten, the company’s co-founder, and the creator above all who fanned the fire that burned within Donald.

Central to Mitchell’s life was an unqualified admiration for Britten’s music. He began writing about the composer in the late 1940s, and never stopped: the immense task of editing the six volumes of Letters from a Life preoccupied him for well over 30 years, although by 2012, when the final volume appeared, he had not been directly involved for some time. Mitchell was the last surviving executor of Britten’s will, becoming director of the Britten-Pears Foundation and chair of the Britten Estate: his tireless advocacy of Britten’s music meant that there was never any posthumous decline in the composer’s reputation. This devotion to Britten was matched by a fascination with the life and music of Mahler, on whom we wrote copiously. Edward Said, in the introduction to Mitchell’s influential study The Language of Modern Music, praised his writing’s ‘passionate unflagging energies, its unshakeable faith in communication and community, its deep love of and concern for music as an aesthetic and social practice’. ‘As Faber Music’s founder, Mitchell contributed immeasurably to the world of classical contemporary and serious educational music publishing. He was an unfailing champion and supporter of the generations which followed him at the company, including myself. Faber Music’s unique DNA – quality, integrity and a fiercely independent, maverick spirit – is epitomised thWrough the extraordinary list of composers and the single-minded spirit with which he built the business. It is on his shoulders that we now stand, and we owe him a great deal.’ Richard King, CEO of Faber Music

More about Donald and his extraordinary achievements on the next pages. I know his spirit is still with us, and I believe his legacy is still an inspiration.

Sally Cavender Performance Music Director|Vice Chairman, Faber Music

PHOTOS: SALLY CAVENDER © MAURICE FOXALL; DONALD MITCHELL WITH IMOGEN HOLST, COLIN MATTHEWS, PETER PEARS AND WILLIAM SERVAES AT A REHEARSAL FOR THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF BRITTEN’S THIRD STRING QUARTET (TWO WEEKS AFTER BRITTEN’S DEATH). © NIGEL LUCKHURST, BRITTEN–PEARS FOUNDATION

HIGHLIGHTS

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‘I first met Donald in 1965, shortly after he had founded Faber Music. He gave me freelance work – he may have warmed to me because, like him, I didn’t have a music degree, and also I shared his passion for Mahler. Through Donald I met Britten, for whom I worked for four years, and also through Donald I eventually became a Faber Music composer – he encouraged me to write a substantial work that would impress him, and so I wrote my Second Symphony. He became a dear friend and I miss the wonderful talks we had about music. Altogether I think perhaps I owe more to Donald than to any other person in my life. Without him I would not be where I am now.’ David Matthews

‘For someone who had had little formal musical education, Donald’s knowledge of and passion for so many areas of the musical world was remarkable. His devotion to Britten was paralleled by his obsession with Mahler, publishing four studies of the music between 1958 and 2005, a pioneering achievement, begun well before Mahler had reached any kind of general recognition in this country. (‘A very tolerable imitation of a composer’, had been Vaughan Williams’s assessment.) If one had to find one word to characterise Donald it would be ‘enthusiasm’: whether one agreed or not with his always eloquently expressed opinions, it was impossible not to admire the sharpness of his mind and the generosity of his spirit.’ Colin Matthews

‘Beyond the intrepid and courageous step of founding the company, Donald instilled an ethos within Faber Music that remains absolutely unchanged to this day – to serve new music at the highest level of excellence in every possible domain, from the quality of orchestral material to cover design, from exceptional standards of typography to the most energetic and devoted promotion. Donald loved the arts – and above all music – in every fibre of his being, and that passion lay behind the way he ran the firm. He was also, however, a shrewd businessman and it was the mixture of these two characteristics which gave the company such a tremendous start in the world and which has sustained it now for over a half-century.

‘As well as his extraordinary powers of will and persuasion, evident in the many ways he devised to disseminate those enthusiasms which truly possessed him, or in the small matter of creating a major music publishing house for his most beloved composer from scratch, I will remember Donald’s gentleness, his touching sensitivity to the music that he loved, the fierceness with which he held his beliefs, and some great personal kindnesses to me over the years. I am very proud to have been supported by one of the last of the great music publishers.’ Oliver Knussen

But finally Donald was also a very dear friend; I will never be able to describe how much I owe him, nor how much I will miss his presence.’ George Benjamin

PHOTOS: DONALD MITCHELL WITH BENJAMIN BRITTEN © NIGEL LUCKHURST, BRITTEN–PEARS FOUNDATION

Knussen in Basel

Tansy Davies Since the premiere of her award-winning opera Between Worlds in 2014, Tansy Davies has been enjoying increased international exposure, with Forest, her recent concerto for four horns and orchestra, commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Warsaw Autumn Festival. Now, with a residency at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Cave, a chamber opera opening this summer, Davies looks set to cement her position as one of the most interesting and individual composers of her generation.

The Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel has announced the acquisition of The Oliver Knussen Collection. Founded in 1973 the foundation developed into a highly recognised international research centre for the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with some hundred estates and collections from leading composers and performers including Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, Béla Bartók, Edgar Varèse, Anton Webern, György Ligeti, and Hans Werner Henze – to name just a few. Other British composers with collections housed there include Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Jonathan Harvey. Besides Knussen’s musical manuscripts, the Collection – which has been made possible thanks to the generous support of André Hoffmann – also includes correspondence, programme booklets and reviews, as well as sound recordings. It will be expanded on an ongoing basis. The acquisition of the collection was marked on 14 February with a concert by soprano Claire Booth and Ensemble Recherche which included Knussen’s Reflection, Four Late Poems and an Epigram of Rainer Maria Rilke, Cantata, and the Whitman Settings, alongside George Benjamin’s Olicantus (in a previously unpublished version for piano) as well as music by Carter, Henze and Stravinsky. The concert also included Patrick Gallois giving the premiere of the revised version of Knussen’s Study for ‘Metamorphosis’ for solo bassoon, a 5-and-a-half-minute work originally written in April 1972 and revised especially for the Sacher concert, with a new dedication ‘to the memory of Alan Stout, American composer, teacher and polymath, a dear friend for 50 years.’ The Metamorphosis of the title is Kafka’s, on which Knussen had once planned to base a large piece. Knussen has described this study as ‘a cartoon’ for the larger project.

IMAGES: OLIVER KNUSSEN © HANA ZUSHI-RHODES, ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC EXCERPT FROM ‘STUDY FOR METAMORPHOSIS’ BY OLIVER KNUSSEN © FABER MUSIC

Concertgebouw residency The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam has announced Davies as its next Composer in Residence for the 18/19 season. The role will truly see Davies ‘in residence’; residing in Amsterdam for several months, she will lead workshops with young composers and collaborate on special performances of her music by students of the Conservatorium of Amsterdam. To crown the residency, Davies will write a new work for the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, to be premiered in May 2019. Other events already announced include a performance of her Song of Pure Nothingness, as well as the reed quintet Calefax premiering a new transcription of The Beginning of the World (by their bass clarinet player Jelte Althuis) in December 2018.

Shedding new light on ‘Undertow’ In early March, members of the London Sinfonietta premiered a newly revised version of Davies’s Undertow for five players as part of the London element of Contemporary Music for All’s weekend festival. Composed in 1999 for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and viola, Davies’s reworking retains the original structure whilst recalibrating dynamics, voicings and tempi. New light is shedding on the material through re-orchestration, and Davies describes the resulting colours as made ‘more vivid’ and the textures ‘more visceral and sensual’ than before, all of which accentuates the music’s dramatic structure.

12 ensemble revive ‘Residuum’ Residuum, Davies’s 10-minute work for two solo violins, solo cello and strings from 2005, has been selected as part of the PRS Resonate Project. It will be revived by the London-based 12 ensemble during their 18/19 season. Davies describes the work as ‘an imaginary replay of the residual energy of Dowland’s ‘Galliard to Lachrymae’, heard like an echo of ancient music in a modern time’.

HIGHLIGHTS Tansy Davies Selected forthcoming performances Undertow first performance of revised version 3.3.18, St Leonard’s Church, Spitalfields, London, UK: London Sinfonietta

neon 15.3.18, Ledger Recital Room, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, UK: Red Note Ensemble/ RCS MusicLab/Simon Proust/ June-Sung Park

Destroying Beauty 19.6.18, St George the Martyr, Borough, London, UK: Olivia Moss/ Clare Simmonds

Cave World premiere

‘Antenoux’

combined with intimate human drama’.

In July last year the Crash Ensemble premiered Antenoux, a new 5-minute work for an ensemble of ten players, at an outdoor location in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Letrim. Commissioned as part of CrashLands – a ground breaking project to mark the 20th anniversary of the ensemble which showcased new work from 20 composers and organised live performances in unusual rural locations scattered across Ireland – the work fluctuates between two kinds of energy: sultry and brooding cycles of highly rhythmic material in guitar, bass, and percussion, and more linear phrases.

At the heart of Cave are the talents of two remarkable – and very different – singers, and Davies cites Padmore’s ‘purity of tone and direct delivery’ together with Mitchener’s ‘huge range of extended techniques and her flexibility’ as major inspirations to her. ‘I’m also drawn to them as personalities, both on and off-stage. As artists they’re both driven, focussed and fearless, in difference ways’.

The work was revived at Dublin’s National Concert Hall in November, and a video of the outdoor premiere – which quirkily splices shots of the ensemble with nature images – was shown at the Dublin New Music Festival in March.

‘Cave’ Cave, a new music theatre work by Tansy Davies, to a text by Nick Drake, will be premiered in the vast warehouse space of The Printworks, London on 20 June. Staged by the London Sinfonietta in association with the Royal Opera, this new work for tenor Mark Padmore and mezzo-soprano Elaine Mitchener follows a grieving man’s quest for survival and renewal, in a dystopian future of deserted shopping malls and melting glaciers. Desperate to connect one last time with his daughter, he enters a dark cave, triggering a journey into an underworld of spirits. Geoffrey Paterson conducts the London Sinfonietta, and Lucy Bailey directs. The project furthers the successful collaboration between Davies and Drake following their opera Between Worlds (2014) which won her a British Composer Award. ‘A composer is often both architect and engineer,’ Davies muses, ‘so it’s easy to get caught up in technical details. Nick’s approach reminds me that it’s all about people, connection and love, no matter how dark the subject matter. In my role as opera composer, my strength lies in my ability to envisage epic, dream-like sound-structures

PHOTO: TANSY DAVIES © EDUARDUS LEE

For Davies, the process of writing Between Worlds was a transformative experience. ‘Composing that work felt like reaching for the impossible, sometimes in many directions at once, which led to break-throughs and break-downs, both personal and artistic’. How has that experience affected Cave? ‘It has allowed me to relax a little this time, and take a few risks, trusting in the visions of my collaborators’, says Davies. ‘A good example in the music is Elaine’s part; much of which I’ve left quite open for her to interpret and effectively create her own unique role’.

20-23.6.18 (6 performances), The Printworks, London, UK: Mark Padmore/Elaine Mitchener/London Sinfonietta/Geoffrey Paterson/dir. Lucy Bailey

The Beginning of the World (arr. J.R. Althuis) World premiere of arrangement 1.12.18, Kleine Zaal, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Calefax Rietkwintet

Song of Pure Nothingness 2.12.18, Kleine Zaal, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Karin Strobos/ Reinild Mees

new work World premiere 17.5.19, Kleine Zaal, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Asko|Schönberg Ensemble

Harmonically, too, Between Worlds heralded something of a gear change: a change perhaps felt most strongly in Davies’s darkly lustrous string orchestra work Dune of Footprints (2017) – which forms the basis of the electronic component in the new chamber opera. The electronics form a very spacious and slow moving sonic ‘cave’, which Davies compares to ‘large bodies of liquid or air coalescing and constantly shifting to create new auras of sound; some soothing, some menacing, some neutral…’ The 15-minute string orchestra work was inspired by a stretch of dry riverbed that leads down in to the Niaux Cave in France’, Davies explains. ‘I was entranced by the ripple patterns and dunes on the cave floor, and by the human history – of how many footsteps must have trodden this ancient route’. And what of The Printworks, the extraordinary venue for the piece? ‘The voids are mostly very tall and long and filled with complex industrial detail, the combination of which I find dramatic and compelling’.

‘The Exterminating Angel’ at the Met

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’, and a critically acclaimed run of performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel received its US premiere at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in October. Adès himself conducted a stellar cast of soloists in the original production by Tom Cairns. Adès’s third opera 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 Buñuel-Alcoriza screenplay by the composer together with the director Tom Cairns, brilliantly captures their descent into anarchy. Featuring a cast who all 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 denselypacked span is breathtaking. A large and masterfully deployed orchestra is coloured by guitar, piano and ondes martenot – the latter soaring above proceedings as an eerie manifestation of the nameless force that ensnares the guests. Like the shipwrecked characters of The Tempest, the cast of this compelling new opera are held in a state of entrapment and dramatic stasis. Like the glittering high-society world of Powder Her Face, the dinner party guests are denizens of a nightmarish world of aristocratic pretension. ‘In a sense, this is a child of those two operas,’ Adès observes, ‘but that comparison has receded, and this opera is a very different animal. Probably a scarier animal.’ The opera travels to The Royal Danish Opera on 23 March, where Robert Houssart conducts a brand new cast in the original Tom Cairns production. ‘A magical, transporting experience, almost like it was coming out of my own mind. We came out two hours later and it felt like no time at all had passed. In preparation we watched the Buñuel movie it’s based on, and the opera was a textbook example of how you do an adaptation beautifully. Sometimes you go to the opera and you think you’re going to a museum, seeing this thing that used to be current, but in this case it felt so new. I think Adès is a genius.’

‘a masterpiece in every sense’ ‘Adès’ second premiere at the Met showed once again that he is undoubtedly one of the foremost composers of our time… Even with so strong a cast, the real stars are Adès and the brilliant score that he led from the pit… a masterpiece in every sense.’ New York Classical Review (Eric C. Simpson), 27 October 2017

Stunningly inventive… In this audacious opera the music digs deep. Adès’s wild, searing score explores the emotional undercurrents of the story and fleshes out the horror of the characters’ situation… Two tragic guests, in the face of unreality, seek solace together. Beatriz and Eduardo are engaged and utterly absorbed in themselves. But Adès enshrouds them in the opera’s most rapturous music, an extended duet with sighing vocal lines and quizzical orchestral sonorities… Over all, this riveting, breathless, score — full of quick-cutting shifts, pointillist bursts, and episodes of ballistic intensity — may be his best work. If you go to a single production this season, make it this one.’ The New York Times (Anthony Tommasini), 28 October 2017

‘…a major cultural event in New York’s music world.’ The Huffington Post (Wilborn Hampton), 27 October 2017

‘Adès’s score adds a new layer of meaning: it demonstrates that music of exquisite craftsmanship can touch all that is most primal in us. I can’t think of another living composer who can conjure fear, contentment, bitterness, disgust, and joy with a few quick measures.’ NY Magazine (Justin Davidson), 27 October 2017

‘This is an opera that builds to a satisfying climax; it has cumulative power… his blend of Bergian underpinnings with diverse historical and popular idioms ultimately coheres, his orchestration is dazzling and the dystopian outbursts truly chilling.’

The Observer (George Saunders), 4 February 2018

IMAGE: 2017 MET PRODUCTION OF ‘THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL’ © KEN HOWARD, THE METROPOLITAN OPERA

The Financial Times (John Rockwell), 31 October 2017

HIGHLIGHTS

Julian Anderson celebrated by BBC

In October 2017, the music of Julian Anderson was celebrated by the BBC in one of their Total Immersion festivals. Featuring over ten works across three concerts, as well as talks and a film screening, the day – a highlight of Anderson’s 50th birthday year – was the largest retrospective of his music to date. The BBC Singers under Nicholas Kok presented Anderson’s choral music, including the Four American Choruses and the Bell Mass, whilst students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (where Anderson is a Professor of Composition and also Composer in Residence) performed Poetry Nearing Silence, Ring Dance, Van Gogh Blue, Alhambra Fantasy and The Colour of Pomegranates. The day culminated in a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner – the conductor who oversaw the premiere of Thebans, Anderson’s critically acclaimed opera, back in 2014. Fantasias, the 23-minute orchestral showpiece abounding in vivid contrasts, was heard alongside Eden, Imagin’d Corners, the poem for violin and orchestra In lieblicher Bläue, and his Symphony. The day was accompanied by a one-day conference devoted to Anderson’s music, ‘Heaven is Shy of Earth: Julian Anderson at 50’, presented by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. ‘Everywhere there is light, glistening in radiant textures. When Anderson writes a nocturne, even that comes alive with constant flashes of moonlight… dazzling orchestration. This light-filled stream of sounds meant an evening of ceaseless hard work for the high wind instruments… Imagin’d Corners, with virtuoso roles for five solo horns, rises to an exultant tumult at the end. Symphony is a musical narrative in a glinting, wintry climate.’ The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 23 October 2017

‘There are so many gripping aspects of Anderson’s orchestral writing: folky eastern European influences (adding quarter tones to his already rich harmonic palette), colossal energy, intriguing textures and flamboyant theatrical gestures – sending four horns around the hall in Imagin’d Corners, for instance.’ The Times (Richard Morrison), 24 October 2017

‘newly and richly imagined sounds’ ‘When reminded by Eden just how seductive a manipulator of orchestral textures Anderson is, and how superb his ear, one only wanted more of the sumptuous same to the concert’s end. His originality lies, I’m tempted to say, more than anywhere in that precision of ear. There are few contemporary composers whose harmonic sense, no matter what outré tuning system he might be using, is so patently assured, and whose music, if stopped in its course at any moment, would reveal such impeccable vertical credentials… I realised I couldn’t pin down the instrumental combination [in Symphony] and was delighted to be left unsure; intrigued by newly and richly imagined sounds that weren’t obtruded by the composer but were the small change of his inventiveness available any time. There was plenty of it, too, in Imagin’d Corners and in the Fantasias, the first of which, for brass alone, had a spluttering, exhilarating crispness that was yet more proof of a faultless ear.’ The Sunday Times (Paul Driver), 29 October 2017

‘Symphony, a Winter-to-Spring piece, begins from nothing, with the lightest touches of sounds. Expressive woodwind melodies ensue, there are percussion riffs, one might hear the cacophony of birdsong and there is glorious lyricism; there are momentous passages that might relate to icecracking – with at least one stupendous outburst – and if this all sounds outside the Symphony as we know it, Anderson says that the work is of “continuous transformation… neither atonal nor tonal but freely evolving” – certainly towards the end when the return of Spring is sensed, a rebirth, and not without the pain of delivery.’ Classical Source (Colin Anderson), 22 October 2017

‘The highlight of the choral concert was Anderson’s Bell Mass. From the assertive opening, to the gorgeous Amen in the Gloria, a fantastic aleatoric climax to the Sanctus and the shaded microtonal solos of the Benedictus, I was carried along very enjoyably… the work of a very impressive choral composer.’ The Artsdesk (Bernard Hughes), 23 October 2017

PHOTO: DETAIL FROM JULIAN ANDERSON’S ‘IMAGIN’D CORNERS’ © FABER MUSIC

Colin Matthews Selected forthcoming performances

Colin Matthews Composer of the Week

Hidden Agenda

As part of BBC Radio 3’s New Year, New Music season, which this year sought to make connections between contemporary pieces and music of the past, Matthews was featured as Composer of the Week at the beginning of January, visiting the studio to discuss his work in person.

World premiere of complete version 4.5.18, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester, UK: London Bridge Trio

Meditation 17.5.18, St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London, United Kingdom: Tabea Debus

From its links to Britten, to influences as wide-ranging as Mahler and Minimalism, Matthews’s music is a fascinating case study in how the music of today can enjoy a rich and fruitful dialogue with the past. Each programme focussed on a particular influence, and the week also included orchestrations of music by Britten and Debussy.

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

Turning Point

‘Hidden Agenda’

Japanese premiere 26.6.18, Tokyo Opera City, Tokyo, Japan: NHK Symphony Orchestra/ Stefan Asbury

Pluto, the renewer 6.7.18, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: Chethams Symphony Orchestra/ Jac van Steen

As Time Returns London premiere 7.12.18, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Sinfonietta

Arrangements Mahler – Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen South Korean premiere 6.3.18, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea: Ian Bostridge/Members of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra

Debussy – Preludes Le vent dans la plaine, La puerta del vino, Les collines d’Anacapri 15-16.3.18, Kongresshaus, Innsbruck, Austria: Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck/Jac van Steen

La Cathédrale engloutie 24.3.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

Général Lavine eccentric/Minstrels 25.3.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

Voiles 4-6.5.18, Parco della Musica, S. Grande, Rome, Italy: Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

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

‘Turning Point’ in Tokyo In July Colin Matthews’s Turning Point receives its Japanese premiere from the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Stefan Asbury. Commissioned in 2006 by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, this 25-minute journey from complex momentum to expressive simplicity displays all the ingenious craft we have come to expect from Matthews, together with a startling emotional directness. Out of a whirring, motoric scherzo comes a jolting sea change: an austere, glacial string chorale of searing intensity that, with gritty resilience, gradually comes to overwhelm everything else.

Following the premiere of his second piano trio Hidden Agenda by the London Bridge Trio last year, Matthews has now extended it to create a three-movement work of 11 minutes duration. The Trio will give the premiere of the completed work in May at the Winchester Chamber Music Festival.

Nicholas Maw

Two works for the London Sinfonietta Works for solo alto flute are a rarity, and Matthews’s Bell-wether, a commission from the London Sinfonietta in memory of their ex-flautist Sebastian Bell, is rarer still in that it mostly eschews the more languorous side of the instruments character in favour of its hidden, mercurial qualities. The three-minute work was premiered as part of the Sinfonietta’s 50th anniversary celebrations in January. The Sinfonietta will premiere a new song cycle for baritone and chamber ensemble, a setting of poems by exiled Czech poet Ivan Blatný, in December.

Debussy 100 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. In this, the 100th anniversary of Debussy’s death, the Preludes will receive performances across the world. Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla has programmed a selection in Rome and Birmingham, the BBC Philharmonic performed a number with Ben Gernon in late February, and in March Jac van Steen conducts three with the Tiroler Symphonieorchester in Innsbruck. Matthews has just completed an orchestration of the first book of Debussy’s Images, which will be recorded for the Pentatone label by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg in July.

Revisiting ‘Dance Scenes’ An exuberant and vigorous set of four orchestral dances, Nicholas Maw’s Dance Scenes (1995) might almost be called a concerto for orchestra in the way it imaginatively puts each group of instruments through their paces. Maw’s debt to his English forebears are clearly signposted in this kaleidoscopic 19-minute work – the brassy extravagance of the first dance sounds like Walton and the tangy woodwind writing later like Britten – and the whole is breathtakingly scored, filled with a profusion of scintillating invention. Premiered by Daniel Harding and the Philharmonia Orchestra, but not performed since 2004, this colourful work – showing Maw at his most generous and upbeat – is ripe for a reappraisal.

PHOTO: COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL; NICHOLAS MAW © MAURICE FOXALL

TUNING IN

Anders Hillborg A prize for Violin Concerto No. 2 In 2017, Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No. 2 saw performances in Helsinki, London, Minneapolis and Seoul. Described as music of ‘directly speaking, timeless beauty’ at its 2016 premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the concerto was composed for Lisa Batiashvili and has also been championed by James Ehnes and Viviane Hagner. The powerful 24-minute work, which alternates between melancholy, almost glacial, calm and driving passages of extraordinary muscle and bite, won Hillborg a Musikförläggarnas Pris at the 2017 Swedish Music Publishers Awards. A broadcast of the Finnish premiere of the concerto in November, featuring Batiashvili and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu, can be viewed online at arte.tv.

The orchestra as sound animal In March Anders Hillborg’s Beast Sampler received its French premiere with Leonard Slatkin conducting the Orchestre National de Lyon. The title of this dazzling 11-minute work refers to Hillborg’s frequent characterization of the orchestra as a ‘sound animal’ – where individual instrumental identities dissolve into one huge sound organism – and the influence of electronic music processes on his work with acoustic instruments. It is an ideal introduction to Hillborg’s language, taking in everything from Xenakis, Ligeti, hints of jazz and orchestrated ‘rewind’ effects, in a myriad of remarkably well-heard textures, built up of glistening sheets of sound. ‘I wanted to focus just as much on sound and noise as on pitch and harmony,’ writes Hillborg before explaining that the work also draws on a number of ‘(sound-)beast samples’ from earlier pieces.

A singing, whistling, take on Bach Following performances of Bach Materia in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, and a nine-performance US tour with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pekka Kuusisto continues to travel the world with this inventive piece for violin and strings. Commissioned by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra as a companion to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, and tailor-made for Kuusisto’s extraordinary range of abilities, including improvisation, the 14-minute piece receives its Norwegian premiere in April. ‘A voice entirely his own… a fascinating patchwork of baroque and contemporary soundworlds… Every performance will be different but there are touchstones that will remain constant, like the surprise opening, in which the strings seem to be tuning before pulling order unexpectedly from chaos… There’s a lot of jazz, reminiscent of West Side Story at its most tense and urgent… There’s twittering birdsong, Kuusisto singing and whistling, violas played with drumsticks, and a slow movement full of sadness. A very exciting work.’ Pioneer Press (Rob Hubbard), 10 November 2017

PHOTO: ANDERS HILLBORG © J-O WEDIN

‘A work of rare mystery and beauty. Moments of intense lyricism, suggesting eternity, alternate with vigorous, lusty, up-tempo, rock-influenced passages — mind vs. body.’ StarTribune (Michael Anthony), 15 September 2017

‘the most absorbing of journeys’ ‘Captivating… both calming and disquieting, rippling with conflict, contrasting moods layered one atop another… it was among the most exciting new violin concertos I’ve encountered in recent years… the most absorbing of journeys, one both troubling and transcendent, often within a single phrase… I found Hillborg’s unpredictable flow fascinating.’ Twin Cities (Rob Hubbard), 14 September 2017

‘Was it going to be generic contemporary? The skeetering strings at the beginning suggested as much. But their headlong collision with a chorus of sustained chords proved arresting: what sounded like a pre-recorded ambience turned out to be those same strings turned to calm seas. In effect much of the concerto was searing cadenza from the compellingly intense Batiashvili, punctuated by two wild eastern dances – part Turkish sanat, part Bollywood, with Hillborg making and needing no apologies for the populism. The intensity held; the ear was led through ever-unexpected harmonic shifts. Filmic in effect, but never merely film music.’

Anders Hillborg Selected forthcoming performances Peacock Tales 5.4.18, Great Guild Hall, Riga. Latvia: Latvian National Symphony Orchestra/Karlis Kundrats (original version) 26.4.18, NDR Grosser Sendesaal, Hannover; 27.4.18, Theater Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany: Martin Fröst/ NDR Radiophilharmonie/Andrew Manze (Millennium version)

Bach Materia Norwegian premiere 8.4.18, Aula, Universitetet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway: Pekka Kuusisto/Det Norske Kammerorkester

Six Pieces for Wind Quintet 14.4.18, Syracuse, NY; 20.5.18, Bunker Hill Presbyterian Church, Sewell, NJ, USA: Imani Winds

Brass Quintet 18.4.18, Independent Theatre, Sydney, NSW; 4.9.18, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Australian Brass Quintet

Mantra – Elegy World premiere 21.4.18, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vladimir Jurowski US premiere 22.7.18, Benedict Music Tent, Aspen, CO, USA: Aspen Festival Orchestra/ Christian Arming

Concerto for Orchestra World premiere 16.1.19, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Marin Alsop

The Artsdesk (David Nice), 30 November 2017

Two new works for the LPO Hillborg’s orchestral homage to Stravinsky, Mantra – Elegy, will be premiered by Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in April, with a US premiere at the Aspen Festival in July. A second work for the LPO, a Concerto for Orchestra, will be premiered in January 2019 with Marin Alsop conducting.

George Benajmin Selected forthcoming performances

George Benjamin Holland Festival Focus

Ringed by the Flat Horizon

The 2018 Holland Festival has announced Benjamin as their Composer in Focus, with a number of events including the national premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence, conducted by Benjamin, at Dutch National Opera. Other events include the Dutch premiere of Sometime Voices at the Holland Festival Proms, with Martyn Brabbins conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, a performance of Written on Skin by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and a rare opportunity to hear Benjamin improvise a live soundtrack on piano (to Fritz Lang’s silent film Der müde Tod).

25.3.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla

Dance Figures 30.3.18, Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul, South Korea: Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra/Peter Eötvös 3.8.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain/George Benjamin

Viola, Viola

‘Dream of the Song’ in Berlin

8.4.18, Mary Norton Hall, Old South Church, Boston, MA, USA: Scott Woolweaver/Mark Holloway 29.5.18, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: German Tcakulov/Timothy Ridout

Sometime Voices 20.4.18, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA: Northwestern University Orchestra/Donald Nally

At First Light 22.4.18, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music School, Singapore: Opus Novus/Zhangyi Chen

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

Into the Little Hill 23.5.18, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands: Ensemble Insomnio/ Ulrich Pohl

Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra 9.6.18, Musica Viva, Prinzregententheater, Munich, Bavaria, Germany: Chamber Orchestra of Europe/David Robertson

Dance Figures/ Bach – Canon & Fugue (from The Art of Fugue)*/Sometime Voices* *Dutch premieres 23.6.18, Holland Festival, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Audun Iversen/Groot Omroepkoor/Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins

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

Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla conducts ‘Ringed By the Flat Horizon’ Who are these hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the Flat Horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and burst in the violent air. In March Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla will conduct Ringed by the Flat Horizon as part of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Debussy Festival. Inspired by a dramatic photograph of a storm breaking over the New Mexico desert and lines from T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, this 20-minute work is dedicated to Benjamin’s teacher Olivier Messiaen, and catapulted its composer to fame after its London premiere at the 1980 BBC Proms. After over 160 performances around the world – including a memorable version by choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – it still seems like a wondrous achievement, with a formal confidence, subtle understanding of timbre, and lucid harmonic sense that have since become synonymous with Benjamin’s work as a whole.

In February Benjamin replaced an indisposed Zubin Mehta to conduct the first Berlin performances of Dream of the Song, his beguiling 20-minute work for countertenor, women’s voices and orchestra from 2015. Soloist Bejun Mehta was joined by the women of the Chor der Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Staatskappelle Berlin. Employing a reduced orchestra (two oboes, four horns, two percussionists, two harps and strings), the work sets three major poets who spent formative years in Granada; two Hebrew poets of mid-11th century, Samuel HaNagid and Solomon Ibn Gabirol (sung by countertenor in English versions by Peter Cole), and Federico García Lorca (sung by the female chorus in the original Spanish). The volatile and frenetic first movement ‘The Pen’ displays the remarkable, transparent density which has become one of Benjamin’s hallmarks; blaring horns cut through an intricate web of string textures, whilst the countertenor’s florid melismas recall Upon Silence (a quite different mode from Benjamin’s operatic style). The soundworld of Written on Skin is more apparent elsewhere, whilst the baleful gongs and lacerating string harmonies of the fourth movement for women’s voices and orchestra only, which sets an incendiary passage of Lorca, owe something to the last of the Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra. From the instrumental musics superimposed in Palimpsests to Written on Skin where ‘the white lines of the Saturday car park cover the heaped up dead’, the layering of past and present has been a recurring preoccupation for Benjamin. The inspired pairing of texts in Dream of the Song creates a rich, melancholy and strange poetic conjunction, expressed most beautifully in the final movement which, overlaying soloist and choir, offers two simultaneous visions of dawn, conceived a millennium apart. ‘The latest in a series of effective, large-scale vocal works by Benjamin. The poems are held together by a colourful and expressive musical language. The composer animated the Staaskapelle to create clear structures that were surprisingly transparent…’ Der Tagespiegel (Isabel Herzfeld), 21 February 2018

PHOTOS: GEORGE BENJAMIN © MATTHEW LLOYD; LAUREN SNOUFFER AS AGNÈS IN ‘WRITTEN ON SKIN’ © KELLY & MASSA FOR OPERA PHILADELPHIA

TUNING IN

Matthew Hindson A new sonata for Ray Chen Matthew Hindson is to pen a new violin sonata for Taiwanese-Australian virtuoso, Ray Chen. Commissioned by Musica Viva Australia, the sonata premieres as part of a 9-date national tour in August, with Chen joined by French pianist Julien Quentin.

‘Celebration’ at the Sydney Festival As part of an all-Australian programme, the Goldner String Quartet gave two performances of Hindson’s most recent quartet, Celebration (String Quartet No. 5) in January as part of the Sydney Festival. The work featured alongside pieces by other Faber composers, Peter Sculthorpe and Carl Vine.

‘Written on Skin’ in Philadelphia Opera Philadelphia presented four performances of Written on Skin in February in a new production by William Kerley. Lauren Snouffer, Mark Stone, and Anthony Roth Costanzo headed the cast, who were conducted by Corrado Rovaris. This was the sixth original production of the work since its premiere in 2012, and the first to have originated in the USA. ‘Perhaps the most significant opera of this century so far… Each scene has its own distinctive orchestral character, like the haunting glass harmonica of the seduction scene and the all-out frenzy of the murder… kaleidoscopic color and precision.’ Wall Street Journal (Heidi Waleson), 12 February 2018

‘One of the most extraordinary operas of the 21st century… The piece is a terrific feat of harmony and orchestration.’ Hyperallergic (John Sherer), 15 February 2018

‘Mesmerizing and fascinating… This may be his first full-length opera, but there is nothing tentative in his work. Benjamin and Crimp have collaborated seamlessly.’ Broadway World (Richard Sasanow), 13 February 2018

‘a contemporary masterpiece’ ‘Kerley’s vision quickly produces an overwhelming effect that seamlessly couples with Benjamin’s intriguing and surprising score… a contemporary masterpiece.’

The Australian Ballet revive ‘Ellipse’ Hindson’s music will once again be centre-stage in the repertory of The Australian Ballet, when the country’s leading dance group revive extracts from his 2002 full-evening ballet Ellipse, as part of a tribute evening to the work’s choreographer, Graeme Murphy. The production ‘Murphy’ celebrates Murphy’s 50-year ballet career (including 31 as Artistic Director of the Sydney Dance Company). There will be 12 performances at the Melbourne Arts Centre, before the company travels to Sydney to give a further 19 shows in the Sydney Opera House. Hindson’s Ellipse draws on several earlier concert works (including Homage to Metallica, In Memoriam, Speed and the Violin Concerto No. 1. It was given over 80 times throughout Australia and the USA between 2002 and 2004 by Sydney Dance Company under Murphy’s direction. ‘Hindson’s score makes a wonderful racket. The score for one dance sounds like a band playing ‘Hold That Tiger’ in competition with a wailing siren. The music is shamelessly big and juicily orchestral; then, just as you begin to wonder where the accompanying movie is, Hindson turns broodingly and sometimes achingly intimate, introducing rattling, whistling, thunking sounds that might come from indigenous Australian instruments.’ The New York Times (Jennifer Dunning), 20 February 2004

George Benjamin Selected forthcoming performances (cont.) Shadowlines 27.6.18, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède, Aix-enProvence, France: Alphonse Cémin 24.7.18, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, USA: Gilles Vonsattell

Duet 2-4.8.18, Sala São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil: Pierre-Laurent Aimard/ Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo/David Robertson

Written on Skin 28.6.18, Holland Festival, Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ, Amsterdam: Jarman/Iversen/Mead/Szabó/ Murray/Mahler Chamber Orchestra/ Lawrence Renes/dir. Benjamin Davis (semi-staged)

Matthew Hindson Selected forthcoming performances Ellipse (extracts) 20-26.3.18, Arts Centre, Melbourne, VIC; 6-23.4.18, Sydney Opera House, NSW, Australia: The Australian Ballet/ch. Graeme Murphy

Piano Trio German premiere 13.5.18, Theater Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany: Catherine Bottomley/Barry Luo/Daniel Carter

New work for violin and piano World premiere 9.8.18, Newcastle Conservatorium, NSW, Australia: Ray Chen and Julien Quentin (part of a 9-concert Musica Viva Australia national tour)

Septet 11.8.18, Sir John Clancy Auditorium, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia: The Australia Ensemble

New work World premiere 16.9.18, City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney, NSW; 17.9.18, Melbourne Recital Centre, VA: ACO Collective

‘He could probably wring a concerto from the sound of a doorbell’

Broad Street Review (Cameron Kelsall), 11 February 2018

‘Vocally, musically, visually and conceptually, Written on Skin is thrilling.’ phindie (Toby Zinman), 11 February 2018

‘Hindson has amazing range. He could probably wring a concerto from the sound of a doorbell. His source material ranges from classical to Metallica to soothing melodic riffs that may have been extracted from an elevator. Best of all, it all works.’ San Francisco Chronicle (Janice Berman), 15 March 2004

Martin Suckling Selected forthcoming performances

Martin Suckling Scottish Music Award shortlist

Candlebird

Suckling’s flute concerto, The White Road, has been shortlisted for a 2018 Scottish Award for New Music. Described as a ‘sonic feast’ by The Scotsman after its premiere by Katherine Bryan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in February, the 14-minute concerto is a work of great subtlety and delicacy. Melody is the guiding force, and the soloist leads us through a number of beguiling landscapes, often inventively coloured with metallic percussion. An extended song, marked ‘almost a lullaby’, leads to a short virtuoso conclusion, gruff brass chords launching the flute into the stratosphere.

6.4.18, The Gulbenkian, University of Kent, Canterbury; 7.4.18, Kings Place, London, UK: Mark Stone/Aurora Orchestra/Nicholas Collon

‘Meditation (after Donne)’ World premiere 7.11.18, Younger Hall, University of St Andrews, St Andrews; 8.11.18, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh; 9.11.18, City Halls, Glasgow, Scotland, UK: Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Nicolas Altstaet

Malcolm Arnold Selected forthcoming performances Concerto for Two Pianos (3 hands) 25.3.18, Brighton Dome, Brighton, UK: Worbey and Farrell/Brighton Philharmonic Orcherstra/Barry Wordsworth 13-14.4.18, Filharmonia Narodowa Warschau, Warsaw, Poland: Lucas and Arthur Jussen/Diego Matheuz

Concerto for Clarinet No. 2 9.4.18, Capitol Betriebs, Mannheim, Germany: Julius Kircher/Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/ Frank Dupree

Peterloo 14.4.18, King’s Church, Amersham, UK: Buckinghamshire County Youth Orchestra/Tom Horn

Trumpet Concerto 29.4.18, Aylesbury Vale Academy, Aylesbury, UK: Matilda Lloyd/ Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra/ Ben Palmer

Concerto for Viola 19.5.18, St Mary’s Church, Hitchin, UK: Helen Sanders-Hewett/Hitchin Symphony Orchestra/Paul Adrian Rooke

The Three Musketeers 4.10-3.11.18, Theatre Royal, Nottingham, UK: Northern Ballet/ chor. David Nixon (UK tour: 23 performances)

A tapestry of tolling bells ‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’ Ideas of memory, cutting-edge technology, Schubert, and the poems of Emily Dickinson and Frances Leviston have all fed into Martin Suckling’s String Quintet ‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’ which received its premiere by members of Aurora Orchestra in January. A substantial 25-minute work in four movements, it formed part of an event organised by Poet in the City which explored the piezoresistive effect, where a material under sufficiently high pressure changes state from a resistor to a conductor of electricity. The quintet opens with a highly energetic dance, whilst the second movement, based around Leviston’s poem ‘White Box’, presents microtonal harmonies, all in harmonics, held in a floating stasis. In the third movement, the instrumentalist lines ‘speak’ the Dickinson poem, ‘After great pain…’, their rhythm and contour taken from an audio analysis of Suckling’s own voice reading the poem. In the final movement, a viola melody is surrounded by a filigree tapestry of echoes, fragments and distorting mirrors across a series of compressions until all that remains of the available space is a single trill. At this point of extreme pressure, the properties of the material suddenly change: bright, gleaming, sudden bursts of sound in a highly microtonal environment. All of this is haunted by the ghost of Schubert, above all the incomparable Adagio from his String Quintet in C major, which increasingly asserts itself on the musical surface until the quintet’s final passages become as if hypnotised by Schubert’s harmonies, crystallising around them, writes Suckling, ‘like frost on a fallen leaf ’. The quintet’s last, longest, movement was premiered in October as part of a live Radio 3 broadcast from London’s Wellcome Collection, with the full work (which makes a fantastic companion to the Schubert Quintet) unveiled at Kings Place in January.

PHOTO: MARTIN SUCKLING © TESSA OKSANEN

As part of the Armistice Centenary commemorations, Suckling is working with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to create, Meditation (after Donne), which will take as its inspiration the massed ringing of bells as Armistice was declared. Suckling envisions ‘a simple song for orchestra, with performers and audience surrounded by a constantly evolving tapestry of tolling bells created by live electronics’. The piece receives three performances in November. The SCO are extending an open invitation to people to send in recordings of their local bells to be included in the electronics part of the work. More details can be found at armisticebells.com

‘Candlebird’ Candlebird, Suckling’s exquisite song cycle for baritone and ensemble from 2011, is being championed by the PRS Foundation’s Resonate Scheme. In April the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon will perform the 25-minute work in Canterbury and London with soloist Mark Stone. Collon is no stranger to the work, having conducted its premiere with the London Sinfonietta as well as a series of well-received performances with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra back in 2015.

Malcolm Arnold Shibe champions Guitar Fantasy A new recording of Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for guitar by one of the instrument’s rising stars has brought renewed attention to this rich and complex work. Sean Shibe’s recording of the Fantasy was named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, and was recently shortlisted for a BBC Music Magazine Award. With his extensive series of Fantasies for solo instruments Arnold made an invaluable contribution to the repertoire of many a recitalist, crafting short approachable pieces that continue to be programmed internationally. Composed for Julian Bream in 1971, this enthralling 10-minute work is ‘exceptional’ says Shibe because ‘it has such contrast – from his most tender writing ever in the ariettas to some of the most pointed, jagged, cynical stuff going on in other parts’.

TUNING IN

David Matthews The finale opens with solo violin recalling the ending of the first movement, then plunges into a long passage of uncertainty, with much use of tremolo strings. A more confident central section in compound time leads to a recapitulation and an aggressive climax, which subsides into an extended repeat of the carol in C major. It ends with an exultant proclamation of the carol as a brass chorale. Spring has arrived. ‘Matthews’s modernism is rooted in a lyrical impulse that he shares with Tippett, and there are signs that he’s finally starting to get his due.’ The Spectator (Richard Bratby), 6 January 2018

In other news, Matthews’s Eighth Symphony will be performed by the Ulster Orchestra and Jac van Steen in April as part of the PRS Foundation’s Resonate Scheme.

‘New Fire’

Muriel Spark in music

In April the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies will premiere a 6-minute work by David Matthews in the opening concert of their Easter Festival of Sacred Music. The title of the piece, New Fire, refers to the new fire kindled at the start of the Easter Saturday service. From this new fire the Paschal candle is lit and, from this candle, other candles held by each member of the congregation, until the whole church is filled with renewed light.

Muriel Spark is best known for her darkly witty novels The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Ballad of Peckham Rye, but she began as a poet and it remained a constant throughout her creative life. The inscription she chose for her gravestone was the single word ‘poeta’. To mark the centenary of Spark’s birth in 1918, a new work for voice, piano and string quartet has been commissioned by her close companion Penelope Jardine. Entitled White Flame, the work will be premiered by mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and the Nash Ensemble on 13 October.

New Fire, then, begins in darkness. The first part is mostly for muted strings, which take up a rising scale figure initially presented on oboe and cor anglais. The second half of the piece starts with a sustained pedal, over which is projected, first on solo cello and then on all the violins, the plainsong melody for Psalm 116, ‘Laudate Dominum omnes gentes’. At the same time, points of light appear, on glockenspiel, crotales, piano, harp and then high woodwind; they gradually proliferate, until the trumpets (ideally sited above the rest of the orchestra) enter with the three rising notes of the plainsong. The work culminates in what Matthews describes as ‘a triumphant celebration of light’ by the full orchestra.

A Ninth Symphony The long-awaited premiere of Matthews’s Ninth Symphony was chosen by The Spectator as a musical highlight of 2018. Kenneth Woods will conduct the English Symphony Orchestra on 9 May at St George’s Hall, Bristol. The Ninth Symphony began in a modest way on 21 December 2015 when Matthews wrote a small carol for his wife Jenifer, with words about the coming of spring. The 27-minute piece unfolds in five movements, and takes the carol as a starting point. Two scherzos frame the slow movement, a slightly extended version of the string piece ‘A June Song’ that Matthews wrote in 2016 for Martin Anderson’s project ‘Music for My Love’, in memory of his partner Yodit Tekle.

PHOTO: DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA

75th Birthday Celebrations Matthews’s 75th Birthday will be marked with several performances at the 2018 Presteigne Festival in August. Full details will be announced in April.

Peter Sculthorpe Sculthorpe on stage Imbued with the sounds and rhythms of Balinese music – particularly the rice-pounding dance, ketungan, and the popular arja – Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 8 makes an ideal work for choreographers. Sculthorpe at his very finest, this 16-minute work is framed by movements for cello alone, written in a spatio-temporal notation in order to create the feeling of improvisation. In March a version of the second movement by Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili will open at Theaterhaus Stuttgart. ‘One of his finest works… music of great beauty and economy.’ The Australian (Kenneth Hince), 27 December 1971

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

David Matthews Selected forthcoming performances New Fire world premiere 8.4.18, Königskloster, Brno, Czech Republic: Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra/Dennis Russell Davies

Symphony No. 8 13.4.18, Ulster Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK: Ulster Orchestra/Jac van Steen

String Quartet No. 8 15.4.18, Pushkin House, London, UK: Villiers Quartet

Adagio for String Orchestra 20.4.18, St Clement Danes Church, London, UK: London School of Economics Orchestra/Matthew Taylor

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

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

Sonatina for viola and piano world premiere 5.10.18, William Alwyn Festival, Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh, Suffolk; 8.10.18, Little Missenden Festival, St John the Baptist Church, Little Missenden, UK: Sarah Jane Bradley/ Nathan Williamson

White Flame world premiere 13.10.18, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Sarah Connolly/ Nash Ensemble

Peter Sculthorpe Selected forthcoming performances Djilile/Cello Dreaming 6.3.18, Capitol Theatre, Tamworth, NSW, Australia: Critical Stages (11 performances in touring theatre production ‘Thomas Murray and the Upside Down River’

String Quartet No. 8 21.3-13.5.18, Theaterhaus, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany: chor. Itzik Galili (2nd movement only)

Harbour Dreaming 25.4.18, Firth Hall, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Alex Raineri

From Irkanda III 13.5.18, Theater Freiberg, Freiberg, Germany: Catherine Bottomley/Barry Luo/Daniel Carter

Djilile/First Sonata for Strings 23.10.18, Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London, UK: Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti

Thomas Adès Selected forthcoming performances

Thomas Adès New works for Boston and LA

Powder Her Face 18.3,7.4.18, Landestheater Detmold, Detmold, Germany: Landestheater Detmold/Lutz Rademacher/dir. Christian Poewe

The LA Philharmonic has announced an ambitious Adès dance project with The Royal Ballet and Wayne MacGregor as part of its 18/19 season. Conducted by Adès in July 2019, the evenings will include Outlier (MacGregor’s existing choreography to the Violin Concerto), In Seven Days, and a new score that the orchestra will have premiered with Gustavo Dudamel in May of that year. Adès is currently at work on a Piano Concerto for Kirill Gerstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which will be premiered in March 2019.

31.3-25.5.18, Theater Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany: Theater Magdeburg/Magdeburgische Philharmonie/Jovan Mitic/dir. Magdalena Fuchsberger 28,30.6.18, Nevill Holt Opera, Nevill Holt, UK: Nevill Holt Opera/Britten Sinfonia/Ian Ryan/dir. Antony McDonald/dir. Danielle Urbas

Totentanz

The complete music for string quartet

Czech premiere 21-23.3.18, Dvorák Hall, Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic: Christianne Stotijn/Simon Keenlyside/Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès 22.4.18, Grosser Saal, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Christianne Stotijn/Simon Keenlyside/ Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/ Thomas Adès Swedish premiere 27-28.4.18, Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Sweden: Jennifer Johnston/Mark Stone/Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding

The Exterminating Angel Danish premiere 23.3-6.5.18, Operaen på Holmen, Copenhagen, Denmark: Royal Danish Opera/Robert Houssart/dir. Tom Cairns

Dances from Powder Her Face 5.4.18, Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela; 6.4.18, Auditorio, La Coruña, Spain: Orquestra Sinfónica de Galicia/Dima Slobodeniouk

Powder Her Face Suite UK premiere 11.4.18, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Thomas Adès Danish premiere 17,19.5.18, DR Konserthuset, Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish National Symphony Orchestra/ Juanjo Mena 28.5.18, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany: Philadelphia Orchestra/ Yannick Nézet-Séguin 21,22.7.18, Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox, MA, USA: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Adès

...but all shall be well 12-13.4.18, Beethoven-Saal, Kulturund Kongresszentrum Liederhalle, Stuttgart; 14.4.18, Rheingoldhalle, Mainz Congress, Mainz; 15.4.18, Konzerthaus, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany: SWR Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Søndergård

Adès pens first film score Thomas Adès recently composed his first film score, for Wash Westmoreland’s Colette, starring Keira Knightley as the once-controversial French novelist and Dominic West as her husband. The film, in many ways timely in its thematic concern with the inequality of power between the sexes, was screened at the Sundance Festival in January, prompting rave reviews, with Variety proclaiming ‘One of the film’s strongest assets is its score’ (it also garnered much other press attention including a mention in The Times newspaper). Colette will be released in the US this Autumn, and in the UK in January 2019. Plans are afoot for concert versions of the score.

‘Totentanz’ 2018 will see Daniel Harding conduct the Swedish premiere of Totentanz with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, whilst Adès himself will conduct the work with both the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. Bringing together baritone and mezzo-soprano soloists with a large orchestra, Totentanz is based on a thirty-metrelong hanging of painted cloth made in 1463 for the church of St Mary in Lübeck. Following the lead of the frieze (and setting its original German text), the piece unfolds as a dialogue between a charismatic and gleefully macabre Grim Reaper (baritone) and the procession of his many victims (mezzo) who we meet in strictly descending order of importance, from Pope and Cardinal to Maiden and Child. Adès paints each character vividly; clangorous anvils and military side-drum herald the Knight whilst rustic, off-kilter horn writing signal the Peasant. ‘The dance of death is not an optional dance’, observes Adès, ‘it’s the one we all have to join in. It’s supposed to be at the same time terrifying, levelling and also funny – it’s absurd… the thing that makes it comic is the total powerlessness of everybody, no matter who they are’.

Few contemporary chamber works can boast 7 commercial recordings, but with the Doelen Quartet’s new release featuring Adès’s complete music for string quartet, Arcadiana becomes one of them. The release on Cybele Records, which also features The Four Quarters and the Piano Quintet (with Dimitri Vassilakis), has been universally praised and was awarded a Diapaison d’Or. ‘Adès’s is a highly personal music which, by virtue of its charm, skill and rigorous procedures, is capable of drawing us into its world of affections. It is this, above all, which endows his music with every bit the same kind of ‘‘just rightness’’ that one experiences in Chopin and Webern. And yet, unlike these composers, who always feel so fully at home in their material, with Adès one has more the sense of a figure who is constantly travelling. He is perhaps most like Fauré, in that sense, endlessly mining the musical subjunctive for a glimpse of something truly unspoiled.’ Guy Dammann (liner notes for the Doelen release)

‘Powder Her Face Suite’ Commissioned by Sir Simon Rattle as one of a string of new works to mark the end of his 16-year tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, Adès’s Powder Her Face Suite incorporates four newly-orchestrated sections of the opera, interpolated between new orchestrations of the three existing Dances from Powder Her Face, to make an extended 30-minute work. Adès himself conducts the UK premiere with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in April.

Revisiting ‘...but all shall be well’ In April Thomas Søndergård and the SWR Symphony will give four performances of ...but all shall be well. Lines taken from the last of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets provided the title for this, Adès’s first large-scale orchestral score. Composed in 1993, this ten-minute work is built around a single melody which, after emerging from a delicate, airy tintinnabulation is transformed through numerous ingenious combinations and permutations. The composer calls this intricately crafted work a ‘consolation’ for orchestra and the work ends with an allusion to Liszt. The work also exists in a version for chamber orchestra.

PHOTO: THOMAS ADÈS CONDUCTING THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA © HILARY SCOTT

TUNING IN

Tom Coult Schumann for chamber orchestra Coult has made an arrangement of Schumann’s Studies in Canonic Form Op. 56 for the Britten Sinfonia Academy. The 17-minute work will be premiered in July. ‘These pieces show great contrapuntal skill and canonic technique, but the severity of the title belies the character of the music – this is music of great wit, charm, beauty and elegance,’ says Coult. ‘My arrangements, for chamber orchestra, aim to match these qualities through orchestral colour – sometimes highlighting the canonic structure, sometimes disguising it.’ Coult’s music has often involved canons, from his Beautiful Caged Thing for soprano and chamber orchestra to his Four Perpetual Motions, which was programmed in March with Aldeburgh Young Musicians.

Études featured in New York

‘Sonnet Machine’ at Holland Festival

In January, Tom Coult’s Études for solo violin were featured as part of Lost Dog New Music Ensemble’s Festival of British Music in New York.

Sonnet Machine, a BBC Philharmonic commission from 2015-16 will receive its Dutch premiere as part of the Holland Festival in June, with Martyn Brabbins conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.

Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta in 2014, the third and fourth etudes are hugely contrasting pieces, the first obsessive and strident, the later more unusual – serene, meditative, and utilising novel playing technique. By pressing down the middle of three strings anywhere reasonably high up the fingerboard and bowing sul tasto, the player can play comfortably on two open strings that aren’t next to one another (the middle one being taken out of commission). By carefully positioning the bow at the right position in relationship to where the middle string is stopped, the violinist can then sustain, at a low volume, both the two open strings and the stopped string in the middle. Coult fills this short study with sustained three-note chords (theoretically impossible and visually disarming), and the fragility that this technique prompts in the sound certainly informs its Zen-like meditative atmosphere.

String Quartet Coult’s new work for the Arditti Quartet will be premiered as part of the opening concerts of the newly refurbished Purcell Room at London’s Southbank Centre in May 2018. Commissioned by the Hepner Foundation in memory of Leo Hepner, the 12-minute work is characterised by the unusual tunings of half of the instruments – the 2nd violin has all its strings tuned down a semitone, and the viola has all its strings tuned down a tone. This greatly expands the number of different pitches available to be played as open strings – unlike the conventional tuning of a quartet, this combination contains 16 unique strings – and all of the piece’s five movements are in some sense explorations of the distinctive timbre of open strings.

PHOTO: TOM COULT © MAURICE FOXALL

Recalling Alan Turing’s fascination with the idea of machines writing sonnets, Coult describes the piece as ‘a creative misunderstanding of sonnet form – 14 bits of music that “rhyme’’ in various ways, as if an early computer had arbitrarily applied the rules of sonnet form to a piece of music.’ Over the course of the work’s riproarious 10 minutes, whipcracks articulate many jolting gear changes and non sequiturs, whilst the front desks of violins and violas double on instruments whose scordaturas lend a blazing rawness to the open-string sonorities of the work’s arresting point of departure. A succession of dazzling textures once again testify to the maturity of this young composer’s craft. Later, the glint of open strings returns to initiate a breathless coda which hurtles forward to its close. Sonnet Machine is not the only work of Coult’s to be revived in coming seasons; composed for the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2013, his Codex (Homage to Serafini) will be performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in their 18/19 Season, as part of the PRS Resonate Scheme.

towards an opera... Coult continues to develop a chamber opera with the award-winning playwright Alice Birch, as part of their Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship supported by Snape Maltings. A showcase is planned on 19 April. Birch’s recent work includes Ophelia’s Zimmer (Royal Court and the Schaubühne Theater Berlin) and Anatomy of a Suicide (Royal Court), both directed by Katie Mitchell, and a BAFTA-nominated screenplay to Lady Macbeth (dir. William Oldroyd). Anatomy of a Suicide was described by the Guardian as ‘radically experimental’ and ‘a rich, haunting, technically dazzling script’ by Time Out.

Thomas Adès Selected forthcoming performances (cont.) Three Studies from Couperin 25-26.4.18, Taulumäki Kirkko, Jyväskylä, Finland: Jyvaskyla Sinfonia/Ville Matvejeff 27.4.18, Grosser Saal, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: Berliner Philharmoniker/Alan Gilbert

Traced Overhead 4.5.18, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Daniil Trifonov

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

piano concerto New York premiere 20.3.19, Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY, USA: Kirill Gerstein/Boston Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Adès

new work world premiere 10-12.5.19, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ Gustavo Dudamel

Violin Concerto/In Seven Days/ new work 12-13.7.19, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Music Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Leila Josefowicz/ Kirill Gerstein/The Royal Ballet/ Company Wayne McGregor/Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ Thomas Adès/chor. Wayne McGregor

Tom Coult Selected forthcoming performances String Quartet World premiere 29.5.18, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Arditti Quartet

Sonnet Machine Dutch premiere 23.6.18, Holland Festival, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins

Arrangements Schumann – Studies in Canonic Form Op. 56 World premiere 12.7.18, St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich; 13.7.18, Mumford Theatre, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge; 14.7.18, Latitude Festival, Suffolk, UK: Britten Sinfonia Academy

Francisco Coll Selected forthcoming performances

Francisco Coll Duo for Kopatchinskaja and Gabetta

Cantos

Coll has composed a violin-cello duo, entitled Rizoma, for Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta. The five-minute work will be premiered in Bern in July, and Coll describes it as the rhizome of a Double Concerto ‘Les Plaisirs Illuminés’, that he is currently writing for the duo.

German premiere 22.7.18, Kreuzgangkonzerte, Offenburg, Germany: Dalia Quartet

Four Iberian Miniatures US premiere

‘Stella’ impresses

26.7.18, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Lenox, MA, USA: Augustin Hadelich/Tanglewood Festival Orchestra/Thomas Adès

Faber Music has published the score of Coll’s imposing motet Stella to coincide with its premiere in late February. Commissioned by Stephen Fry for Suzi Digby OBE and the Singers of ORA, the five-minute reflection on Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella has been recorded for release next year. Full details can be found on page 28.

Rizoma World premiere 30.7.18, Gstaad, Bern, Switzerland: Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Sol Gabetta

Valencia Residency Francisco Coll has been announced as the inaugural Composer-in-Residence of the Palau de la Música and the Orchestra of Valencia, a position spanning the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons. The residency will see the Orchestra of Valencia programme a number of existing pieces, as well as premiering a new symphonic work. Coll – a native of Valencia who now lives in Lucerne – will work with young composers, and will also advise the orchestra on new music programming in general. A CD recording documenting the residency is also planned.

Iberian Miniatures in Spain and USA When Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures for violin and chamber orchestra were performed at the BBC Proms, with Augustin Hadelich and the Britten Sinfonia under Thomas Adès, The Financial Times described them as ‘like images of Spain seen through an insect’s eye’. The 12-minute work, which flickers with light, colour and rhythm, received its Spanish premiere in February, with Chloë Hanslip and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia under Eugene Tzigane. Hanslip is the fourth violinist to tackle these flamenco-inspired virtuoso showpieces, the others being Hadelich, Pekka Kuusisto and Noa Wildschut (a protégé of Anne-Sophie Mutter). Hadelich and Adès will give the US premiere of the miniatures at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music in July.

A recording of ‘Mural’

‘Stella impressed with its emotional range, volatile dynamics and transitory grinding harmonies.’ The Times (Geoff Brown), 27 February 2018

Guitar concerto channels Flamenco Turia, a new guitar concerto in five movements commissioned by Christian Karlsen and Norrbotten NEO, received three performances in Sweden in December with Jacob Kellermann as soloist. The 18-minute work for guitar and seven players takes its name from the dried-up river in Valencia which now hosts gardens, fountains, cafés, and even an opera house by architect Santiago Calatrava. ‘As a child,’ Coll explains, ‘I used to walk in this unusual river, full of light, flowers and people. I always thought that one day I would write the music of this river. When Christian Karlsen contacted me, I immediately knew that this was my opportunity to write a piece for guitar and ensemble with Spanish luminosity. This soundscape evokes the light and the respective shadows of my country.’ Flamenco is very much in the surface of this work, although it is always filtered through Coll’s distinctive sonorous imagination. Speaking to Valencia’s Levante newspaper, Karlsen said: ‘It has a very Spanish flavour without falling into clichés and its use of flamenco is very personal. It is definitely one of the most important concertos for guitar, and a great addition to the existing pieces by Rodrigo and Villalobos. I hope I can give the Spanish premiere of this mystical, expressive and exciting work soon’.

In January the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España and Cristóbal Soler recorded Coll’s Mural after a performance in Zaragoza. The recording vividly captures this impressive work, particularly in the finale, which opens up vast, almost Brucknerian vistas before its unsettling conclusion, where a glimpse of E-major evaporates, leaving a dark cluster in the lower strings. The 24-minute piece – Coll’s most ambitious to date – premiered in 2016 by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno, then toured the UK in 2017 with Thomas Adès conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. 16

PHOTO: FRANCISCO COLL © JUDITH COLL; CHRISTIAN KARLSEN, FRANCISCO COLL AND JACOB KELLERMANN REHEARSING ‘TURIA’

TUNING IN

Carl Davis A new ‘Gatsby’ for Pittsburgh Ballet Having already won plaudits in 2000 for his evocative score to a TV adaptation of The Great Gatsby, Davis is set to return to the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s brilliant fable of hedonistic excess and tragic reality of 1920s America in a new original ballet score for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. Choreographed by Jorden Morris, the new show will open in February 2019, and should provide Davis ample scope to conjure both the shimmering Jazz Age, and the destructive obsession which forces Gatsby’s world to unravel.

‘Charlie’s Flea Circus’

Carl Davis Selected forthcoming performances An Eastern Westerner/Safety Last 10-11.3.18, Schrott Center for the Arts, Indianapolis, IN, USA: Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra/ Matthew Kraemer

Pride and Prejudice Theme 8.4.18, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, Kent, UK: Philharmonia Orchestra/ Carl Davis CBE

Nijinsky 18.4.18, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava, Slovakia: Orchestra of the Slovak National Theatre/chor. Daniel de Andrade

Bintley’s ‘Aladdin’ revived A UK tour of Carl Davis’s score to Aladdin, by David Bintley’s Birmingham Royal Ballet, received a rapturous reception last year, with The Stage praising the music’s ‘lush vivacity’. To coincide with the tour, The Carl Davis Collection reissued the classic recording of the ballet, with the Malaysian Philharmonic conducted by the composer.

Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio 22.4.18, Christuskirche, Bremerhaven, Germany: Städtische Orchester Delmenhorst/Eva Schad

The Mysterious Lady

Speaking in Maestro, the recent book dedicated to Davis’s life and music, Bintley said: ‘I love Aladdin from beginning to end. There are no clouds in the sky, and we know it’s going to end well. It’s so redolent of nineteenth-century Orientalism, and Carl’s original music captured that atmosphere perfectly… The company really took to it… The whole score just dances’.

Luxembourg premiere 4.5.18, Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg: Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg/Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/ Carl Davis CBE

The Kid Luxembourg premiere

‘La Dame aux Camélias’ in Naples Alexandre Dumas’s The Lady of the Camelias has inspired a wealth of plays, films, ballets and operas – most famously Verdi’s La Traviata. Davis’s ballet version was commissioned by the National Ballet of Croatia and premiered in 2008 and went on to sell out two successive seasons. The opulent score, which brilliantly encapsulates the story’s high emotions, will receive its Italian premiere in September at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, with choreography by Derek Deane.

‘The Mysterious Lady’ In March Davis conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in his score to The Mysterious Lady, the classic 1928 MetroGoldwyn-Mayer silent starring Greta Garbo. Garbo, the lady of the title, is Tania Fedorova, a Russian spy who falls for an Austrian soldier. The concert also featured the UK premiere of Davis’s score to Scene from The Divine Woman – a single reel that was unearthed in a Russian archive in 1993 in which Garbo plays Marianne, a young actress in 1860s Paris who must choose between the love of a young soldier and the attentions of a wealthy impresario. Davis conducts The Mysterious Lady again at Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg in May.

PHOTOS: CARL DAVIS © JASPER FRY

Davis composed Charlie’s Flea Circus, a delightful 5-minute work for saxophone and piano, for the sixtieth birthday of leading performer John Harle. Taking in waltzes and mazurkas, it makes a wonderful addition to the repertoire and has been published by Faber Music in a volume comprising two forms of the work: the original for alto doubling sopranino saxophone and piano, and a more accessible version for alto saxophone and piano. Writing about the inspiration behind the piece, Davis said: ‘sometime in the early 1980s a mysterious barrel was exhumed from an old Hollywood house which contained rare Chaplin footage. This discovery sparked a TV series – Unknown Chaplin – released in 1983, utilising not only the newly discovered material but also much more material unearthed from the Chaplin archive including a short sketch named ‘‘The Professor’’ for which I wrote the music. Chaplin often explored characters other than the ubiquitous little tramp and this was one of them, though he never developed it. We see the Professor lugging a heavy suitcase to a shabby dosshouse. The suitcase contains a flea circus which soon escapes infesting all the denizens of the dosshouse including a dog and the landlord. From a musical point of view, the score seemed to require two themes – a dreary minor key tune for the Professor, and something very jolly for the airborne fleas’.

5.5.18, Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg: Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg/Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/ Carl Davis CBE

Safety Last Ukranian premiere 14.7.18, Odessa International Film Festival, Potemkin Stairs, Odessa, Ukraine: Odessa Symphonic Orchestra/Igor Shavruk

The Lady of the Camellias Italian premiere 15-22.9.18, Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, Italy: Orchestra Teatro San Carlo/Nicola Giuliani/chor. Derek Deane

Oliver Knussen

Julian Anderson

2.7.18 Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Melissa Doecke

A new recording of the Horn Concerto

‘Seadrift’ in New York

Julian Anderson Selected forthcoming performances

‘More concert aria than concerto’ is how Oliver Knussen once described his Horn Concerto, which has just been released on CD, in a live recording by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and their principal horn Felix Dervaux under conductor Ryan Wigglesworth.

In January, Julian Anderson’s Whitman setting Seadrift was featured as part of Lost Dog New Music Ensemble’s Festival of British Music in New York.

Oliver Knussen Selected forthcoming performances Symphony No. 2 16.3.18, St Alfege Church, Greenwich, London, UK: St Paul’s Sinfonia/Andrew Morley

The Way to Castle Yonder/Violin Concerto 12.4.18, Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland: Leila Josefowicz/Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen

Where the Wild Things Are 15.4-3.7.18, Opernhaus, Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany: Deutsche Oper am Rhein/Duisburger Philharmoniker/Jesse Wong/dir. Philipp Westerbarkei

Masks

Piano Études Nos. 1-3 12.3.18, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, UK: Clare Hammond

The Bearded Lady 11.5.18, Victoria Hall, Grange-overSands, UK: Richard Uttley/Olivier Stankiewicz

Composed for the legendary Barry Tuckwell, Knussen’s 13-minute concerto was originally envisaged in two parts, ‘Fantastico’ (a sonata-allegro) and ‘Adagio’ (variations on a ground bass), framed and connected by cadenza-like passages. In the process of composition, however, these designs telescoped unexpectedly, resulting in a single movement in which the interlocked old forms are only the vestigial frames for a rich exploration of the horn’s many characters, from Mahlerian Nachtmusik to moments of clear, Mozartian brilliance. Described as ‘a masterpiece of lucidity’ by the Guardian the concerto has received over 80 performances since its premiere in 1994, most recently with Knussen himself conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with soloist Jukka Harju.

Revisiting the Second Symphony In March Knussen’s Second Symphony receives a performance from the St Paul’s Sinfonia and Andrew Morley. Written in 1970-71 when its composer was still in his teens, Knussen’s Symphony No. 2 may only clock in at 17 minutes, but its brevity belies the enormous emotional world it creates. In the symphony, a high soprano joins the chamber orchestra for a pale, moonlit journey of a dreaming sleeper, setting words by Sylvia Plath alongside Georg Trakl (whose words Knussen has also set in his Rosary Songs and Trumpets). Filled with shimmering, spectral textures, this is an uneasy piece which combines an eerie, glacial brilliance with a burning expressionist intensity. One of Knussen’s strongest early statements, this compelling work deserves to be much better known. ‘Every note in this intricate work is fastidiously placed.’ The Independent (Michael Church), 31 July 2012

A world away from Delius’s work of the same name or, indeed, Per Nørgård’s 1978 version for soprano and ensemble, Anderson’s bracing, windswept setting of lines from ‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking’ displays terrific energy and economy of gesture. Scored for soprano, flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet and piano, the 10-minute work begins by allowing the effulgence of Whitman’s words to speak for themselves, though towards the end the music grows ever more rich and resonant.

Boston residency Already familiar to Boston audiences through his relationship with the Symphony Orchestra, Anderson has been announced as the Composer-in-Residence for the 2018 Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory. The Callithumpian Consort directed by Stephen Drury, will present a number of chamber and ensemble works. Full details will be announced in late Spring.

Revisiting ‘Heaven is Shy of Earth’ With Anderson’s Tombeau, a setting of Emily Dickinson, being premiered by members of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in March, what better time to revisit Heaven is Shy of Earth for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra, which sets poems by Dickinson alongside the High Mass and Psalm 84. Commissioned for the 2006 BBC Proms (where The Sunday Times described it as ‘a revelation’), this 30-minute ‘secular mass’ is a beautiful and curious work. In 2008 it won a British Composer Award, then in 2010 it was extended with a further movement, ‘Gloria (with Bird)’, which highlights the piece’s intention to reflect and celebrate the natural world. It is this latter version which will soon be released on the Ondine label, alongside Anderson’s ballet score The Comedy of Change.

PHOTOS: OLIVER KNUSSEN © HANA ZUSHI-RHODES, ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC; JULIAN ANDERSON © MAURICE FOXALL

TUNING IN

Carl Vine Australian Ballet’s ‘The Silver Rose’ An extract from Vine’s The Silver Rose will be staged by The Australian Ballet in March as part of its tribute to renowned choreographer Graeme Murphy. A reinterpretation of Hugo von Hoffmannsthal’s scenario for Der Rosenkavalier, Graeme Murphy’s The Silver Rose is a lavishly told story of love trysts, revenge and bittersweet romance. Vine, a long-time collaborator of Murphy’s, revisited his extensive orchestral catalogue to compile the 90-minute score, a section of which will be heard as part of this tribute evening when it travels to Melbourne and Sydney in the coming months.

Musica Viva Melbourne residency The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has announced a major Carl Vine residence as part of their 17/18 season which will culminate in the premiere of his Symphony No. 8 conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. The project highlights Vine’s position as one of the most respected Australian composers working today. It will feature his Smith’s Alchemy, Concerto for Orchestra, The Tree of Man for voice and strings, and the orchestral fanfare V (as part of the Last Night of the Melbourne Proms in addition to performances on tour in China).

After nearly two decades at the helm of Musica Viva – the world’s largest chamber music organisation – Vine will step down as Artistic Director in late 2019. ‘Musica Viva has now engulfed half of my adult life, and it has been an unbelievable honour to devote these years to exploring the supreme creative social phenomenon that is classical chamber music,’ said Vine.

Gergiev conducts Piano Concerto

Double Piano Concerto A skilled pianist himself, Vine has created a body of piano works which occupies a central place in the contemporary repertoire of many pianists through its scintillating command of sonority and space, not to mention its versatility and wit. He is currently at work on a Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, commissioned by the West Australian and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras with support from philanthropist Geoff Stearn. It will be premiered in Perth this May by outstanding international pianists Piers Lane and Kathryn Stott, with Rory Macdonald conducting.

PHOTO: CARL VINE © KEITH SAUNDERS; VALERY GERGIEV © OLEG ZOTOV

The Silver Rose (excerpts) 20-26.3.18, Arts Centre, Melbourne, VIC; 6-23.4.18, Sydney Opera House, NSW, Australia: The Australian Ballet/ch. Graeme Murphy

V 25.3.18, Last Night of the Melbourne Proms, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis

Piano Trio 29.3.18, Daniel and Joanna S Rose Studio, Lincoln Center, New York City, NY, USA: Sitkovetsky Trio (2 performances)

Toccatissimo 25.4.18, Salon, Firth Hall, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Alex Raineri

Double Piano Concerto World premiere 10-11.5.18, Perth Concert Hall, Perth, WA; 19.5.18, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, TAS, Australia: Piers Lane/Kathryn Stott/West Australian Symphony Orchestra/Rory Macdonald

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

Lyrical, direct and exhibiting a masterful understanding of vocal writing, Vine’s secular cantata for soprano and strings, The Tree of Man, is a gift to audience and musicians alike. The 11-minute work, written in 2012 for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and soprano Danielle de Niese, is based on a passage from a novel of the same name by the Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick White. Vine knew White personally (having written music for several of his stage plays in the 1980s) and his setting perfectly complements the simplicity and sincerity of the prose. The music moves in an arc from its quietly insistent beginnings and rhapsodic central section to a haunting conclusion, where the brooding opening returns before evaporating into the air.

Carl Vine Selected forthcoming performances

Smith’s Alchemy 9-10.8.18, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC; 10.8.18, Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia: Members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/ Dale Barltrop

Symphony No. 8 World premiere

In December Valery Gergiev conducted Vine’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in the closing concert of the 2017 Mariinsky International Piano Festival, St Petersburg, with the Mariinsky Orchestra and soloist Mira Yevtich. First performed by Piers Lane and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2012, Carl Vine’s vibrant concerto is an attractive 25-minute work comprising three movements. A Rhapsody and Nocturne lead to a finale entitled ‘Cloudless Blue’, a dazzling presto that captures all the brilliance of the Australian summer.

30.8,1.9.18, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC; 31.8.18, Deakin’s Costa Hall, Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Geelong, VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis

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

Torsten Rasch Selected forthcoming performances

Torsten Rasch myth, magic, music, and madness

Die Formel

Rasch’s dramatic Violin Concerto ‘Tropoi’ received its US premiere in January with two performances by Mira Wang and the Spokane Symphony under Eckart Preu. Wang performs the work again in April with the South Carolina Philharmonic and Morihiko Nakahara.

world premiere 2.3-14.4.18, Stadttheater, Bern, Switzerland: Vokalensemble ardent/Camerata Bern/Jonathan Stockhammer/dir. Gerd Heinz

…in umbra…

This substantial four-movement 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. Unfolding over 20 minutes, this weighty statement is everything we have come to expect from Rasch: a large orchestra is masterfully handled, whilst the hefty solo part, with its many knotty twists and turns, offers violinists numerous opportunities to showcase their technical – and interpretative – virtuosity.

world premiere 22-23.3.18, Centro Cultural Miguel Delibes, Valladolid, Spain: Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León/Andrew Gourlay

Violin Concerto 28.4.18, Koger Center for the Arts, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA: Mira Wang/ South Carolina Philharmonic/ Morihiko Nakahara

Benjamin Britten Selected forthcoming performances Death in Venice 19.5-6.7.18, Landestheater Linz, Linz, Austria: Landestheater Linz/Roland Böer/dir. Hermann Schneider 13.6-5.7.18, Opernhaus, Stuttgart, German: Staatsorchester Stuttgart/ Marco Comin/dir. Demis Volpi

The Sword in the Stone: Concert Suite 26-27.5.18, Théâtre d’Orléans, Scène Nationale, Orléans, France: Orchestre Symphonique d’Orléans/Marius Stieghorst (‘Bird Music’ only)

Paul Bunyan 3-8.9.18, Wilton’s Music Hall, London, UK: English National Opera/ Matthew Kofi Waldren/dir. Jamie Manton

String Quartet No. 3 8.9.18, South Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Australian String Quartet

Looking back to 1918 In March and April 2018 Konzerttheater Bern will stage Die Formel, an ambitious interdisciplinary work for singers, actors and orchestra with music by Torsten Rasch. 100 years after the end of the First World War and the October Revolution, Doris Reckewell’s text takes Bern’s important role as a neutral waystation and imagines an encounter between seven of the twentieth century’s most culturally important figures who passed through the city: the revolutionary exile Lenin with his wife; the emancipated social pedagogue Nadeshda Krupskaja; the as-yet-unknown physicist Albert Einstein and his wife Mileva Marić; the artist Paul Klee and his pianist wife Lily; as well as the young, uprooted poet Robert Walser. Jonathan Stockhammer will conduct Camerata Bern and Vokalensemble ardent in a production directed by Gerd Heinz.

from the depths… A commission from Andrew Gourlay and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Rasch’s latest orchestral work, …in umbra…, is based on the Lutheran chorale ‘Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir’, also known as ‘De Profundis’. Rasch chose the chorale, he writes, out of a desire ‘to convey the meaning of its text; of its sense of being lost and crying out from the depths of a dark place – a place in the shadows’. The work is not a set of variations in the traditional sense, but rather sees Rasch take each of the chorale’s seven phrases as the starting point for far reaching extemporisations, which radically re-cast the material and make it thrillingly resonant with today. …in umbra…will be premiered in Valladolid, Spain in late March, with Andrew Gourlay conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León.

Explore the Music of Torsten Rasch with our Online Score Library: scorelibrary.fabermusic.com

‘The entire world of music has been made richer by the addition of an important new violin concerto by Rasch… Its reception was enthusiastic, due in no small degree to the blazing advocacy of the soloist… Rasch’s mastery of orchestral effect allows him to exploit the obvious cinematic potential of the tale, from the eerie, timeless stillness from which the powerful tropoi emerge to their wild confrontation, and ultimate conquest, of the forces of destruction and disorder. Both the source and target of this potent energy is the violinist, who is required to exploit resources of the instrument that Paganini never dreamed of. Wang brought even the most bizarre and strenuous of Rasch’s imaginings before us as things of beauty: colorful, evocative and consoling. From the lowest chest tones of her Stradivarius to its stratospheric harmonics, her command of bow speed and pressure produced tropes of delight and amazement.’ The Spokesman-Review (Larry Lapidus), 28 January 2018

Benjamin Britten Britten in America In September English National Opera will present a new production of Benjamin Britten’s first work for stage, Paul Bunyan, at Wilton’s Music Hall. The production will be directed by Jamie Manton, designed by Camilla Clarke and conducted by ENO Charles Mackerras Conducting Fellow Matthew Kofi Waldren. 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.

TUNING IN

Jonathan Harvey

John Woolrich

Jonathan Harvey Selected forthcoming performances Bhakti 17.3.18: Great Guild Hall, Riga, Latvia: Sinfonietta Riga/Normunds Sne

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

Bird Concerto with Pianosong

Revisiting the Oboe Concerto

‘Speakings’ In January one of Jonathan Harvey’s late masterpieces received a rare performance from the Basel Sinfonietta, SWR Experimentalstudio and Baldur Brönnimann. Speakings for orchestra and electronics was composed in 2008 during Harvey’s time as Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and utilises a unique process of electronic transformation developed at IRCAM to explore the possibility that an orchestra could be made to ‘speak’. Winner of the prestigious Monaco Prize, the 25-minute work belongs to that fascinating clutch of works composed around the time of Harvey’s final opera, Wagner Dream, which contain musical allusions to Wagner, in this case Parsifal. Unfolding over three continuous movements, the music moves from the babbling of a baby and the frenetic chatter of human life in all its expressions, to music of unity, a hymn which is close to Gregorian chant in which, in Harvey’s words ‘the paradise of the sounding temple is imagined’. Faber Music has developed a new typeset edition of Speakings that was used for this performance and will be released on sale soon.

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

Choral Publications Faber Music is pleased to announce the publication of two new editions of Harvey choral works: Forms of Emptiness, and Plainsongs for Peace and Light. For full details, see page 28.

All concertos are built from a mismatch of forces: the individual against the crowd, solo against tutti. Many composers have intensified this discrepancy by banishing the solo instrument from the orchestra, so that the colour of the solo and the tutti are as different as possible. John Woolrich, however, takes a different approach in his Oboe Concerto: rather than isolating the soloist, he has filled the orchestra with the mournful noise of its singing: the oboe is surrounded by an attendant group of three oboes and their more extrovert second cousin, the soprano saxophone. But the oppositions are still there – the drama and the poetry of the work flow from the contrast between the fragile keening of the oboe and the brutal power of a large symphony orchestra. The 26-minute work was premiered, and recorded, by Nicholas Daniel, who revived it in January with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Jonathan Berman. ‘A real tour de force… Quiet passages contrasted with sections that seemed to explore the outermost limits of dramatic expression and sheer decibel content… not only musically satisfying but dramatically exciting.’ Seen and Heard (Paul Corfield Godfrey), 2 February 2018

‘It had an immensity which I have heard little of in contemporary music… simply astounding.’ The Sprout (Weeping Tudor), 21 February 2018

Mozart refashioned Whilst many will be familiar with Woolrich’s Ulysses Awakes – an achingly beautiful reworking of Monteverdi for viola and strings which receives performances in the UK, Australia and the Netherlands in the coming months – fewer may know his The Theatre Represents a Garden: Night which will be performed by the Morley Chamber Orchestra and Charles Peebles in May. A 19-minute journey through 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. 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.

15.4.18, Barnes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA: Ryan MacEvoy McCullough/Ensemble X/ Timothy Weiss

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco/String Quartet No. 4 24.4.18, Firth Hall, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Ligeti Quartet

Ricercare una melodia (oboe)/ Tombeau de Messiaen/Run Before Lightning 2.7.18, Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Inventi Ensemble/Melissa Doecke/ Ben Opie/Peter de Jager

John Woolrich Selected forthcoming performances Ulysses Awakes 2.5.18, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Daniel Bard 11.5.18, Max Richter’s Sounds and Visions, Barbican Centre, London, UK: 12 ensemble 14.6.18, Melbourne Recital Centre; 16.6.18, South Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Lawrence Power/Australian National Academy of Music

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

Scarlatti Sonatas Set 2 11,13.5.18, Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge; 13.5.18, Binham Priory, Binham, Norfok, UK: Anglia Ruskin University/ Christopher Tarrant

A Book of Studies Set 1 28.6.18, Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross, Crediton; 6.12.18, Assembly Room, The Council House, Chichester, UK: Magnard Ensemble

Pianobooks II, VI, VII, IX, XII, XIV, XV World premiere of XV 15.11.18, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Clare Hammond

NEW WORKS Stage Works GEORGE BENJAMIN Lessons in Love and Violence (2015-17) opera in two parts. c.100 minutes Text: Martin Crimp (Eng) 8 Singers: Baritone/Soprano/Baritone/Tenor/High Tenor or Haute-contre/High Col S/Mezzo soprano/Bass Baritone 2(I+II=picc).2.ebcl.2(I=A+ebcl.II=A+basset horn).bcl.3(III=cbsn) – 4.2(I+II=ptpt).2.btrbn.cbtrbn.0 – perc(4): 2 crot/5 t.bells/2 gongs/4 timp/2 bongos/2 SD/talking drum/2 tombaks/2 TD/2 tumbas/BD/claves/3 mokubios/2 tpl.bl/3 tgl/2 tamb/3 susp.cym/whip/2 pairs of machine cast/2 vibraslaps/4 guiros – 2 harps – cel – cimbalom – strings (suggested 10.8.8.8.6 double basses require low C extensions) Co-commissioned and co-produced by the Royal Opera Covent Garden London, Dutch National Opera Amsterdam, Hamburg State opera, Opéra de Lyon, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona and Teatro Real Madrid 10.5.2018, Royal Opera House, London, UK: The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/George Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell Full score, vocal score and parts in preparation Text 0-571-54055-4 and first edition vocal score 0-571-54054-6 will be on sale from 10th May 2018

TORSTEN RASCH Die Formel (2017) theatre work for solo voices, chorus, childrens’ choir and ensemble. c. 60-70 minutes music (c.120 minutes total) Text: Doris Reckewell (Ger) Singers: MILEVA (col S)/NADEZHDA (S)/LILY (M)/WALSER (BBar)/SATB chorus/Childrens’ choir perc(3): crot/glsp/vib/t.bells/tuned gongs/mar/timp/tuned steel drums/bongos (pair)/4 tpl.bl OR 4 log drums/3 tom-toms/ claves/tgl/2 susp.cyms/china.cym/2 tam-t/BD – cimbalom(=percussion 3) – accordion – strings FP: 2.3.2018, Stadttheater, Bern, Switzerland: Vokalensemble ardent/Camerata Bern/Jonathan Stockhammer/dir. Gerd Heinz Commissioned by Cihan Inan, on behalf of Stattheater Bern Full score, vocal score and parts for hire

Orchestra NED BIGHAM Archipelago Dances Set 1 (2016) orchestra. 22 minutes 3(III=picc).2.ca.3(III=bcl).2.cbsn – 4331 – timp – perc(4) – 2 pno(II=cel) – 2 harp - strings FP: Feb 2016/June 2017: Royal Scottish National Orchestra recording sessions, Glasgow, UK: Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jean-Claude Picard Score and parts for hire Archipelago Dances Set 2 (2017) orchestra. 22 minutes 3(III=picc).3(III=ca).3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) – 4331 – timp – perc(4) – cel – harp – strings(DB with C extension) FP: Feb 2016/June 2017: Royal Scottish National Orchestra recording sessions, Glasgow, UK: Royal Scottish National Orchestra/ Jean-Claude Picard Score and parts for hire Two Nightscapes (2017) orchestra. 10 minutes picc.2(I=picc.II=afl).2.ca.3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) – 4.3.2.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(3) – cel – harp – strings FP: Feb 2016/June 2017: Royal Scottish National Orchestra recording sessions, Glasgow, UK: Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jean-Claude Picard Score and parts for hire

DEBUSSY orch. COLIN MATTHEWS Images Book 1 (2017-18) orchestra. c.14 minutes 2(I=optional picc.II=picc).afl.2.ca.2(I+II=cl in A).bcl.2.cbsn – 4231 – timp – perc(3): crot/glsp/tgl/clash.cym/susp.cym/siz. cym/tam-t/BD – 2 harps – cel – strings Commissioned by Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Philharmonie Luxembourg FP: Recording 3-5 July 2018, Philharmonie Luxembourg Score and parts in preparation

DANNY ELFMAN Concerto for Violin & Orchestra (Eleven Eleven) (2017) violin and orchestra. 40 minutes 3(III=picc).2.ca.2.bcl.3(III=cbsn) – 4.3.2.btrbn.1(=cimbasso) – timp – perc(4) – harp – cel – strings Commissioned by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Live, Stanford University and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. FP: 21.6.2017, Prague Proms, Smetana Hall, Prague, Czech Republic: Sandy Cameron/Czech National SO/John Mauceri Score and parts for hire

ANDERS HILLBORG Mantra – Elegy (2017) Homage to Stravinsky for orchestra. 6½ minutes 3(II+III=picc).2.2.2(II=cbsn) – 4230 – timp – perc(1): vib/t.bells/large tam-t – strings Commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and the Aspen Music Festival FP: 21.4.2018, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski Score and parts in preparation

DAVID MATTHEWS New Fire (2018) orchestra. 6½ minutes 3(III=picc).3(III=ca).3(III=bcl).2.cbsn – 4.4(IV ad lib.).3.1 – timp – perc(2): I: glsp/Chinese.cym II: crot/t.bells – harp (doubled if possible) – pno – strings FP: 8.4.2018, Königskloster, Brno, Czech Republic: Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra/Dennis Russell Davies Score and parts in preparation

DAVID MATTHEWS Symphony No. 9 (2016) orchestra. c.27 minutes 2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2(II=bcl).2(II=cbsn) – 4230 – timp – perc: crot/tgl/3 susp.cym/SD – harp – strings FP: 9.5.2018, St George’s, Bristol, UK: English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods Score and parts in preparation

TORSTEN RASCH …in umbra… (2017) Variations on ‘Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir’ for orchestra. c.17 minutes picc.2(II=afl).2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 4331 – timp – perc(3): crot/glsp/vib/t.bells/2 tuned gongs/mar/cyms/susp.cym/ch.cym/2 tam-t/claves/tpl.bl/2 BD – harp – pno(=cel) – strings (suggested number of players: 14.12.10.8.6) Commissioned by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León FP: 22.3.2018, Centro Cultural Miguel Delibes, Valladolid, Spain: Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León/Andrew Gourlay Score and parts in preparation

VIKKI STONE Concerto for Comedian & Orchestra (2017) comedian and orchestra (chamber or large). 50 minutes 1(=picc).1(=ca).1.1 – 2110 – timp – perc(2) – cel – amalgamated keyboard – harp – strings OR 2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2.2 – 4.2.2.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(2) – cel - harp – strings FP: 25.6.2017, Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, Somerset, UK: Vikki Stone/Wells Cathedral School Symphony Orchestra/Ben Glassberg Score and parts for hire

Ensemble FRANCISCO COLL Turia (2017) concerto for guitar and ensemble. 18 minutes fl(=picc+afl).cl(=bcl) – perc(1): glsp+bow/xyl/crot/cajon/3 tpl.bl/cast/metal guiro/susp.cym/mark tree/large tin – pno – vln.vla.vlc FP: 14.12.2017, Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden: Jacob Kellerman/Norrbotten NEO/Christian Karlsen Commissioned by Christian Karlsen, Jacob Kellermann, Föreningen Kammarmusik NU and the Norrbotten NEO Ensemble with kind financial support from the Swedish Arts Council and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Score and parts in preparation Exclusive to Christian Karlsen and Jacob Kellermann until 14 December 2020

Chamber TOM COULT String Quartet (2018) string quartet. c.12 minutes Commissioned by the Hepner Foundation For Leo Hepner FP: 29.5.2018, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Arditti Quartet Score and parts in preparation

TANSY DAVIES Undertow (1999 rev. 2018) chamber ensemble of 5 players. c.6 minutes fl.cl.vln.vlc.pno Commissioned by Chroma Score and parts for hire

MATTHEW HINDSON Celebration (String Quartet No. 5) (2017) string quartet. 10 minutes Written for the Goldner String Quartet FP: 28.7.2017, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Townsville, QLD, Australia: Goldner String Quartet. Score and parts on special sale from the Hire Library

COLIN MATTHEWS Hidden Agenda (2017-18) Piano Trio No. 2. c.11 minutes Commissioned by the Winchester Chamber Music Festival with financial support from the Friends of the Festival together with Hinrichsen Foundation and Winchester City Council First two movements FP: 28.4.2017, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester, UK: London Bridge Trio Complete premiere: 4.5.2018, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester, UK: London Bridge Trio Score and parts in preparation

MARTIN SUCKLING String Quintet ‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’ (2017) for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos. 25 minutes Commissioned by Aurora Orchestra and Poet in the City IV movement FP: 15.10.2017, Wellcome Collection, London, UK: Aurora Orchestra Complete FP: 12.1.2018, Hall 1, Kings Place, London, UK: Aurora Orchestra Score and parts in preparation

NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS Instrumental

New Publications

New Recordings

FRANCISCO COLL

GEORGE BENJAMIN

THOMAS ADÈS

Rizoma (2017) violin and cello. 4½ minutes FP: 30.7.2018, Gstaad, Bern, Switzerland: Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Sol Gabetta Commissioned by Patricia Kopatchinskaja Score in preparation

Lessons in Love and Violence

Vocal score 0-571-54054-6 Text 0-571-54055-4

COLIN MATTHEWS

FRANCISCO COLL

Meditation (2017) after Telemann’s 12th Fantasie for solo tenor or soprano recorder. 2½ minutes Commissioned for Tabea Debus by City Music Foundation FP: 6.1.2018, Baroque at the Edge Festival, St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, London, UK: Tabea Debus Score in preparation

Stella

Bell-wether (2017) solo alto flute. c.2 minutes In memory of Sebastian Bell Bell-wether was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, with the generous support of Lark (Group) Ltd. FP: 24.1.2018, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Michael Cox Score in preparation

Vocal THOMAS ADÈS Four Purcell Realizations (2012/2017) voice and piano. 12 minutes By Beauteous Softness, Come unto these yellow sands, Full Fathom Five and An Evening Hymn By Beauteous Softness and An Evening Hymn were co-commissioned by Simon Yates and Kevin Roon, and Carnegie Hall. FP: Come unto these yellow sands and Full Fathom Five: 26.10.2012, Le Poisson Rouge, New York, NY, USA: Iestyn Davies/Thomas Adès By Beauteous Softness and An Evening Hymn: 15.10.2017, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York, NY, USA: Iestyn Davies/Thomas Adès Score on special sale from the Hire Library

Choral FRANCISCO COLL Stella (2016) A reflection on Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella for SATB a cappella choir in 8 parts. c.5 minutes FP: 24.2.2018, LSO St Luke’s, London, UK: ORA Singers/Suzi Digby Commissioned by Stephen Fry for Suzi Digby OBE and the singers of ORA Score 0-571-53652-2 on sale

HOWARD GOODALL Invictus: A Passion (2017) soprano and tenor soloists, SATB chorus and small orchestra. 55 minutes ssax – 2 hrn – pno(= elec pno) – (organ) – 2 string quartets.db Texts: Æmelia Lanyer née Bassano; Christina Georgina Rossetti; Ella Wheeler Wilcox; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper; William Wilberforce; Lamentations of Jeremiah; Psalm 142; Antiphon for Maundy Thursday; William Ernest Henley; A.E. Housman; John 20:1; Isaac Watts; W.B. Yeats; George Herbert (English & Latin). Commissioned by St. Luke’s Friends of Music for the Chancel Choir of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, Sid Davis, Director. FP: 25.3.2018, St Luke’s United Methodist Church, Houston, TX, USA: St Luke’s United Methodist Church Choir/Howard Goodall. Vocal score on sale (in preparation), full score, vocal score and parts for hire

£34.99 £9.99 (Both available from 10th May)

Score 0-571-53979-3

£3.99

Charlie’s Flea Circus (saxophone and piano)

£14.99

JONATHAN HARVEY Plainsongs for Peace and Light

Score 0-571-52214-9

£4.50

Fantasy for Guitar Sean Shibe Delphian DCD34193

Cello Suites Nos. 1-3 (arranged for solo viola) Laura Menegozzo In Alto SSP2019 Nocturnal after John Dowland Sean Shibe Delphian DCD34193

CARL DAVIS

Forms of Emptiness

Score 0-571-54013-9

MALCOLM ARNOLD

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

CARL DAVIS

Score and parts 0-571-54049-X

Arcadiana; The Four Quarters; Piano Quintet Dimitri Vassilakis/DoelenKwartet Cybele SACD 261603

£6.50

Aladdin Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra/Carl Davis CBE Carl Davis Collection CDC029

JONNY GREENWOOD Water (premiere recording) Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti ABC Classics

JONATHAN HARVEY The Angels Taipei Chamber Singers/Chen Yun-Hung TCS-P12-1712

OLIVER KNUSSEN Horn Concerto Felix Dervaux/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth RCO 17004

PETER SCULTHORPE Djilile (arranged for piano and strings) Tamara-Anna Cislowska/Australian Chamber Orchestra ABC Classics 481 5781

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (arranged for two pianos) Mark Bebbington/Rebeca Omordia SOMMCD 0164

ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGE Wassail! Carols of Comfort & Joy (2017) unison children’s choir, SATB choir and band. 40 minutes. Text: Robert Herrick; Traditional; Anon; Joanna L’Estrange; Nahum Tate (Eng) descant recorder(=treble+sopranino) – piano accordion – pno (or gtr) – perc(1) – db Commissioned by United Learning FP: 27.11.2017, Southwark Cathedral, London, UK: United Learning/Call Me Al Jazz Quintet/Alexander L’Estrange. Vocal score (0-571-54038-4) is available for hire, and on sale. Full score and parts available for hire. Children’s choir resources (a separate children’s part PDF and set of rehearsal MP3s) are also available on sale.

Danny Elfman signs to Faber Music

Seattle Symphony take up Khan Concerto Indian sitar maestro Nishat Khan gave the US premiere of his 2012 sitar concerto The Gate of the Moon as part of Seattle Symphony’s ‘Celebrate Asia’ festival on 11 February. In a packed Benaroya Hall, Khan and the orchestra were conducted by DaYe Lin.

Ned Bigham: new works for orchestra Further to the recent success of Ned Bigham’s multi-screen orchestral work Staffa (given at the Edinburgh International Festival last year), Faber Music is happy to announce that we are publishing other works by this acclaimed British composer. Staffa was the title track of Bigham’s latest album, and we have now made available the remaining two works featured: Archipelago Dances Sets 1 and 2 and Two Nightscapes.

Faber Music is thrilled to announce the signing of a publishing agreement with legendary Hollywood composer, Danny Elfman, in respect of his new Violin Concerto ‘Eleven Eleven’. The 40-minute work was written for the American soloist Sandy Cameron, who gave the premiere in Prague in June 2017. It was co-commissioned by the Prague Proms, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Stanford Live, Stanford University. Cameron was joined by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and John Mauceri for the Prague performance and the German premiere given three months later in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. She also gave the US premiere in March, with two performances by the Stanford Symphony Orchestra. In June, Cameron and Mauceri join the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to record the work for commercial release, and there are three live performances planned in September by Cameron with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta. In the meantime, a short 9-minute promotional video taken from the premiere, which includes highlights from all four movements can be obtained by emailing musicfornow@fabermusic.com. A complete score can be viewed at scorelibrary.fabermusic.com.

Meredith to open BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival Five Telegrams is a unique collaboration between acclaimed composer Anna Meredith, and 59 Productions, the Tony Award-winning design company whose work includes the London 2012 Opening Ceremony and the National Theatre’s hit War Horse. Part of 14-18 NOW, Five Telegrams is a co-commission from 14-18 NOW, the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival – the first time these two major festivals have worked together in this way. It will be performed at both festivals later this year. More in the next issue… Meanwhile, one of the high points of the opening events of the newly-restored Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank will be a ‘Varmints Live’ evening, taking place on 28 April. Meredith and her band will be joined by the Southbank Sinfonia under Simon Dobson in an electronic/orchestral reimagining of her award-winning debut album, ‘Varmints’, plus a number of brand-new tracks.

‘Hugely enjoyable, brilliantly orchestrated and performed… post-minimalist abounding with good tunes, tightly constructed, wonderfully accessible… it is wonderful to have a composer once again embracing dance forms in concert music… Bigham has a remarkable gift for orchestral colour and the RSNO under Picard clearly relish bringing the score to life. It is so refreshing to hear a disc by a British composer who is not afraid to write work for an audience to engage with. Britten, who was so keen that his music should be ‘useful’, would be proud.’ British Music Society Magazine (Paul Jackson), 2017

Greenwood’s ‘Water’ released on ABC The premiere recording of Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral piece, Water (2012), has been released by ABC Classics, in a performance by the group that commissioned the work, the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The release, which couples Greenwood’s work with Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, is the first classical vinyl release in Australia for over 20 years. Written following Greenwood’s stint as the ACO’s Composer-inResidence in 2012, Water is inspired by Philip Larkin’s poem of the same name, which alludes to a glass of water ‘where any-angled light would congregate endlessly’. Scored for strings, flutes, keyboard, piano and two Indian tanpura, it takes the form of a continuous 15-minute movement. Kristjan Järvi included Water in a programme he gave with MDR Sinfonieorchester in Leipzig earlier this year.

Mixed in amongst extracts of Lanyer’s long-form poem are texts from various periods of historic turmoil, written or inspired by women, which describe human suffering and persecution but which emphasise the human capacity for humility in the face of tyranny – themes that hold a profound universal resonance. These texts include ‘Gethsemane’ by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, ‘Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary’ by Christina Georgina Rossetti and ‘Slave Auction’ by Ellen Watkins Harper.

A Concerto for Comedian and Orchestra Vikki Stone has followed an unusual career path to date. Following her training as a singer at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she went on to develop her career as a stand-up comedian, singer, actor and composer. Well-known as a comedy musician she has now branched out even further, having penned a Concerto for Comedian and Orchestra.

Writing about Invictus, Goodall said: ‘In writing a setting of the Passion story, in the 21st century, I felt it important to look at its ideas, its format and its message afresh… I wanted to reflect musically on what this story has to tell us, now.’ A vocal score (0-571-53653-0) will be released in May.

Jessica Curry

Originally workshopped at Wells Cathedral School (she is a former pupil), she has now performed the 50-minute work at the Latitude and Glastonbury Festivals, and most recently at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe where she was accompanied by the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland Camerata under Ben Glassberg. As the title suggests, the Concerto is a vehicle for Stone’s own comedic talents but it has been written in such a way that it can be performed by other comedians, with the script able to be adapted as necessary. It is in four movements, with a narrative, and it also introduces the audience to the orchestra and issues of concert etiquette! Highlights include ‘The Arrival of the Dishwasher’ and there’s even a ‘March of the Latecomers’… The Concerto is available in versions for large and small orchestra. Contact us for perusal materials (musicfornow@fabermusic.com)

Howard Goodall’s ‘Invictus: A Passion’ Howard Goodall’s new work for chorus and orchestra, Invictus: A Passion is to launch in both the US and UK later this year. The 50-minute work premieres on 25 March (Palm Sunday) in Houston, Texas, and is the result of a commission from long-time Goodall advocates, St Luke’s United Methodist Church (Music Director, Sid Davis). The composer will travel to the US to conduct St Luke’s UMC Chancel Choir in the premiere performance. Immediately prior to this, the work will be recorded for release in August by The Sixteen’s Coro label, performed by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford conducted by Stephen Darlington with soloists from The Sixteen (Kirsty Hopkins and Mark Dobell) accompanied by the The Lanyer Ensemble. The same forces give the work’s European premiere at St John’s Smith Square, London on 25 May (the day before the Goodall’s 60th birthday), a performance that will also be broadcast on Classic FM. Invictus: A Passion explores the role and perspective of women in particular, and juxtaposes poems by various authors with the 1611 verse narrative of the biblical Passion by Æmelia Lanyer, one of the first books published in the English language by a female poet.

Faber Music is proud to announce the release of Jessica Curry’s first printed publication, ‘The Light We Cast’. The book comprised a collection of three short unaccompanied choral pieces: ‘The Light We Cast’ (from the acclaimed video game score Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture), ‘So Let Us Melt’ (the title track from the eponymous video game) and ‘Kiss the Bairns’ (from The Durham Hymns, a setting of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy). It is on sale now in both printed and digital formats (ISBN 0-571-54042-2). Curry is best known as a composer for video games and presenter of a show dedicated to the genre on Classic FM. Indeed her score for So Let Us Melt has been nominated for several awards at the 2018 GANG (Game Audio Network Guild) Awards, taking place on 22 March. The Dear Esther Live UK tour, in which the titular video game was played in real-time alongside musicians, recently concluded after performances at the Sage Gateshead, Usher Hall, Liverpool Philharmonic, The Anvil Basingstoke, Colston Hall, Bristol, and the Brighton Dome. Future outings include the Holland Festival in June and Musikfest Bremen in September.

Success for Faber Music composers at The Music Teacher Awards On receiving the award, composer L’Estrange said: ‘I’m incredibly proud of Wassail! From writing the work, recording and rehearsing it across the country with hundreds of amazing students and their brilliant teachers, to conducting the premieres – the whole process has been a complete joy. Thank you to everyone at United Learning and our supporters!’ Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy vocal score ISBN 0-571-54038-4 | Price: £12.99

Faber Music is delighted to be the publisher of two winners of 2018 Music Teacher Awards. Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy by Alexander L’Estrange won the public vote to receive the Best Classical Music Education Initiative Award, sponsored by Classic FM, and authors Heather Hammond & Karen Marshall won Best Print Resource for their series The Intermediate Pianist. Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy, which was commissioned by United Learning and premiered in December, brought together over 1,000 staff and students from across the UK. The piece was created to inspire collaboration, musical excellence and joy through choral singing. Performers from United Learning academies and independent schools across the country took part in the premieres in London and Manchester, side by side with acclaimed vocal ensemble Apollo 5.

The Intermediate Pianist by Heather Hammond and Karen Marshall was been specifically written to help students progress through the tricky intermediate stages of learning the piano, offering a ‘one-stop shop’ for Grade 3–5 level pianists. Marshall said: ‘This intermediate stage of learning the piano – and indeed any instrument – is a notoriously tricky period, when many teachers may find students dropping off, losing interest and quitting lessons. The Intermediate Pianist tackles the issues faced by students and teachers through these stages and provides a music curriculum to engage, excite, enthuse and educate pupils, helping them to understand the music that they are playing and developing them into well-rounded musicians.’ ‘A fresh and ground-breaking approach.’ Andrew Eales (pianodao.com)

Media & Film

Composer news

Synchronisation licensing news

The soundtrack recording of Carl Davis’s score for Ethel and Ernest, the 2016 animated film based on the graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, is shortly to be released on the Decca/Verve label. This touching film has now won three international awards and been nominated for six others – including, most recently, Best Voice Performance (for actors Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent), Best Long Form and Best Sound at the British Animation Awards which take place in March.

Since acquiring the copyright in Icelandic composer Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson’s Heyr, Himna Smiður (‘Hear, Smith of Heavens’) in 2015, Faber Music has enjoyed particular success in licensing this exquisitely beautiful choral hymn. It featured in two episodes of MGM TV’s acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (broadcast on Channel 4 in 2016). It is featured in a scene in Baltasar Kormákur’s 2016 film Eidurinn (‘The Oath’), and was recently used by Terence Malick in his documentary film Awaken.

Congratulations are due to Dan Jones, whose score for the BBC’s SSGB has been nominated for an RTS Award. Dan recently completed his score for BBC Films’ feature On Chesil Beach, based on Ian McEwan’s novel and directed by Dominic Cooke.

‘Ecstasio’, the third movement of Thomas Adés’s Asyla has been used in the Amazon comedy series Mozart in the Jungle. The storyline of episodes 409 and 410 concerns the premiere of a new work by a fictional composer – and Asyla is that new work!

PHOTOS: SAM JACKSON (CLASSIC FM), CATHERINE BARKER (UNITED LEARNING), ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGE STILL FROM ‘ETHEL AND EARNEST’ © ETHEL & ERNEST PRODUCTIONS LTD 2016; THE HANDMAID’S TALE ©MGM TV

Bärenreiter focus: the music of Miroslav Srnka A flair for opera Central to Srnka’s creative life is a collaboration with the awardwinning Australian playwright Tom Holloway. Make No Noise, their first chamber opera was commissioned by the Bayerische Staatsoper and supported by Aldeburgh Music through Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship, and premiered at the 2011 Munich Opera Festival. The full-evening opera tells the story of a young woman who is caring for a man seriously injured in a fire on an oil platform. She is almost deaf, and he bears the blame for the death of his best friend. Both have found a bearable way of dealing with their respective pasts – silence. Make No Noise is the story of a coming together, the beginning of a communication, a healing. With a body of work which combines intellectual rigour and a searching human conscience, Czech composer Miroslav Srnka is making waves across Europe. Last season saw the Czech premiere of his Piano Concerto by Nicolas Hodges and Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra under by Tomáš Netopil, and the world premiere of moves 03 by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice conducted by PierreAndré Valade. A new work for the LA Philharmonic New Music Ensemble and Susanna Mälkki will be premiered in November.

Salzburg focus Six Srnka works were the principal focus of the 2017 DIALOGUES Festival in Salzburg. The festival’s opening concert featured My Life Without Me, a 35-minute monodrama for soprano and ensemble inspired by Isabelle Coixet’s 2003 film of the same title. Johannes Kalitzke directed the Austrian Ensemble for New Music with soprano Laura Aikin. Elsewhere Srnka was programmed with other Czech composers. Quatuor Diotima performed Janáček alongside two Srnka works they recently recorded for a portrait disc on Naïve Records: the quartet Engrams, and the Dvořák-inspired piano quintet Pouhou vlnou (with Wilhem Latchoumia). More recently, in January Quatour Diotima premiered a new quartet, Future Family, in Paris.

Srnka and Holloway’s next collaboration, South Pole, was commissioned by the Bavarian State Opera and was premiered in 2016 with Kirill Petrenko conducting a cast starring Rolando Villazón and Thomas Hampson. A ‘double opera’ in two acts, South Pole is based on the legendary Antarctic race between Robert Falcon Scott and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, it unfolds in a tremendous arc of tension. The drama takes place in an atmosphere of deadly ice, loneliness, the disorientation in storms and snow blindness in sunshine – in short, the ups and downs of hope and despair. Just a year after its critically acclaimed world premiere, South Pole received further performances in a reduced and revised version at the Staatstheater Darmstadt last May and June. The theatre’s artistic director Karsten Wiegand directed a new production. Faber Music is the exclusive UK hire agent for Bärenreiter

A New Release from Faber & Faber DEBUSSY – A Painter in Sound Stephen Walsh Claude Debussy was that rare creature, a composer who reinvented the language of music without alienating the majority of music lovers. He is the modernist everyone loves. How did he achieve this? Was it through the association of his music with visual images, or was it simply that, by throwing out the rule book of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied, his music put beauty of sound above the spiritual ambitions of the German tradition from which those rules derived. Stephen Walsh’s thought-provoking biography, told partly through the events of Debussy’s life and partly through a critical discussion of his music, addresses these and other questions about one of the most influential composers of the early twentieth century. Elegantly written, with a wit and transparency worthy of its subject, it assumes a serious interest on the reader’s part while largely avoiding technicalities and musical jargon. Above all, the intention is to send the reader hurrying back to the music, revisiting the familiar and exploring the unfamiliar.

Choral Scores from Faber Music HEAD OFFICE Faber Music Ltd Bloomsbury House 74–77 Great Russell St London WC1B 3DA www.fabermusic.com Promotion Department: +44(0)207 908 5311/2 promotion@fabermusic.com

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Jonathan Harvey: Forms of Emptiness In Jonathan Harvey’s imaginative and multi-layered Forms of Emptiness, a main a cappella choir (often divided and employing internal conductors) sings three poems by E. E. Cummings at different speeds and tonalities, referencing numerous sacred musics of the past from chant to Palestrina and even Messiaen. Against these vivid flashes of joy and colour is set the Buddhist Heart Sutra performed by a quartet of soloists in the original Sanskrit. At times a speaking voice simultaneously intones the same text in English. The resulting 13-minute work is thrillingly audacious, with joyous clouds of voices coalescing effortlessly into mysterious, hushed homophonies.

Score | 0-571-54013-9 | £6.50

USA & CANADA

Francisco Coll: Stella

Hire

Francisco Coll’s imposing 5-minute motet Stella was written for ORA and Suzi Digby in 2016. Inspired by, and subtly drawing on a renaissance masterpiece – Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella – this arresting work for 8-part choir is ideal for disciplined ensembles looking for a new challenge. ‘Victoria has been always a model for me as a composer’, says Coll. ‘I especially admire his music’s textural clarity, the luminosity of its harmony, and the personal expression of its melodic lines.’

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

‘Stella impressed with its emotional range, volatile dynamics and transitory grinding harmonies.’

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: TANSY DAVIES © EDUARDUS LEE

The Times (Geoff Brown), 27 February 2018

Score | 0-571-53652-2 | £3.99

Jonathan Harvey: Plainsongs for Peace and Light Predominantly hushed and serene, Plainsongs for Peace and Light proved to be Jonathan Harvey’s final work. It sees Harvey re-examining the very fundamentals of his craft – superimposing lines of plainsong, relishing the simple clash of note against note and creating rich, otherworldly sonorities through an elaborate use of canon. Harvey was a composer who always embraced and sought-out the very latest in musical technologies but the simplicity of the a cappella choir became something of a constant to which he returned throughout his life. Writing in Tempo, Paul Conway noted this work’s ‘understated but extremely affecting, numinous power’. The piece is for mixed voices of SATB in 16 parts. Full Score | 0-571-52214-9 | £4.50

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