PROGRAMME NOTES CONTINUED Sylvia Lim suspended in the air I was influenced by two short passages from Beethoven’s piano music – from the third movement of his ‘Moonlight’ Sonata (bb. 33–40) and the opening of his ‘Appassionata’ (bb. 25–31). In both passages, time feels suspended or stretched, and yet things pulsate – there are rhythmic drones and little repetitive fragments. In my own work, quiet, unstable sounds pulsate and hover. It’s a very static and intimate work which explores the more delicate sounds of the chamber orchestra. Listeners are invited to hear how these sounds shift against each other, and to notice what happens when sounds emerge and disappear.
© Nina Close
Sylvia Lim born 1992
Sylvia Lim is a composer based in the UK. Her works are intimate, exploring a small amount of material in depth – often a single sound, texture, or entity. She is interested in the materiality of sound, notions of close listening, perception, rawness and instability. Her music is influenced by natural phenomena in our world and the visual arts. She works very closely with musicians, visual artists and dancers.
Sylvia’s music has been performed and/or workshopped by PlusMinus Ensemble, EXAUDI, CoMA Singers, Liam Byrne, Natasha Zielazinski, Musarc, BBC Singers, Fournier Trio, Kaleidoscope Saxophone Quartet, tick tock, members of the Aurora Orchestra and members of the London Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been published in the CoMA Partsong Book, and performed at the Cambridge Female Composers Festival, CoMA Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival and Barbican OpenFest’s Unfinished. As well as the LPO Young Composers Programme, in 2019/20 she was also a participant on Psappha’s Composing for Piano scheme. She is a Rosie Johnson RPS/Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer for 2020/21 as part of the RPS Composers Programme. She is currently working on a piece for Ars Nova and The Riot Ensemble, a piece for members of the Aurora Orchestra, and a solo work for pianist Ben Smith. Sylvia completed her PhD at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she also gained a First Class Bachelor of Music (Honours) and a Master of Music with distinction, winning the Ian Horsbrugh Memorial Prize for Composition in 2015. She now teaches workshop skills and composition there. In the past she also taught at the University of Bristol. sylvialim.co 11
