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fortissimo!FABER MUSIC NEWS AUTUMN 2014

SPECIAL FEATURES

A NEW SIGNING: Rising star Tom Coult

THEBANSTriumph at ENO

TORSTEN RASCHA Foreign Field

Peter Sculthorpe (1929-2014)Celebrating the Life and Work of

Faber Music’s Longest-Serving Composer

‘An artist with the rare ability to capture and

conjure the essence of a place’

‘His music is unfailingly honest and of the heart’

PHOTO: PETER SCULTHORPE © CHRIS LATHAM

HIGHLIGHTS

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It is with deep sadness that Faber Music announces the death of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. Australia’s foremost composer, Sculthorpe died in Sydney on the morning of Friday 8 August 2014 aged 85.

The recipient of Australia’s highest honours, Sculthorpe inspired a whole generation of composers whose music is now internationally known. His most defining quality has been his ability to somehow create the feeling of the Australian landscape in his music. This was achieved in part by his study of Aboriginal music, as well as his deep love of landscape and his concern with issues of conservation and ecology. Sally Cavender, Vice-Chairman of Faber Music, writes:

“Peter joined Faber Music in 1965, our founding year, and our relationship with him throughout these 49 years has been a joy and a pleasure from that time until now. His music is absolutely distinct, individual and lyrical, and expresses the warmth and simplicity of the man himself. His loss will be felt by his many pupils who now number amongst Australia’s most successful composers, and by Australian musical culture at large which he so profoundly influenced and reflected.”

Born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1929, Sculthorpe was educated at Launceston Church Grammar School, the University of Melbourne, and Wadham College, Oxford. He was Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney, where he began teaching in 1964, a Harkness Fellow at Yale University, USA, and a visiting professor at Sussex University, UK, in 1971-72.

Sculthorpe’s rich and varied compositions (including an astonishing eighteen string quartets) are regularly performed and recorded throughout the world. His preoccupation with

Australian landscape, environmental issues and the frailty of the human condition can be heard in works such as Earth Cry (1986) and Requiem (2003). The latter grew from his concern about women and children killed in the war in Iraq. While his String Quartet No. 16 (2006) addressed the plight of asylum-seekers in Australian detention centres, his String Quartet No. 18 (2010) was devoted to climate change. His output relates closely to the unique social and physical characteristics of Australia, and to the cultures of its Pacific Basin neighbours. Influences included much of the music of Asia – especially that of Japan and Indonesia – and, in recent years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island music and culture. Appointed OBE in 1977 and AO in 1990, Sculthorpe was elected one of Australia’s Living National Treasures in 1998 and was the recipient of a Silver Jubilee Medal. An Honorary Foreign Life Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he held honorary doctorates from the universities of Tasmania, Melbourne, Sussex, Griffith and Sydney and in 2011 was awarded the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica by Juan Carlos I of Spain.

MATTHEW HINDSON COMPOSER

‘For Australian composers, Peter was a mentor, a guiding light, an inspiration. His music was unfailingly honest and of the heart – just like he was as a person. His unique and creative approach was a beacon to composers the world over in demonstrating how music can be of its place and time.’

KEY WORK:

Mangrove (1979)brass, percussion and strings, with optional didjeriduDuration 14 minutes0000 – 4231 – perc(3): bongos/2 congas/tam-t/ch.cym/vib/susp.cym/BD/crot – stringsFP: 27.4.1979, Opera House, Sydney, Australia : Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Louis FremauxScore 0-571-50631-3 on sale, parts for hire

One of Sculthorpe’s most popular orchestral works, Mangrove unfolds in one long movement, consisting of spirited sections scored for brass and percussion, and sections in which a long brooding melody becomes out of phase with itself. There are sections suggesting love and loving, scored, for the most part, for strings; and evocative bird-sounds are also prominent.

DAVID MATTHEWS COMPOSER

‘I first met Peter in 1972 when he was visiting professor at Sussex University and needed someone to assist him in the composition of Rites of Passage. We immediately

PETER SCULTHORPE (1929-2014)

‘His music is absolutely distinct, individual and lyrical,

and expresses the warmth and simplicity of the man himself.’

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a range of contexts. He insisted that we needed to be as open to the sounds of indigenous Australian musics, as to the symmetries of Western European music; aware of traditional Indonesian or Japanese music – he described Gagaku as a pinnacle of human invention and beauty; or the innovations of composers such as Harry Partch.

Reaching beyond music and musical influences, in Peter’s mind’s ear there was always land and landscape. In the best, most nurturing sense, Peter was a ‘place maker’ – an artist with a rare ability to capture and conjure, often through the simplest of means (in his case, a single hovering chord through which strings would rustle and screech in powerful mimicry of birds soaring towards a pulsating sun), the essence of a place and to share it with others. Peter’s ‘places’ were elemental – Sun Music and Earth Cry; lonely – Irkanda IV; colonial – Port Essington; or monumentally physical – Mangrove and Kakadu. And where others were eviscerated and alienated in their relationships with these places, Peter composed them with love and care.’

THE KRONOS QUARTET

‘Peter is as central to Australia’s music as Aaron Copland is to America’s music. He was a tireless advocate for other composers and his warm, gregarious and fun-loving presence contributed enormously to the world of music. I’ll never forget his kind response, in impeccable penmanship, to my first fan letter. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Peter’s String Quartet No. 8 was a Kronos theme song and was central to our first Nonesuch album. He was always pleased to hear that his music was being played in jails, schools, and everywhere else imaginable. Over the years Peter wrote three beautifully vivid works for Kronos and arranged his breakthrough piece Irkanda lV. With his From Ubirr he also brought the didjeridoo into the world of Kronos. Somehow things have always seemed right knowing Peter was in Sydney bringing his music to life. We miss him immensely.’

KEY WORK:

Requiem (2003)SATB chorus, didjeridu and orchestraDuration 40 minutesdidjeridu solo – 2222 – 4331 – timp – perc(3) – stringsFP: 3.3.2004: Adelaide Town Hall, Australia: William Barton/Adelaide Symphony Orchestra/Adelaide Chamber Singers/Adelaide Voices/ Richard MillsCommissioned by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra Text: Plainsong Mass of the Dead (Aboriginal/Latin)Vocal score 0-571-52375-7 on sale, full score and parts for hire

Bringing together large orchestral and choral forces supported by an improvised underlay from the didjeridu, Sculthorpe’s Requiem is one of his strongest statements. A haunting traditional lullaby is added as an additional canticle movement and recurs movingly in the final lux aeterna.

became friends, and in 1974 he invited me to stay at his house in Sydney where we collaborated on the music for a television film, Essington, with a script by Thomas Keneally. In subsequent years we wrote two more film scores together, I continued to visit, and he also came to stay with me in London. In his exquisite Georgian house in Sydney, full of works of art including a world-class collection of Chinese ceramics, we would talk for hours at night over a bottle of whisky, with Peter drinking 90% of it. The next morning Peter would begin composing promptly, showing no signs of a hangover. Perhaps what strikes me most about Peter’s music is that right from the start – from the Piano Sonatina – he had an individual voice. His harmony, his melodies, his approach to form, were all highly original. Whatever sources he used – Aboriginal, Japanese, Indonesian, Native American – all were transformed into his own personal language. This is why his music will last.’

RICHARD TOGNETTIARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

‘The ACO is to Peter Sculthorpe as a tree is to soil. Peter wrote for the ACO right through the history of the ACO, right from the very word go. When I first joined the ACO and got to know the man himself I was touched by his humility, gentleness and his resoluteness. He wrote many pieces for the Orchestra and we look forward to having one hell of a time remembering him through his music over the coming years.

‘I always thought that Peter the man had lived since time began

and would live forever. His music I believe will live forever.’

KEY WORK:

String Quartet No 8 (1968)string quartetDuration 16 minutesFP: 15.1.1970, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Allegri String QuartetCommissioned by the Radcliffe Award Commission 1968Study score 0-571-50513-9 and parts 0-571-50530-9 on sale.

Sculthorpe’s eighteen string quartets undoubtedly represent one of the most important cycles of the post war era.His eighth quartet follows a five-movement symmetrical structure, where two keening cello solos frame frenetic dances based on the rhythms of Balinese rice-pounding music.

SIR JONATHAN MILLS AOCOMPOSER AND FESTIVAL DIRECTOR

‘Peter was not a teacher in any conventional sense…He saw his role to encourage and to expose; to offer advice and wisdom as one was in the midst of writing a piece; and to ensure that all his students were aware of the widest possible concept of what music could be, in

HIGHLIGHTS

PETER SCULTHORPE (1929-2014)

SCORE EXCERPT: NOURLANGIE © FABER MUSIC

THEBANS – A TRIUMPH AT ENO

HIGHLIGHTS

CAST:

Antigone Soprano (Julia Sporsén)Jocasta Mezzo Soprano (Susan Bickley)Oedipus Heroic Baritone (Roland Wood)Creon Tenor (Peter Hoare)Polynices Baritone (Jonathan McGovern)Tiresias Bass (Matthew Best)King Theseus and Messenger Counter Tenor (Christopher Ainslie)Haemon and Stranger High Light Tenor (Anthony Gregory)Shepherd Baritone (Paul Sheehan)Citizens of Thebes Chorus

INSTRUMENTATION & WORK INFORMATION:Duration: Act 1 – 48 mins Act 2 – 21 mins Act 3 – 30 mins Instrumentation: 3(II=picc & fl tuned ¼-tone flat, III=picc & afl).3(III=ca).3(II=cl tuned ¼-tone flat & E-flat cl, III=bcl).bcl.cbcl.3(III=cbsn) – 4.3(I=flhn, III=optional tpt in D).3.1 – 5 perc (see fabermusic.com for full details) – harp – pno/synth/cel – strings First Performances: 3.5.2014, Coliseum, London, UK: English National Opera/cond. Edward Gardner/dir. Pierre Audi 3.5.2015, Stadttheater, Bonn, Germany: Theater Der Stadt Bonn/cond.Johannes Pell/dir. Pierre Audi Commissioned by English National Opera with support from The Boltini Trust, PRS for Music Foundation and ENO’s Contemporary Opera Group

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Julian Anderson’s first opera Thebans burst into life at its English National Opera premiere on 3 May and scored a huge success for the composer. This compelling re-telling of Sophocles’ timeless Theban tragedies focuses on the fate of Oedipus and his daughter Antigone. Anderson and his librettist, Frank McGuinness, have distilled to c.100 minutes of taut drama where murder and incest, political ambition, love and loyalty, hatred and revenge drive everyone on a collision course which can only lead to catastrophe.

With a dramatic thrust that pins you to your seat, choral writing of power rarely heard in the opera house, orchestration that speaks of mastery at every stroke, and character portrayals so vivid that you leave the opera house haunted by their ghosts, this is an opera of great importance. The themes of the original – blood, murder, incest, political ambition, love and loyalty – are, if anything, intensified in this bold adaptation. ‘The drama is vivid and strong,’ writes Anderson, ‘I don’t want people to know what’s hit them until they’ve left the opera house.’ The relationship between onstage action and Anderson’s music is a rich and complex one and his mastery of the orchestra is confirmed repeatedly – be it individual details like the black, oily contrabass clarinet which shadows the blind prophet Tiresias or the many alluring, intricate string textures which recur throughout. At the heart of the work is the chorus – first the Citizens of Thebes and then, offstage in the third act, the voices of Gods and the sounds of nature – all expressed in sensitive choral writing of the upmost power.

Some composers might test their operatic mettle with a small work, but Anderson’s first foray into opera is confidently written on the grandest of scales (Thebans is scored for a cast of 9, full chorus and large orchestra); its epic majesty making this premiere all the more memorable. Outstanding performances by the premiere cast added further lustre to this exceptional production. And in director Pierre Audi and conductor Edward Gardner, Anderson has found kindred spirits. Thebans is a co-production with Theater Bonn who will give the German premiere on 3 May 2015.

PHOTOS: ENO ‘THEBANS’ - JULIA SPORSEN, ROLAND WOOD © TRISTRAM KENTON BACKGROUND IMAGE: ENO THEBANS ACT II– COMPANY © TRISTRAM KENTON

THEBANS – A TRIUMPH AT ENO

HIGHLIGHTS

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REVIEWS:

‘[Anderson and McGuinness] have brilliantly compressed Sophocles’s trilogy into a compelling and dramatic narrative that feels fresh and thrilling… One of the great qualities of Thebans… It blows apart this crippling reverence and presents the drama afresh… This raw dramatic quality is partly due to McGuinness’s libretto, which keeps its language direct and the pace relentlessly high… But the real magic comes from Anderson’s score, in which the directness of the libretto is simultaneously enhanced and fractured. Indeed, the clash between the score’s elemental rhythmic profile and the shimmering quality of its expanded harmonic language seems at once to slow and speed the action so that each event appears both inexorable and ambiguous. Anderson’s opera thus gives access to the psychology of the action in a way in which few versions have managed, or attempted… The superb solo writing is even eclipsed by that for the chorus… [an] extraordinary retelling of the myth.’

The Guardian (Guy Dammann), 5 May 2014

‘…an extraordinary finale in which Oedipus’s death occurs like a Wagnerian transfiguration, haloed in the warm, rich glow of arguably the most spectacular orchestral writing heard in any opera of the past half a century. For mastery of texture, color and invention, Mr. Anderson sets standards… it is a triumph of sustained intensity that has dramatic impact on its own terms. And its individuality is striking… this is an opera like no other — which makes Mr. Anderson a maverick or a genius; perhaps both. Either way, his Thebans is distinctively impressive.’

The New York Times (Michael White), 5 May 2014

‘luminous and vivid’

‘Lyrical, direct and brilliantly performed… Julian Anderson’s compelling opera [is]… A work of skilful compression... [the] music is luminous and vivid, encompassing the broadly tonal and the wildly dissonant. It doesn’t sound like anyone else’s… He has always expanded aural horizons using electronics and microtones – the latter ever present in Thebans… At each dramatic moment, he shifts the sound with subtle imagination… Anderson’s choral writing is perhaps the strongest element in the opera, majestic, fluent and affecting…’

The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 11 May 2014

‘One of Anderson’s most notable achievements is his ability to allow each line to cut through the orchestral texture. His score is well paced, and the composer’s diverse musical language proves an asset in shading in the variety of characters and situations required over the course of three very different dramas. The complex, ambiguous music nevertheless makes an immediate impact.’

The Stage (George Hall), 6 May 2014

‘one of the best things Anderson has done’

‘…the result is magnificent… It is not hard to see the present magnum opus, and the operatic genre itself, as a culmination of his intellectual and creative pursuits alike. It is his first opera, yet his music all along has had a powerful dramatic essence… Everything was mentally in place, then, for his bursting into opera, and he had the luck to find the right librettist… [Frank McGuiness] has supplied what seems an eminently settable, elegant condensation of the drama… The superb assurance of the writing, metallically intent but underpinned by a novel harmonic richness, makes it, I think, one of the best things

Anderson has done…’The Sunday Times (Paul Driver), 11 May 2014

PHOTOS: ENO ‘THEBANS’ ACT II– THE CHORUS OF ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA © TRISTRAM KENTON

‘arguably the most spectacular orchestral writing heard in any opera of the past half a century’

Faber Music is delighted to announce a new publishing agreement with Tom Coult, a young composer who, though only twenty-five years of age, has already been championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles. Mature, finessed and displaying an inventive and forward-looking musical mind, Coult’s work represents an exciting addition to the Faber catalogue and we look forward to nurturing this brilliant new voice in future years.

Coult (b. London, 1988) studied at the University of Manchester with Camden Reeves and Phillip Grange and is currently working towards a PhD at King’s College London with George Benjamin. His music is characterised by iridescent timbres, glistening harmonies and clear, articulate gestures. One thematic preoccupation is an interest in the fantastical – his Codex (Homage to Serafini) (premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra as the culmination of a year-long Sound and Music Embedded residency in 2013) and his Rainbow-Shooting Cloud Contraption for fifteen players (written at Aldeburgh’s Contemporary Composition course in 2013) both draw inspiration from the imaginary encyclopaedia of Luigi Serafini whilst his Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux for five players takes its title from Frank L. Warrin’s version of Lewis Caroll’s Jaberwocky (translating made-up English into made-up French).

Awarded the Royal Philharmonic Prize in 2013, Coult wrote his Four Perpetual Motions for ten players which were first performed by members of Philharmonia Orchestra at a Music of Today event at the Royal Festival Hall. His music has featured at several music festivals including Bangor New Music Festival, where the Orchestra of the Swan gave the premiere of his ambitious

large ensemble work Antic Rounds in 2014. Currently a Sound and Music New Voices composer (2014/15), Coult is also an Associate Member of LSO Soundhub. In October he will be a featured composer at the ‘Soundings’ festival curated by the Fidelio Trio’s Mary Dullea at the Austrian Cultural Forum London. Coult has proven himself to be a passionate advocate for new music, too: in 2013, his lucid and insightful investigation of Pierre Boulez’s Sur Incises – ‘Refraction, Crystallisation and the Absent Idea(l)’ – was published in Tempo.

Coult was recently commissioned to write two Études for solo violin by the London Sinfonietta as part of their ‘Shorts’ series. They are hugely contrasting pieces, the first obsessive and strident, the later more unusual – serene, meditative and utilising a novel technique by which the violinist sustains hushed three-note chords. These Études – which join two earlier works to create a book of four – were premiered by the Sinfonietta’s leader Jonathan Morton in July and will be recorded for digital download by NMC.Future projects include a commission for the strings of the Britten Sinfonia (to be premiered at London’s Milton Court on 20 March) and a work for the Mahler Chamber Orchestra commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival.

TOM COULT WRITES:I feel honoured, privileged and almost indecently thrilled to be signing with Faber Music. Having spent so many hours poring over scores by Faber composers, it’s very exciting to be working in such company, and I’m looking forward immensely to a long and productive relationship.

HIGHLIGHTS

FABER MUSIC SIGNS TOM COULT

6PHOTOS: TOM COULT © SARAH HILL BACKGROUND IMAGE: SKETCH FOR ANTIC ROUNDS © TOM COULT SCORE EXTRACT – FOUR PERPETUAL MOTIONS © FABER MUSIC

HIGHLIGHTS

FABER MUSIC SIGNS TOM COULTWORKS PUBLISHED BY FABER MUSIC

Four Perpetual Motions (2013)for an ensemble of ten playersDuration 13 minutesfl.ob.cl – tpt – perc(1): vib/mar/glsp/crot/2 bongos – harp – vln.vla.vlc.dbFP: 27.6.2013 Royal Festival Hall, London, UK: Philharmonia Orchestra/Rüdiger BöhnScore and parts on hire

These mature and well-crafted pieces showcase Coult’s ear for beguiling, burnished sonorities and his ability to harness the most complex of technical devices to rich emotional ends. Whilst his musical schemas are often audacious and innovative, the security and light touch with which Coult carries them out ensures that his Four Perpetual Motions are always as expressive as they are impressive.

Coult was one of the winners of the 2012 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize and was consequently commissioned to write this work for the Philharmonia Music of Today Series.

Four Études (2010/2014)violin soloDuration c.8 minutesFP: I & II 19.3.2010 Cosmo Rodewald Hall, Manchester, UK: Sarah HillIII & IV 23.7.2014 Kings Place, London, UK: Jonathan MortonScore on special sale

Antic Rounds (2014)for an ensemble of seventeen playersDuration 13 minutes1(=picc).1(=ca).1(=Ebcl).1 – 1.1.1.0 – timp – perc(1): mar/crot/t.bells – strings (0.0.3.3.2)Commissioned by Bangor New Music Festival as a result of winning the William Mathias Composition Prize.FP: 14.3.2014 Bangor New Music Festival, Bangor University, Bangor, UK: Orchestra of the Swan/David Curtis

Score and parts on hire

Rainbow-Shooting Cloud Contraption (2013)for an ensemble of fifteen playersDuration 5 minutes1(=picc).1.1(=bcl).1 – 1.1.1.0 – Perc(1): tam-t/2 tpl.bl/vib/xyl – pno – harp – strings (1.1.1.1.1)FP: 12.7.2013 Britten Studio, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Britten-Pears Composers Ensemble/Gregory CharetteScore and parts on hire

Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux (2012/2013)for five players (also exists in a version for four players)Duration 7 minutesfl.2 cl - vla.vlc (quartet version: fl – pno – vla.vlc)FP 27.5.2012 St Magnus Festival, Kirkwall, Orkney, UK: Gemini/Hyun-Jin Yun (Quintet version)Score and parts of both versions on special sale

Limp (2012)for violin and pianoDuration 7 minutesCommissioned by Richard Whalley and Helen TongeFP: 21.5.2012 Chorlton Arts Festival, St. Werbergh’s Church, Manchester, UK: Richard Whalley/Helen TongeScore and part on special sale

Solvitrambulando (2012)for orchestraDuration 17 minutes2.2.2(II=bcl).2 – 2.2.0.0 – strings (6.5.5.4.2)Young Composer-in-Residence Commission by Lancashire Sinfonietta and Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.FP: 22.3.2012 LICA Concert Hall, Lancaster, UK: Lancashire Sinfonietta/Andrew WatkinsonScore and parts on hire

‘…Coult is someone to watch out for.’

Codex (Homage to Serafini) (2013)for symphony orchestraDuration 12 minutes3(III=picc).3(III=ca).3(II=Ebcl.III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) – 4.3.3(=btrbn).1 – timp – perc(3) – harp – strings (14.12.10.8.6)Composer-in-Residence commission by Sound and MusicFP: 14.11.2013 BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Garry WalkerScore and parts on hire

In this, his largest work to date, Coult creates remarkably deep, transparent orchestral textures with flair, drawing on an extensive and individual palette of colours and emotions with apparent ease. Well-paced, dramatic and individual, this is surely the work of a composer destined for great things.

‘Exploring a colourful landscape of the mind, the score’s capricious twists and turns were anchored by a germinal rising figure and a striking use of temple blocks, which recurred at key points… there was sufficient grit and heft within its flights of fancy to suggest Coult is someone to watch out for.’

Tempo (Paul Conway), April 2014

Piano Trio “The Chronophage” (2011)violin, cello and pianoDuration c.15 minutesFP: 26.4.2012, Lincoln Hall, Portland, OR, USA: Third Angle EnsembleScore and parts on special sale

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PHOTO: THE SOURCES FOR ‘A FOREIGN FIELD’ © TORSTEN RASCH

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HIGHLIGHTS

WWI REMEMBERED IN MAJOR RASCH PREMIEREOne of this summer’s most anticipated new works, Torsten Rasch’s A Foreign Field received its world premiere on 31 July 2014 at Worcester Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival, bringing together an impressive array of artists: soloists Yeree Suh (soprano) and Roderick Williams (baritone), the choristers of Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester and Chemnitz Cathedrals, the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of conductor Baldur Brönnimann. Commissioned jointly by the historic Three Choirs Festival and Germany’s Chemnitz Opera to mark the centenary of the First World War, Rasch’s 40-minute cantata takes its name from Brooke’s poem The Soldier and brings together poets from both sides of the conflict, Biblical psalm texts and parts of the Latin Requiem Mass to create a rich and extremely personal meditation which loosely follows the structure of the Anglican Evensong.

A Foreign Field once again proves Rasch to be a master of the large-scale canvas, displaying a dazzling array of orchestral textures together with an intuitive understanding of dramatic pacing. A former Dresden boy chorister himself, Rasch writes for the voice in a way which brings out every word’s expressive potential.

At the heart of this moving work is the relationship between Helen and Edward Thomas, especially the last night they spent together before Edward’s death on the Western Front in 1917. Rasch sets the poems Thomas wrote to her – ‘And You Helen’ and ‘Beauty’ – whilst the poet’s Welsh ancestry is referenced in ‘The Ash Grove’ melody which permeates much of the work’s second part. A moment of calm reflection in the midst of human suffering, Rasch’s masterful setting of Psalm 91 – the so called ‘Soldier’s Psalm’ which was carried by men on all sides of the conflict because it confidently prays for victory over the enemy – has already been singled out by critics for its daringly pared-back style and communicative power.

In March A Foreign Field will receive two performances at the Städtische Theater Chemnitz by the Robert Schumann Philharmonie under Frank Beermann.

‘Both [A Foreign Field and Britten’s War Requiem] reflect on the horrors of the world wars and set poetry from the period, although Rasch ranges more widely, embracing German as well as British writers. Both ingeniously enmesh this poetry in a Christian liturgical context. For Rasch, it is by a judicious choice of psalm texts. And both use large orchestra and choir,

with a boys’ choir supplying an otherworldly overlay. A Foreign Field… is less ritualistic and metaphorical, far more focused on real personal anguish... And it is also, surprisingly, written in a far more romantic, or post-romantic, style, than Britten’s starker 1962 masterpiece. …full of chromatic harmonies slithering downwards like a world subsiding into chaos, and orchestral interludes that fiercely evoke the screaming shells and ear-shattering artillery as well as (in a magnificently moving, Berg-like ending) the heroism and sacrifice of the millions who died… the best movement is also the simplest: a superbly crafted, unaccompanied choral setting of Psalm 91.’

The Times (Richard Morrison), 4 August 2014

One of the finest, most worthwhile premieres I have heard in many years… a gripping melding of frontline verismo, the tearing-apart of lovers, and desperately-needed compassion… The scene of domestic grief lies at the heart of the work, charting the parting of Edward Thomas from his wife Helen as he set off for the Western Front, and unfolds over a fantasia on The Ash Grove. There are other musical references too… hints of Strauss’ Metamorphosen (themselves lamenting the destruction of Dresden) and Mahler’s final, Nirvana-evoking symphonies. The children have some memorable moments, not least when they are occasionally accompanied by an evocative solo trumpet, and when they add the fearful words of a boy trapped in a Chemnitz air-raid shelter in 1945 as a backdrop to the sorrowful Edward Thomas duet: Mussen wir jetzt all sterben? (‘Must we all die now?’).

The Birmingham Post (Christopher Morley), 4 August 2014

‘...a magnificently moving, Berg-like ending...’

‘The musical score was as many-layered as the text. Washes of glittery metal percussion, creating an otherwordly atmosphere, sat cheek-by-jowl with a densely expressive texture that often harked back to Berg, or even Wagner.’

The Telegraph (Ivan Hewett), 1 August 2014

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HIGHLIGHTS

THE NASH AT 50 FABER IN POLANDMaw, Anderson and David Matthews Feature in the Nash Ensemble’s 50th Birthday SeasonDuring the 2014-15 season the Nash Ensemble celebrates a remarkable 50 years since giving its first concert in October 1964. It has become a standard-bearer for British music-making around the world and to mark this achievement, its founding artistic director, Amelia Freedman, has devised an Anniversary Series consisting of some of their best programmes. The ensemble has consistently displayed a pioneering approach to commissioning and has performed over 40 new works by Faber composers. A selection of these will feature in this celebratory season, including Nicholas Maw’s Roman Canticle (see the Tuning In section) and two works by Julian Anderson – Prayer for solo viola and the vivid Poetry Nearing Silence for seven players.

One of the ensemble’s closest collaborators has been David Matthews. Three of the ten works he has written for them will be revived: in October his Horn Quintet, written in memory of Nicholas Maw, can be heard whilst his First String Trio – composed in 1989 for the 25th anniversary of the Nash Ensemble and featuring a musical motif based around their name – will feature in November. A Black Bird Sang, a delightful quartet for flute and string trio will be performed in March. Matthews’ formidable skills as an arranger will also be showcased through a selection of his many transcriptions: Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, excerpts from Strauss’ Capriccio and Mahler’s Rückert Lieder.

Other Faber composers who have enjoyed close links with the ensemble include Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Jonathan Harvey.

Sally Cavender, Vice-Chairman of Faber Music, writes: ‘In the 40 odd years I have known them, The Nash Ensemble has been the benchmark of what a group of top chamber musicians and soloists in the 20th and 21st century should be. Always keen to tackle new work, they yet bring superb sensitivity and musicianship to the classics of the repertoire. Amelia Freedman’s programming has also been the distinguishing factor in making the Nash Ensemble the iconic group that it is – a national asset.’

Polish Premieres for Anderson, Davies and Harvey Spiral House, Tansy Davies’ trumpet concerto, will receive its Polish premiere this September as part of the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Dutch new-music specialist Marco Blaauw will be the soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic under Jacek Kaspszyk. Inspired by the elegant concrete and glass constructions of architect Zaha Hadid, the 22-minute concerto was singled out at its 2006 premiere for its ‘explosive rhetoric’. The solo trumpet (and its accompanying group of orchestral trumpets, oboes and clarinet) spiral up through, and are reflected in, block-like orchestral tuttis which are at times made up of as many as eight different grinding mechanisms which pull and push against each other to rousing effect. The same concert will also include a performance of Jonathan Harvey’s Body Mandala which, with its earthy and arresting sound world inspired by the fierce wildness of Buddhist purification ceremonies, has established itself as one of Harvey’s most popular and frequently performed works.

In October Benjamin Schwartz will conduct the Wrocław Philharmonic in the Polish premiere of Julian Anderson’s The Discovery of Heaven as part of the ISCM World Music Days in Wrocław. Since its premiere in 2012 this kaleidoscopic masterpiece has enjoyed an extraordinary reception, with performances by the New York Philharmonic and West Australian Symphony Orchestra, a critically-acclaimed recording by the LPO and a prestigious South Bank Sky Arts Award in 2013.

PHOTOS (LEFT TO RIGHT): NICHOLAS MAW © MAURICE FOXALL, NASH ENSEMBLE © HANYA CHLALA/ARENAPAL, DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA, JULIAN ANDERSON © MAURICE FOXALL, JONATHAN HARVEY © MAURICE FOXALL, TANSY DAVIES © RIKARD ÖSTERLUND

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TUNING IN

Selected forthcoming performances

...upon one note 16.9.14, The Forge, Camden, London, UK: The Berkeley Ensemble

Cantata 21.9.14, Stenton Church, Stenton, East Lothian, UK: Francois Leleux Hebrides Ensemble

8.10.14, Folly Arts Theatre, Hereford College of Arts, Hereford, UK: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Ophelia Dances Book 112.10.14, Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, UK: Kokoro/Mark Forkgen

Cantata 24.10.14, Shrewsbury Museum, Shrewsbury; 25.10.14, The Market Theatre, Ledbury; 26.10.14, Presteigne, Wales, UK: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

The Way to Castle Yonder 25.10.14, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Centre, New York, NY, USA: Juilliard School/Edward Gardner

Coursing 30.10.14, Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, Purchase, NY, USA: SUNY Purchase/Dominic Donato

4.11.14, Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig, Niedersachsen, Germany: Ensemble Modern

Flourish with Fireworks 22, 23.10.15, Grieghallen, Bergen, Norway: Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/ Edward Gardner

‘Fantastical Abstraction’ – Renewed Praise for the Third SymphonyKnussen’s reputation as a master of the large orchestra was further bolstered in July when his Third Symphony was chosen as one of the 50 Greatest Symphonies by The Guardian’s Tom Service. Composed in 1979 when Knussen was just 27 and the result of six years working, thinking, revising, and refining, this 15-minute tour de force traverses a massive musical and emotional spectrum. Originally inspired by the trauma, madness and drowning of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, this indisputable modern classic displays a kaleidoscopic brilliance, from the careering clarinet melodies and raucous Perotin-inspired trombone interjections of its first part to the unnerving submerged horn sonorities towards its close.

‘The music’s surfaces move with a captivating shimmer

and dazzle...’

‘The music’s surfaces move with a captivating shimmer and dazzle, but each time you listen you will take a new pass through the work’s musical currents

and undercurrents, finding new layers of poetry and technical-expressive alchemy in its crystalline construction. That’s the paradox about this supposedly “short” piece: it’s music that creates its own kind of time, which seems to suspend linear temporality – the music moves instead in spirals and circles rather than straight lines...’

The Guardian Online (Tom Service)

Washington ResidencyMuch-loved in America, Oliver Knussen travelled to Washington in April with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group for a series of concerts and workshops at the Library of Congress. The concerts included several works by Knussen himself: the tightly constructed Ophelia Dances for small chamber ensemble and his solo piano work Ophelia’s Last Dance.

‘... Cantata proved to be an absolutely beguiling work...’

Knussen’s Cantata for oboe and string trio was also featured. Inhabiting the vivid harmonic world of the Third Symphony, this compact ten-minute work ranges from a wild, elaborately ornamented climax to a poignant, rocking Lullaby of great tenderness. The third panel in a triptych comprising Autumnal for violin and piano and Sonya’s Lullaby for piano, Cantata is one of Knussen’s most popular chamber works and will receive a further four performances by the BCMG this October as part of a UK tour.

‘It was impossible to come away without a renewed appreciation of Knussen’s profound impact on contemporary music — not only as a composer, but also as a conductor and curator… It was Knussen’s own Cantata that provided the most colorful and engaging music of the evening. Like Carter, Knussen writes exceptionally concise and intricate music but with far more charm and natural warmth, and Cantata proved to be an absolutely beguiling work.’

Washington Post (Stephen Brookes), 13 April 2014

Oliver Knussen

PHOTO: OLIVER KNUSSEN © MAURICE FOXALL

SCORE: ‘CANTATA’ © FABER MUSIC

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Selected forthcoming performances

At First Light 11.10.14, Leith Symington Griswold Hall, Baltimore, MD, USA: Johns Hopkins University/Gene Young

18.10.14, Alex Theatre, Glendale, CA; 19.10.14, Royce Hall, University of California, Los Angeles; USA: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra/Douglas Boyd

17.4.15, Milan, Lombardy, Italy: Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano

31.5.15, The Orpheum, Vancouver, BC, Canada: Vancouver Symphony/Gordon Gerrard

Upon Silence 11.10.14, Leith Symington Griswold Hall, Baltimore, MD, USA: Johns Hopkins University/Gene Young

Into the Little Hill 1-7.11.14, Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany: Marieke Steenhoek/Helena Rasker/Essener Philharmoniker/cond. Manuel Nawri/dir. Kay Link

11.6-4.7.15, Kammertheater, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany: Junge Oper of Oper Stuttgart/dir. Jenke Nordalm/cond. Nicholas Kok

Written on Skin(Swedish premiere)

24.1-22. 2.15, Kungliga Operan, Stockholm, Sweden: Royal Swedish Opera/cond. Lawrence Renes/dir. Kay Metzger

(Canadian premiere)7.3.15, Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, ON, Canada: Toronto Symphony Orchestra/George Benjamin

(Swiss premiere)2-17.5.15, Grosse Haus des Theaters St Gallen, St Gallen, Switzerland: Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen/Nicole Raab/Otto Tomsk

Viola, Viola 29.1.15, St John’s Smith Square, London, United Kingdom: Paul Silverthorne/Richard Waters

A Mind of Winter(Canadian premiere)28.2.15, Toronto, ON, Canada: Toronto Symphony/George Benjamin/Barbara Hannigan

Duet(Canadian premiere)4.3.15, Toronto, ON, Canada: Toronto Symphony/George Benjamin/Ryan McCullough

Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra 12.4.15, Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA: Discovery Ensemble

PHOTO: GEORGE BENJAMIN © MATTHEW LLOYD, ‘WRITTEN ON SKIN’ IN DETMOLD WITH VERA-LOTTE BÖCKER (AGNÈS), MARKUS GRUBER (ANGEL 3), ANNA WERLE (ANGEL 2), ANDREAS JÖREN (THE PROTECTOR) © LANDESTHEATER DETMOLD/LEFEBVRE

George Benjamin

Continued Acclaim for ‘Written on Skin’…In May George Benjamin won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Large-Scale Composition prize (his third!) for Written on Skin. The jury saluted Benjamin’s ‘technical skill in the service of expression, depth of emotional impact, vividly colourful orchestration’ and ‘a brilliant libretto’ by Martin Crimp. Faber Music’s composers have won this award an impressive 9 times in the last 24 years.

Also in May, two performances of the opera at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon received rave reviews:

‘The George Benjamin-Martin Crimp partnership imposes itself as the most important since that of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal…The opera lasts one hundred minutes without intermission, and without longueurs, repetitions or clichés.’

Expresso (Jorge Calado), 31 May 2014

Finally, the recently released DVD of Written on Skin has won the coveted Contemporary prize at the 2014 Gramophone Classical Music Awards. The award ceremony takes place on 17 September.

...And a Bold New Staging in DetmoldSince its premiere two years ago, Written on Skin has travelled the world and picked up a host of awards in the process. In April it was performed at the Landestheater Detmold in a new production from director Kay Metzger which confirms, if proof were needed, that the musical and textual richness of the work is capable of inspiring a whole range of dramatic possibilities.

This production will be staged at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm in February

‘Judged statistically and artistically, it is already the 21st century’s most successful new opera… Benjamin’s score, eerily nostalgic yet pure and inventive, is simply superb… Metzger’s production is a modest affair, simpler and more literal than Mitchell’s multi-layered extravagance. His three angels have wings sprouting from white laboratory coats, and they run a morgue that is part mad-house, part theatre of the mind... This is a whole new world of visual reference, and it fits well with the social tensions of the piece… On a small stage and on a limited budget, Written on Skin still moves and mesmerises.’

The Financial Times (Shirley Apthorp), 28 April 2014

‘Benjamin writes in an almost ideal manner for the five vocal soloists: very cantabile, linear, never “against” the voice.’

Neue Musikzeitung (Christoph Schulte), 30 April 2014

‘They dared and won: the courage of the State Theatre [Detmold], only the third opera house worldwide to stage a new production of Written on Skin, has paid off. The crowd cheered at a magnificent premiere.’

Lippisches Kultur-Journal (Barbara Luetgebrune), 14 April 2014

A Growing American PresenceWith expectation mounting for the New York premiere of Written on Skin in August 2015, two works by Benjamin – Upon Silence and the Octet – were featured in a concert last June by the Orchestra of St Luke’s and conductor Pablo Heras-Casado.

‘Few composers have seen their American reputations rise as swiftly in recent years… Boulez is a modern legend, but Mr Benjamin… is surely in his league, a creator of pristine and tantalizing soundworlds… [Octet] begins like an announcement – the artist is present! – with a pluck, a hush, a tremor and then a rush, led by the twinkling celesta, into a creamy flute solo. Mr Benjamin guides the music from glassy slides in the violin and celesta to dreamy passages punctuated by rhythmic beats.’

New York Times (Zachary Woolfe), 2 June 2014

‘Into the Little Hill’ in GermanyBenjamin’s chamber opera will receive four fully staged performances in Essen this November. The production will be directed by Kay Link with singers Marieke Steenhoek and Helena Rasker and players from the Essen Philharmonic conducted by Manuel Nawri.

Aldeburgh ResidencyAt the end of this year’s Aldeburgh festival (which saw a truly memorable performance of Viola, Viola), it was announced that George Benjamin will take up a position as Artist in Residence at the 2015 festival. More details will be announced later in 2015.

Further HonoursPreviously a Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres, Benjamin has now been appointed a Commandeur – the highest such order of merit with under twenty recipients a year. In December he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of King’s College Cambridge.

TUNING IN

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Selected forthcoming performances

Overture after In Extremis(World Premiere)6.9.14, Palau de la Música, Valencia, Spain: Orquesta Federal/Cristóbal Soler

Liquid Symmetries 10, 11.9.14, Palau de la Música, Valencia, Spain: Grupo Mixtour/Pablo Rus

Hidd’n Blue(Luxembourg Premiere)26.9.14, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg: Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/Gustavo Gimeno

Four Miniatures (for violin and orchestra)(World Premiere)2.11.14, Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, Essex, UK: Pekka Kuusisto/Britten Sinfonia/Thomas Adès

Tapias(World Premiere of revised version)16, 17, 18.1.15, Auditorio Nacional de Música, Madrid, Spain: Juan Carlos Matamoros/National Orchestra of Spain/George Pehlivanian

(UK Premiere)29.1.15, Glasgow, Scotland, UK: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Simon Johnson/Otto Tausk

TUNING IN

Francisco Coll

PHOTO: FRANCISCO COLL

UK Premiere of Piano ConcertinoColl’s Piano Concertino No seré yo quien diga nada (‘I’m not saying nothing’) received its UK premiere in June at Symphony Hall, Birmingham before travelling to the Aldeburgh Festival. Performed by Nicolas Hodges and the CBSO under Thomas Adès, this four-movement work, with its idiosyncratic instrumentation (a bottom-heavy ensemble of lower strings, wind, brass and percussion), flinty harmonies and taut rhythmic profile made a strong and lasting impression on audiences.

For these UK performances, Coll added a substantial cadenza to showcase Hodges’ formidable musicality even further. Drawing on material from elsewhere in the work, it provides a dynamic bridge between the icy third movement – Interlude – and the frenzied acrobatics of the final Postlude.

‘An elegant, feisty showpiece, full of vividly imagined ideas and quicksilver changes of direction and mood, through which the soloist cavorts like a high-wire artist, over an orchestra… which comments on and supports its act.’

The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 12 June 2014

‘The score dances in the stratosphere, tugged back to earth by contrabassoons, contrabass clarinet and sax. In four almost continuous movements, the work is gloriously yet anarchically pianistic.’

The Times (Hilary Finch), 23 June 2014

‘…a hectically sustained dance, the piano’s incessant chirruping woven into the percussion and piccolos in ever-changing patterns, with only tiny pauses to catch its breath.’

The Telegraph (Ivan Hewett), 22 June 2014

Overture after ‘In Extremis’In August, a bold and gutsy new orchestral work from Coll was premiered by the Orquesta Federal under Cristóbal Soler in Valencia. Drawing on the orgiastic central section of the composer’s 2012 cantata, In Extremis, the work displays Coll’s dazzling imagination for orchestral colour together

with a flair for grand statement.All these characteristics suggest that this work

could enjoy similar success to Hidd’n Blue, Coll’s previous short work for orchestra. The perfect concert-opener, Hidd’n Blue has been taken up by numerous orchestras internationally since its premiere by the LSO in 2009. Recent exponents have included the Luxembourg Philharmonic and Gustavo Gimeo, who perform it this September, and the Youth Mediterranean Orchestra under Alain Altinoglu who gave four performances of the work this summer, including at the Aix-en-Provence festival.

TapiasThe world premiere of the revised version of Coll’s Trombone Concerto Tapias (‘Walls’) will take place in Madrid in January, with three performances by soloist Juan Carlos Matamoros and the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Universitat de Valencia under Cristóbal Soler. Unlike the Piano Concertino, where the pianist is mostly grafted onto the ensemble, in this 16-minute concerto the soloist is centre stage. Coll, a trombonist himself, understands intuitively how best to make the instrument speak.

Just over a week after these performances in Spain, Otto Tausk will conduct the work’s UK premiere in Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and their principal trombonist Simon Johnson.

Hyperludes for solo violinColl has written a set of astringent and fearlessly virtuosic solo violin pieces – entitled Hyperludes – which will be premiered in Valencia during the 2014/15 season. The three pieces, lasting around ten minutes in total, display the same sensitive string writing on show in Coll’s viola concerto Ad Marginem.

Four Miniatures OrchestrationTraces of the rhythms of Spanish folk music, like the lurching Basque Zortziko which underpins much of the Piano Concertino, have been responsible for giving Coll’s music its particular kick and flavour. This influence has never been as directly audible as in his Four Miniatures, originally written for violin and piano in 2013 but now arranged for violin and chamber orchestra. Two almost schizophrenic Fandangos bookend a Tango and a Lamento, the latter using microtonal inflections to great expressive effect.

The premiere at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, in November will feature the lively and thoroughly individual Pekka Kuusisto as soloist alongside the Britten Sinfonia under Thomas Adès. (Adès, incidentally, is currently working on his own orchestration of the cello and piano work Lieux Retrouvés.)

Coll’s talent for orchestration will also be showcased in a new commission from Ensemble Intercontemporain – an arrangement of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder – to be premiered in late 2015.

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Carl Davis – Selected forthcoming performances

Speedy 11.10.14, Florence Baptist Church of Mt. Zion, Florence, KY, USA: Kentucky Symphony Orchestra/cond. James R Cassidy

Behind the Screen 25.10.14, Uptown Theatre, Barrie, ON, Canada: Huronia Symphony Orchestra

A Christmas Carol (ballet)(New Zealand premiere)30, 31.10.14, 1 – 8.11.14, St James Theatre, Wellington; 15, 16.11.14, Regent Theatre, Dunedin; 20, 21, 22.11.14, Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch; 26.11.14, Regent on Broadway, Palmerston; 29, 30.11.14, Napier Municipal Theatre, Napier; 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.12.14, ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland; 13, 14.12.14, Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna, New Zealand: Royal New Zealand Ballet/chor. Massimo Morricone/Nigel Gaynor

Flesh and the Devil 2.11.14, Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ, USA: New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

Last Train To Tomorrow(London premiere)9.11.14, Roundhouse, London, United Kingdom: City of London Sinfonia/Finchley Children’s Music Group/Carl Davis

The Thief of Bagdad6.12.14, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées, France: Orchestre symphonique de l’école de musique de Tournefeuille, Toulouse/Claude Puysségur

Safety Last 4.1.15, Teatro Victoria Eugenia, San Sebastián, Spain: Basque Youth Orchestra/Juan José Ocon

Carl Vine – Selected forthcoming performances

Smith’s Alchemy 5.10.14, Amuz, Antwerp; 18.10.14, Miryzaal, Ghent; 19.10.14, Concertgebouw, Bruges, Belgium: Het Kamerorkest/Ning Kam

Concerto for Orchestra(world premiere) 10, 11.10.14, Perth Concert Hall, Perth, WA, Australia: Western Australia Symphony Orchestra/Michael Stern

London Premiere of ‘Last Train to Tomorrow’ This November at the Roundhouse Carl Davis will conduct the Finchley Children’s Music Group and the City of London Sinfonia in the eagerly anticipated London premiere of Last Train to Tomorrow, his 45-minute dramatic narrative for children’s choir, actors (or speakers) and orchestra based on the story of the Kindertransport. The work’s previous performances in Manchester and Prague were received to great acclaim and this next outing looks set for a similar reception.

‘...approachable, heartfelt, even sentimental, but

passionate and single-minded in its message.’

‘…vintage Davis – approachable, heartfelt, even sentimental, but passionate and single-minded in its message. If you want something for a top-class children’s choir to get their teeth into, try this. It’s not often a new work’s world premiere gets a standing ovation from the entire hall.’

Classical Music (Robert Beale), 15 December 2012

Honour Crowns 60th Birthday Year Carl Vine has been appointed Officer (AO) of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List ‘for distinguished service to the performing arts as a composer, conductor, academic and artistic director, and to the support and mentoring of emerging performers’. Previous recipients of this prestigious honour include Peter Sculthorpe, who received his back in 1990. The honour crowns a busy year which has included the first performances of Vine’s orchestral tone poem Gravity Road and his Piano Trio The Village.

Concerto for Orchestra Vine returns to his home town in October where his new Concerto for Orchestra will be premiered by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. The work was commissioned by philanthropist Geoff Stearn and will receive two performances at the Perth Concert Hall, conducted by Michael Stern.

‘Smith’s Alchemy’October also sees violinist Ning Kam directing the Het Kamerorkest in Vine’s Smith’s Alchemy for string orchestra. This 15-minute work seeks to transform the individual instruments into a single “super” instrument while capitalising on their natural singing qualities – a kind of aural alchemy. Commenting on this arrangement of the original quartet version of the piece, Vine comments that ‘the potential to “share” difficult techniques across more than one instrument has in many ways liberated the music, allowing greater emphasis on its lyrical qualities.’ The work will be heard in three concerts around Belgium on 5, 18 and 19 October.

Shortlisted for Excellence AwardVine has been shortlisted for his exemplary contribution to Musica Viva Australia in 2013 as Artistic Director, and to the wider arts and cultural industry at the 2014 Australia Art Music Awards.

TUNING IN

PHOTOS: CARL DAVIS © TREVOR LEIGHTON , CARL VINE © KEITH SAUNDERS

Carl Davis Carl Vine

Malcolm Arnold – Selected forthcoming performances

Peterloo (world premiere of choral version with lyrics by Tim Rice)13.9.14, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK: BBC Symphony Orchestra/BBC Symphony Chorus/Sakari Oramo

Larch Trees 21.9.14, MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester, UK: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Richard Davis

Concerto for Clarinet No 2 28.9.14, Kloster Heisterbach, Königswinter; 28,9.14, Augustinum, Bonn, Germany: Pamela Coates/Sinfonia Königswinter/Tobias van der Locht

Symphony No 8 11.10.14, St Barnabas Church, Ealing, London, UK: Ealing Symphony Orchestra/John Gibbons

Trumpet Concerto 18.10.14, Malcolm Arnold Festival, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, UK: John Wallace/Northampton Symphony Orchestra

The Three Musketeers23-25.10.14, Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Calgary; 7, 8.11.14, Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Edmonton, AB, Canada: Alberta Ballet/chor. David Nixon

Anniversary Overture 22.11.14, St Mary’s Church, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK: Hitchin SO/Paul Adrian Rooke

Nicholas Maw – Selected forthcoming performances

Roman Canticle 7.2.15, Wigmore Hall, London, United Kingdom: Nash Ensemble: Roderick Williams/Lawrence Power/Philippa Davies/Lucy Wakeford

PHOTO: MALCOLM ARNOLD14

TUNING IN

Nicholas MawRoman Canticle performanceA performance of Maw’s Roman Canticle by Roderick Williams and members of the Nash Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall in February provides the perfect opportunity to reassess this perfectly-crafted work afresh. Subtitled ‘Two in the Campagna’, the piece adds voice to the standard trio of flute, viola and harp (the instrumental combination used by Debussy in his 1917 Sonata) and was singled out by The Times for its ‘harmonic eloquence and rhythmic fervour’.

Sculpting gracious, lyrical vocal lines from Browning’s famously unwieldy verse, Maw is once again shown to be a subtle and sensitive vocal writer. Light and breezy instrumental passages evoking sunny Italian climes rub shoulders with moments of intense, often yearning longing for something past.

In the work’s final moments Maw’s post-romantic language – voice and flute snagging expressively against consonant harp chords – proves the perfect foil to Browning’s poem, which expresses the intangibility of human love, the ‘infinite passion and the pain of finite hearts that yearn’.

Malcolm Arnold

Malcolm Arnold Festival: ‘A Kaleidoscopic Imagination’Now in its ninth year, the Malcolm Arnold Festival this October is a must for anyone interested in learning more about this most diverse and fascinating composer.

Highlights include a rare chance to hear Sir Malcolm’s one-act opera The Open Window and a lecture recital surveying his piano music. This year’s festival also sees the completion of a two-year survey of Arnold’s concertos, including the Trumpet Concerto with soloist John Wallace (who gave the first performance in 1983) and Julian Bliss playing the First Clarinet Concerto.Events take place on 18 and 19 October at the Royal & Derngate Theatre, Northampton.

‘Peterloo’ features at the Last Night of the PromsAt this year’s Last Night of the Proms, a new choral version of Arnold’s dramatic Peterloo Overture with lyrics by Sir Tim Rice received its first performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo. The overture powerfully portrays the terrible events of the Peterloo Massacre but, after a lament for the killed and injured, it ends in triumph, in the firm belief that all those who have suffered and died in the cause of unity amongst mankind, will not have died in vain.

OTHER WORKS OF INTEREST...

Flute, viola and harp trios may also wish to investigate Francisco Coll’s …’de voz aceitunada’, an intricate, astringent twelve-minute work of extremes which has yet to receive a performance outside the UK.

15

Colin MatthewsSelected forthcoming performances

Hidden Variables (version for ensemble)5.10.14, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Nicholas Collon

Grand Barcarolle 25.10.14, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Juanjo Mena

13.5.15, Ulster Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK: Ulster Orchestra/Rafael Payare

Spiralling(world premiere)26.10.14, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Spira Mirabilis

Feux d’artifice 31.12.14, 1.1.15, Albertinum, Dresden, Germany: Dresdner Philharmoniker/HK Gruber

The Pied Piper(world premiere)8.2.15, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski

(US premiere)6. 6. 15, S. Mark Taper Foundation, Seattle, WA, USA: Seattle Symphony/Stilian Kirov

Hidden Variables(version for orchestra)12.3.15, Barbican Centre, London, UK: London Symphony Orchestra/Michael Tilson Thomas

“Nicht zu schnell” from Piano Quartet 17.4.15, Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain: Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife/Victor Pablo Pérez

TUNING IN

Hallé RecordingThe relationship between the Hallé Orchestra and their Composer Emeritus continues to blossom with a further recording devoted to his music. The disc will feature Crossing the Alps for eight-part chorus and organ pedal together with, fittingly in this year in which we commemorate the centenary of the First World War, two large-scale works for chorus, soloists and orchestra which reflect on the conflict – No Man’s Land (a collaboration with Christopher Reid) and Aftertones, his settings of war-poet Edmund Blunden. The recording will be released in October on the Hallé’s own label, which has already featured Matthews’ orchestrations of the Debussy Preludes and his sombre, dream-like Horn Concerto. With exciting young conductor Nicholas Collon and stellar vocal soloists Ian Bostridge and Roderick Williams, this promises to be a major addition to the already sizeable Matthews discography.

‘Hidden Variables’Nicholas Collon will return to the music of Matthews in October with a performance of Hidden Variables with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Scored for 14 players, this 13-minute Scherzo consists of a set of interlocking variations, with an unvarying time signature (6/4) and same very fast tempo throughout. Premiered by the BCMG and Simon Rattle in 1989 (one of their very first commissions), the work swerves off into a series of wicked little vignettes on a number of the leading minimalist composers.

In March Michael Tilson Thomas will conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in the orchestral version of the work – an LSO commission written in 1991 during Matthews’ time as their Associate Composer.

‘Taking as its starting-point the woodblock from Andriessen’s De snelheid, Matthews pits a parade of identifiable American Minimalist styles against more chromatic and congested material. The pastiche is

hilariously accurate (mid-80s Reich, Glass and, Adams). But the intention appears not to be ironic or mocking. Nor is it possible simply to identify the chromatic music as Matthews’s ‘voice’. The care and warmth attended upon the borrowed material suggest a more subtle picture: here is a composer aware of the complexity of his creative make-up, as preoccupied by diversity of influence as singularity of voice’

Musical Times (Robert Adlington), April 1994

‘...here is a composer aware of the complexity of his

creative make-up...’

A New Work for Spira MirabilisAward-winning chamber orchestra Spira Mirabilis have hitherto devoted themselves almost entirely to the great works of the classical and romantic tradition, but their Aldeburgh debut in 2011 inspired their very first commission from Colin Matthews. It’s an enticing prospect; the orchestra’s ethos of long-term collaboration and intensive preparation must be a composer’s dream. Entitled Spiralling the new 25-minute work will be premiered at Snape Maltings in October.

The Pied Piper Matthews has collaborated with author Michael Morpurgo (War Horse, The Mozart Question) to present the timeless tale of The Pied Piper of Hamelin in a new work aimed at children. In this 50-minute work for full orchestra, speakers and children’s choir, the story is compellingly and movingly told through the eyes of a young boy. The work will be premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski in February.

LOOKING AHEAD...

Colin Matthews celebrates his 70th Birthday in 2016. If you are interested in marking this occasion and would like to find out more please contact the promotion department.

PHOTO: COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL, SCORE EXTRACT ‘HIDDEN VARIABLES’ © FABER MUSIC

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Selected forthcoming performances

Chamber Symphony(Singapore premiere)7.9.14, Singapore: London Sinfonietta/Sîan Edwards

Arcadiana 12.9.14, Jordan Hall, Boston; 13, 14.9.14, Amherst, MA, USA: A Far Cry (arr. for string orchestra)

20.2.15, Jordan Hall, Boston, MA, USA: Calder Quartet

Violin Concerto 16.9.14, Aula, Universitetet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway: Det Norske Kammerorkester/Anthony Marwood/Christian Eggen

17, 18, 19.10.14, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/Juanjo Mena/Leila Josefowicz

5.3.15, Concertgeouw, Bruges; 9-31.5.15, 5-7.6.15, Vlaamse Opera, Ghent, Belgium: Royal Ballet of Flanders

Asyla 25, 26.9.14, Alte Oper, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany: HR-Symphonieorchester/Markus Stenz

In Seven Days 4, 5.10.14, Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA, USA: Santa Cruz County Symphony/Nicholas Hodges/Daniel Stewart

5-7.3.15, Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, CA, USA: Kirill Gerstein/San Francisco Symphony/Thomas Adès

Piano Quintet 8.10.14, The Point Theatre, Eastleigh; 23, 24.10.14, DanceXchange, Birmingham; 14.11.14 Dance East, Ipswich; 18.11.14, Trnity Laban, London; 21.11.14, Bath Spa University, Bath, UK: Alexander Whitley Dance Company

Lieux retrouvés 11.10.14, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Colin Carr/Thomas Sauer

Mazurkas 15.10.14, Wigmore Hall, London, United Kingdom: Danny Driver

Violin Concerto / Life Story / Polaris / Piano Quintet 30, 31.10.14, 1.11.14, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, UK: Royal Ballet of Flanders/Britten Sinfonia/Thomas Gould/Claire Booth

Piano Quintet / Violin Concerto2.11.14, Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, UK: Pekka Kuusisto/Britten Sinfonia/Thomas Adès

Court Studies from The Tempest 15.11.14, LSO St Luke’s, London, UK: Aurora Orchestra

Darknesse Visible 6.12.14, Cité de la musique, Paris, France: Ensemble Intercontemporain

TUNING IN

PHOTO: ENO ‘POWDER HER FACE’ 2014 AMANDA ROOCROFT 14 © RICHARD HUBERT SMITH

Thomas Adès

‘Tevot’: Further UK Performances and Publication of Full Score A facsimile score of Adès’ vast Tevot was recently published to coincide with two UK performances this June. Adès conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Birmingham and at Snape Maltings as part of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, where the work received a truly rapturous reception.

The sheer communicative power of Tevot, with its perfectly judged trajectory and blazing A-major conclusion, is almost without equal. Unafraid to wear its heart on its sleeve, this is a work of breath-taking vision, sincerity and expression.

‘A vast and heady orchestral piece, exhilarating in its sea-surge of lament, renewal and affirmation… Dark timpani, trombones, horns move like a tidal undertow, yielding to a glittering dance of woodwind and tuned anvils, a chorale for oboes and vibraphone. Suspensions tug, lament returns, high violins dematerialise. This music is as bold in imagination as it is in structure — and it unfailingly hits the spot.’

The Times (Hilary Finch), 23 June 2014

‘…a magnificent orchestral journey through chaos to

consolation.’

The Times (Geoff Brown), 20 February 2010

The score, priced at £29.99, is available from the Faber Music Store.

See the Music, Hear the DanceIn an epic new Sadler’s Wells programme, See the Music, Hear the Dance, Adès will conduct the Britten Sinfonia in his only London appearance of 2014, featuring a cross section of his work from intimate chamber pieces to vast orchestral canvases.

The evening begins with the beautiful Outlier, choreographed by Associate Artist Wayne McGregor to Adès’ Violin Concerto Concentric Paths with Thomas Gould as soloist. This “mesmerising” (Financial Times) European premiere was originally created for the New York City Ballet, and is re-mounted as a co-production with 11 dancers of the Royal Ballet of Flanders who make a welcome return to London. Adès will then be joined by soprano Claire Booth for a performance of his setting of Tennessee Williams, Life Story, with choreography by Karole Armitage

In The Grit in the Oyster, Whitley’s sensuous and intricately detailed choreography sets a trio of dancers against Adès’ rich and complex Piano Quintet, exploring ideas of obsession and transformation. The evening culminates the premiere of Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Crystal Pite’s response to Adès’ formidable Polaris (2010). Pite choreographs a cast of 66 dancers in the spiralling structures inspired by Adès’ creation.

See the Music, Hear the Dance runs at Sadler’s Wells for three nights from 30 October to 1 November. The Grit in the Oyster will tour to venues across the UK later in November in a version with recorded music whilst Outlier travels to Belgium in May.

A New Production of ‘Powder Her Face’ at ENOAt the age of just 24 Thomas Adès composed his first opera, Powder Her Face, a work which changed opera, not only with its dazzlingly varied score which draws on influences as broad as cabaret, tango, Berg and Stravinsky, but its scandalous contemporary subject matter. With over 200 performances since its premiere, the work is already a modern classic.

The opera’s most recent performances – in a new English National Opera production by director Joe Hill-Gibbins, starring Amanda Roocroft as the notorious Duchess – have inspired renewed admiration for this brilliant score.

‘Of the many singular aspects of Powder Her Face, from rapturous musical pastiche to sleazy story, the most extraordinary is that it was first seen nearly two decades ago yet still feels fresh and startling… At times it felt hot and crackling, as if about to combust. The unearthly, nervy sound of several fishing reels being turned is a typical moment of invention.’

The Observer (Fiona Maddocks), 6 April 2014

‘Nowadays, with more than 200 performances worldwide and counting, it’s regarded as a modern classic… Adès’ score remains a brilliant achievement – wild, witty and sophisticated in its use of parody and a wide range of references to other musical styles.’

The Stage (George Hall), 3 April 2014

‘This must be the fifth time I have seen [this] opera over the last 19 years. At each encounter, I have been increasingly awed by the music’s steely brilliance and impressed by its camp yet clear-eyed dissection of the Balzacian tale of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, victim of her own stupidity and cupidity as well as the hypocrisy of the press and the establishment.’

The Telegraph (Rupert Christiansen), 3 April 2014

‘The chamber-sized orchestrations by Adès are brash and strident, as in-yer-face as the Duchess’s peccadillo.’

What’s On Stage (Mark Valencia), 3 April 2014

New York Premiere of ‘Totentanz’After critically-acclaimed performances in London and Warsaw, Adès’ most recent work will be unveiled in New York in March by the New York Philharmonic, soloists Simon Keenlyside and Christianne Stotijn conducted by the composer.

Bringing together baritone, mezzo-soprano and a (very) large orchestra, Totentanz is Adès’ longest composition for the concert hall to date. Reuniting Adès with baritone Simon Keenlyside (who created the role of Prospero in The Tempest), it is the culmination of Adès’ long fascination with dances of death, previously documented in the tango mortale from Arcadiana (1994), the drug-fuelled dance music of Asyla (1997) and the devilish cancan macabre which closes Lieux Retrouvés (2009).

Whilst the work’s vast scale, compelling drama and totally distinctive sound world all made a powerful impact, it was its intimate closing passages, where death meets a new-born child, which ultimately made the strongest impression on audiences. For critic Alexandra Coughlan it was ‘a coup de théâtre that reverses expectations, not piercing onwards to the bone beneath the skin but retreating to the fleshy fantasy of human life’.

…in the sleeve of snow…Astonishingly intense and often fragmentary, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin has inspired countless composers including Ligeti, Britten, Kurtág and Nono. With his ...in der Hülse von Schnee..., a Hölderlin cycle for mixed choir, Torsten Rasch has invented a language of winding chromaticisms and saturated harmonies that mirrors and intensifies the complexity of these extraordinary texts. A huge variety of vocal expression is contained within the work’s eight movements, from lyrical arioso and unsettling half-sprechgesang outbursts to exhilarating agitato passages where complex chords are thrown violently about the ensemble with abandon. The ghost of tonality is a constant presence throughout and the eventual emergence of a blazing major chord at the climax of the last movement is both striking and audacious.

The fifteen-minute long work will be premiered in October at the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonie by the RIAS Chamber Choir under Hans-Christoph Rademann.

Mendelssohn Cycle revived

Was bedeutet die Bewegung… a Mendelssohn song cycle for baritone and strings was revived at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in August by Ensemble Resonanz and the singer who gave its premiere in 2012, Matthias Goerne. This is no workaday transcription, however: in addition to skilfully arranging Mendelssohn’s song accompaniments for strings, Rasch has created a number of unusual interludes to link the songs together. These interludes, written in Rasch’s own post-Romantic voice and containing modern techniques including glissandi and snap-pizzicati, add a whole new dimension to the cycle, startlingly revealing its dark undercurrents and psychologies.

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TUNING IN

PHOTO: MATTHIAS GOERNE © MARCO BORGGREVE FOR HARMONIA MUNDI

Torsten Rasch - Selected forthcoming performances

...in der Hülse von Schnee...(world premiere)16.10.14, Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany: RIAS Chamber Choir/ Hans-Christoph Rademann

A Foreign Field(German premiere)4-5.3.15, Opernhaus, Chemnitz, Sachsen, Germany: Robert Schumann Philharmonie/Frank Beermann

Benjamin Britten - Selected forthcoming performances

Owen Wingrave 30.9.14, Agora Theater Lelystad, Lelystad; 2.10.14, Theater Speelhuis, Helmond; 4.10.14, Junushoff, Wageningen; 9.10.14, Theater de Veste, Delft; 10.10.14, Stadspodia Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands: Opera Trionfo and New Ensemble

5-11.10.14, Opéra national de Lorraine , Nancy, Lorraine, France: Opéra national de Lorraine/Marie-Eve Signeyrole/Ryan McAdams

Curlew River 11-12.10.14, Osaka College of Music Hall, Osaka, Japan: Do/Kasufumi Yamashita

30.10-1.11.14, Lincoln Center, New York; 6-14.11.14, University of Northern California, Petaluma, CA, USA: Britten Sinfonia/Martin Fitzpatrick

19-22.2.15, St-Johannes-Kirche, Altona, Germany: Studierende der HfMT/Daniel Zimmermann

Owen Wingrave (Chamber Reduction arr. D. Matthews) 21-28.11.14, Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées, France: Orchestre national du Capitole/cond. David Syrus/dir. Alfonso Caiani

10-30.1.15, Oper Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany: Oper Frankfurt/ cond. Yuval Zorn/dir. Walter Sutcliffe

26.2.-1.3.15, Arizona State University, Tempe, Tempe, AZ, USA

Movement for Clarinet and Orchestra(German premiere)25.1.15, Festsaal der Rudolf Steiner Schule, Siegen, Germany: Collegium Musicum Siegen/Bruce Whitson

For Britten news see page 19

Torsten RaschThomas Adès

18PHOTOS: TANSY DAVIES (LEFT) © RIKARD ÖSTERLUND, JONATHAN HARVEY (RIGHT) © MAURICE FOXALL

Tansy Davies – Selected forthcoming performances

Omega and the Deer 19.9.14, Dansens Hus, Oslo, Norway: Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt

Spiral House(Polish premiere)27.9.14, Filharmonia Norodowa, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Warsaw, Poland: Warsaw Philharmonic/ Marco Blaauw/Jacek Kaspszyk

neon 5.10.14, Southbank Centre, London, United Kingdom: Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble/Clark Rundell

Between Worlds11.4.15, Barbican Centre, London UK: English National Opera/cond.Gerry Cornelius/dir. Deborah Warner (8 performances)

Jonathan Harvey – Selected forthcoming performances

Plainsongs for Peace and Light 14.9.14, Abbaye Impériale, Baume-les-Messieurs, Franche-Comté, France: Ensemble vocal Aedes/Mathieu Romano

Body Mandala(Polish premiere)27.9.14, Warsaw, Poland: Warsaw Philharmonic/Jacek Kaspszyk

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco 28.10.14, Studio Theatre, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

ff / Nataraja / Death of Light, Light of Death 28.10.14, Carole Nash Recital Room, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK: Musicians from the RNCM

Bhakti/ Three Sketches / The Riot / Tombeau de Messiaen 29.10.14, Carole Nash Recital Room, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK: RNCM New Ensemble/Carl Rundell/Carlos Agreda

You24.2.15, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Jonathan Berman

Ashes Dance Back(Polish premiere)21.5.15, Naradowe Forum Muzyki , Wrocław, Poland: Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir

Tranquil Abiding 21-23.5.15, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, NY, USA: New York Philharmonic/Susanna Mälkki

TUNING IN

From 28-29 October the RNCM has planned a number of concerts to commemorate Jonathan Harvey in what would have been his 75th year. The two-day festival will feature a selection of his chamber works (including the clangourous Nataraja for flute and piano and the rarely-heard Death of Light, Light of Death for five players) and culminates with Clark Rundell conducting the RNCM New Ensemble in Bhakti, Harvey’s mystical exploration of the Sanskrit Hymns of the Rig Veda for chamber ensemble and quadrophonic tape. The festival also features a talk by Harvey scholar Dr Michael Downes, an all-day installation of electronic works and a screening of Barry Gavin’s 2011 portrait of the composer ‘Towards and Beyond’.

New Electronic Studio at Sussex UniversityLast March saw the unveiling of the Jonathan Harvey Electronic Music Studio at the University of Sussex’s Music Department, where Harvey was Professor of Music from 1977 until 1993. Dr Ed Hughes, Head of Music, said:“In the Music department we are incredibly proud of our link to Jonathan Harvey who, while Professor of Music at Sussex, wrote a series of internationally acclaimed compositions in response to commissions from major institutions such as IRCAM in Paris, and orchestras such as BBC Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic. He was not only a brilliant composer but also an inspiring and generous teacher, as his former pupils and colleagues testify – we heard about this at the opening of the music studio from Professor Jonathan Cross, who worked at Sussex as a music lecturer alongside Harvey, and recalled his insightful teaching.”

Jonathan HarveyTansy Davies

The Asko-Schönberg Ensemble perform ‘neon’An exhilarating collage of twisted modernist funk, neon is one of Davies’ most frequently performed works. In October the celebrated Asko-Schönberg Ensemble and conductor Clark Rundell will perform it as part of a concert at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

‘It’s a dialogue between the human body and the machine’ Davies writes. ‘The human is detectable in the surfaces of the music – often fragile sounding, imperfect, dirty or ‘distressed’ in some way. The mechanical side appears in the form of grooves that drive the piece, which despite their asymmetrical design, are robust, sleek and unstoppable’.

‘…The mechanical side appears in the form of grooves that drive the

piece... are robust, sleek and unstoppable.’

Inspiring a new generation of musiciansIris, Davies’ red-blooded concerto for soprano saxophone and ensemble from 2004, received an electric performance in July from the talented members of this summer’s London Sinfonietta Academy, soloist Victoria Puttock and long-time Davies advocate Pierre-André Valade. The 14-minute concerto brings together two very different musics—a dark, mournful chorale and a dirty, wildly exuberant rumpus—with the saxophone, shaman-like, bridging the gap between one realm and the other. This revival of Iris is timely as the idea of the shaman (also an influence in the piano concerto Nature) will be explored again in Davies’ new opera Between Worlds. The opera, which premieres at ENO in April, will be the subject of a special feature in the next issue of Fortissimo.

19

John Woolrich – Selected forthcoming performances

Night will not draw on, The / Adagissimo / Presence of Departed Acts, A / In the Mirrors of Asleep / Dramolet, A 3.10.14, Vilnius, Lithuania: Lithuanian Ensemble Network

Ulysses Awakes 16.10.14, Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, Apple Valley; 17.10.14, Wooddale Church, Eden Prairie; 18.10.14, St Paul’s UCC, St Paul, MN, USA: Saint Paul CO/Chirstian Zacharias

26.11.14, The Forge, Camden, London, UK: 12 ensemble

Call to the Mirrors(world premiere)25.10.14, St Bartholomew’s Church, Orford, Suffolk, UK: Britten-Pears Orchestra/Elgar Howarth

Pianobook XI(world premiere)18.11.14, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Wales; 7.2.15, Riverhouse Barn, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey; 13.2.15, University of York, York, UK: Clare Hammond

Concerto for Violin (London premiere) / Italian Songs / Ulysses Awakes / Three Songs for mezzo-soprano and strings20.11.14, Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London; 21.11.14, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, UK: Sophie Bevan/Clare Finnimore/Thomas Gould/Britten Sinfonia/Duncan Ward

A Sort of Heaven(world premiere)21.11.14, Cliveden House, Taplow, Buckinghamshire, UK: Alexandra Wood/Huw Watkins

Sestina 25.11.14, Bishopsgate Institute, London, UK: Schubert Ensemble

The tongs and the bones(world premiere)29.11.14, St Mary’s Church, Osterley, London, UK: Hounslow Symphony Orchestra/Scott Wilson

Fantazia 11.12.14, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff; 14.12.14, London, UK; 18.12.14, Antwerp, Belgium: Fretwork

For Britten performances see page 17

TUNING IN

Two Recent PremieresThe latest addition to John Woolrich’s rich and extensive catalogue of chamber works is Pluck from the Air, an intense quintet for piano and strings. Premiered at the Cheltenham Festival in July and subsequently broadcast on Radio 3, the ten-minute work – described as ‘rhythmically vivid’ by The Times’ Paul Driver – will receive its London premiere at the Wigmore Hall in November 2015.

Scored for the evocative combination of ‘whispering voices and wind instruments’ A Quality of Loss was unveiled at the Dartington International Summer School in August. Based on fragments of poems and quotations by Emily Dickinson – who previously inspired Woolrich’s Exploit In White for brass quintet and A Presence of Departed Acts for mixed quartet – this highly individual work could not have been written by anyone else.

Continuing Birthday CelebrationsJohn Woolrich has enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with the Britten Sinfonia, both as composer and programmer. The ensemble has given premieres of twelve of his works (most recently Whitel’s Ey in 2009) and this November they celebrate his 60th birthday with concerts in London and Cambridge.

One highlight is sure to be the much-awaited London premiere of Woolrich’s dynamic yet warmly lyrical Violin Concerto, assured of a memorable performance by the ensemble’s own associate leader Thomas Gould. Conceived in a single 21-minute movement, the work was received to critical acclaim at its premiere at the 2008 Aldeburgh Festival. The concert also features Woolrich’s arrangements of songs by Purcell and Wolf together with his ever-popular reworking of Monteverdi Ulysses Awakes for solo viola (performed here by Britten Sinfonia’s Clare Finnimore) and strings.

John Woolrich

Wingrave Chamber ReductionThe centrepiece of the 2014 Aldeburgh Festival was Owen Wingrave, one of Britten’s most outspoken anti-war statements. First heard in 2007, David Matthews’ chamber arrangement of the score for fourteen players has helped to revive interest in this unsettling work. The Telegraph’s Ivan Hewett praised Matthews’ ‘clever’ reduction whilst Andrew Clement’s, writing in The Guardian described it as ‘tellingly refined’, commenting that it ‘gives [the opera] the intimate force of a chamber work’. Few know this music better than Matthews, who worked closely with Britten at the time of the opera’s genesis.

Critical Reaction to the Violin Concerto:

‘It was the sense of a single instrument being allowed flights of imagination and lyrical soul-searching that emerged as the piece’s most compelling element.’

The Guardian (Rian Evans) 2 July 2008

‘It sustains a gripping power that is really rather

mysterious.’

The Times (Paul Driver) 6 July 2008

Looking AheadA ten-minute work for two brass ensembles with timpani, Call to the Mirrors, premieres at Orford Church in November, performed by the Britten-Pears Orchestra and Elgar Howarth. November sees two new works: The Tongs and the Bones, for the Hounslow Symphony Orchestra (the title is taken from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and A Sort of Heaven for violin and piano. The later, commissioned to celebrate and honour the life and work of artist Sir Stanley Spencer, will be premiered at Cliveden House, Maidenhead by Alexandra Wood and Huw Watkins.

Benjamin Britten

PHOTOS: (LEFT) JOHN WOOLRICH © MAURICE FOXALL (RIGHT) JANICE KELLY, CATHERINE BLACKHOUSE, RICHARD BERKELEY-STEELE AND SUSAN BULLOCK IN ‘OWEN WINGRAVE’ AT ALDEBURGH FESTIVAL © ROBERT WORKMAN

David Matthews – Selected forthcoming performances

Horn Quintet 18.10.14, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Nash Ensemble/Richard Watkins

Owen Wingrave(Chamber Reduction arr. David Matthews) 21-28.11.14, Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées, France: Orchestre national du Capitole/cond. David Syrus/dir. Alfonso Caiani

10-30.1.15, Oper Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany: Oper Frankfurt/ cond. Yuval Zorn/dir. Walter Sutcliffe

26.2-1.3.15, Arizona State University, Tempe, Tempe, AZ, USA

Two Chopin Nocturnes(world premiere)5.12.14, Queen’s Cross Church, Aberdeen; 6.12.14, Inverness Cathedral, Inverness; 7.12.14, Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh; 9.12.14, Caird Hall, Dundee; 10.12.14, St John’s Kirk, Perth; 11.12.14, Wellington Church, Glasgow, Scotland, UK: Scottish Ensemble

Darkness Draws In / Winter Journey 19.12.14, St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London, UK: Park Lane Group

Winter Remembered / Darkness Draws In 9.1.15, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Park Lane Group

Sonata for Piano / Journeying Songs / The Shorter Ring 9.1.15, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Park Lane Group

Double Concerto 15.1.15, St John’s Smith Square, London, United Kingdom: Sara Trickey/Sarah-Jane Bradley/Orchestra Nova/George Vass

Eight Duos 10.3.15, Concert Hall, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK: Retorica Duo

A Blackbird Sang 14.3.15, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Philippa Davies/Nash Ensemble

Symphony No 8(world premiere)17.4.15, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/HK Gruber

PHOTO: DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA

TUNING IN

20

Anthem for Westminster Abbey War VigilA specially commissioned anthem by David Matthews was premiered on 4 August 2014 at Westminster Abbey as part of a service of solemn commemoration marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Entitled To what God shall we chant our songs of battle? the work was broadcast live on BBC2 television to almost two and a half million people.

Stark and gritty yet always rooted in tonality, Matthews’s expressive harmonies bring a potent immediacy to the bitter, disillusioned words of war poet Harold Monro and two lyrical solos for soprano and tenor which set passages from the Book of Lamentations and St Luke’s Gospel. Beginning with a violent and impassioned energy, this anthem ultimately offers little consolation. In the words of James O’Donnell it ‘leaves you standing on the edge of an abyss’ – its impetus petering out in a series of hushed, troubled questions.

The five-minute anthem adds to the composer’s impressive body of a cappella choral works which includes Aequam memento (2004), and the carol Christ is Born of Maiden Fair (1968). Matthews’ recently recorded Vespers (SATB and orchestra) was recently described as ‘a work both of great beauty and genuine spiritual force’ by BBC Music Magazine.

The specially devised vigil began at 10pm and ended with the chimes of Big Ben an hour later – the moment when war was declared. Writing for The Arts Desk, David Nice characterised the anthem as ‘singular and haunting, a piece to listen carefully to again’.

Park Lane Group FocusThe Park Lane Group, the organisation that has established the careers of generations of vastly talented young artists (including our own Thomas Adès), has chosen David Matthews as one of its Frontline Composers for its prestigious New Year Series. The concert on 9 January will showcase a range of chamber pieces: Journeying Songs for solo

cello, Winter Remembered for viola and piano, and the evocative Darkness Draws In for solo viola. Two solo piano works, the powerful Sonata from 1989 and The Shorter Ring (a witty five-minute reduction of Wagner’s epic), will also feature.

Chopin TranscriptionsAfter several acclaimed performances of David Matthews’ arrangement of Dvořak Love Songs in February, the Scottish Ensemble has commissioned him to arrange two Chopin Nocturnes for six performances across Scotland as part of a tour this December.

Speaking of the project, Matthews commented: ‘It was hard to choose two to arrange for strings as they are all so pianistic, but of all the Nocturnes Op. 37 No. 1 seemed the most suitable, and I also chose Op. 55 No. 1 as it was one of the two dedicated to Chopin’s Scottish pupil and friend Jane Stirling.’

A New Symphony for the BBC PhilharmonicA craftsman of great originality and integrity, David Matthews is widely acknowledged as one of the leading living exponents of the symphonic form. His latest symphony (the Eighth) will be premiered by the BBC Philharmonic and HK Gruber at Bridgewater Hall on 17 April. Matthews has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the BBC Philharmonic who have performed and recorded numerous works by him. After the orchestra gave the premiere of his orchestral tone poem A Vision of the Sea at the 2013 Proms, their principal conductor Juanjo Mena was so impressed by Matthews’ handling of the orchestra that he immediately approached him about commissioning this next symphony.

A new song cycle for bass and piano trio Setting specially written texts by David Sargeant, Songs from a Bright September was first performed by its commissioners, the Angel Trio and bass Matthew Rose, in March at Witney’s Victoria Hall, London’s Blackheath Halls and the Paul Hamlyn Hall at the Royal Opera House. Suckling’s sensitive vocal writing maintains the delicate sparseness of Sargeant’s poetry and as such it is often the instruments that take on the primary melodic role.

Like the Six Speechless Songs from 2013 this thirteen-minute work eschews the microtonal language present in many of Suckling’s works (Nocturne and the Violin Concerto de sol y grana),

David Matthews

Martin Suckling

instead exploring resonance through a pure and clear harmonic language sometimes reminiscent of Messiaen.

In the first song the piano mostly inhabits its bottom two octaves, its heavy chords triggering crepuscular third-pedal resonances out of which sinuous violin and cello lines emerge, winding their way around each other. In contrast, the second song is bright and sharply etched; a repeating cycle of staccato triads in the piano dancing high above a vocal lyric which is shadowed by fluttering violin arabesques. The third movement, considerably longer than the previous two, juxtaposes a dance melody with a gently rocking lullaby figure in seemingly endless descent. This cradling descent is repeated at progressively higher pitch and faster speed until eventually the piano breaks free into an ecstatic solo which fuses elements of lullaby dance and song. ‘To me’ writes Suckling, ‘Sergeant’s poems suggest a parent’s meditations shortly before the birth of their child: wonder at the new life growing within, anticipation of a joyful childhood, and intimations of bittersweet future partings.’

Matthew Rose and the Angel Trio will perform the songs as part of an American tour in March 2015 alongside another new commission, a setting of Rilke, by John Woolrich.

CandlebirdIn February Suckling’s beguiling settings of Don Patterson, Candlebird, will receive three performances across Scotland by baritone Mark Stone, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Nicholas Collon (who oversaw its first performance in 2011). Described at its premiere as ‘staggeringly assured’ it is constantly compelling over its 25-minute span, with quarter tones, folk music, luxurious lines and scurrying fragments all woven together into a wholly unique musical world.

21SCORE EXTRACT: ‘SONGS FROM A BRIGHT SEPTEMBER’ © FABER MUSIC

TUNING IN

Martin Suckling – Selected forthcoming performancesPostcards 22.9.14, Penrith Methodist Church, Penrith, Cumbria, UK: Scottish Ensemble

Candlebird 25.2.15, University of St Andrews, St Andrews; 27.2.15, City Halls, Glasgow; 28.2.15, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Mark Stone/Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Nicholas Collon

Matthew Hindson – Selected forthcoming performancesPulse Magnet(US premiere)7.9.2014, New York Chamber Music Festival, Symphony Space, New York, NY, USA: Pascal Rogé/Ami Rogé/Gregory Zuber/Duncan Patton

It is better to be feared than loved(world premiere)8 & 9.10.2014, Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus/Sydney YO/Brett Weymark

Rave-Elation (Extended Mix)9.11.2014, Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Melbourne YO/Paul Fitzsimon

Monkey Music(Italian premiere)24.11.2014, Oratorio S Cecilia, Bologna, Italy: Antonietta Loffredo

‘The Returned Soldier’The Returned Soldier (Symphony No 3) is inspired by the subject of the effects of war and, in particular, post-traumatic stress disorder. With several generations of Hindson’s own family affected by the trauma of war, it is an issue close to his heart. The 25-minute orchestral work was commissioned by The Phoenix Symphony Commissioning Club and was given three performances by the Phoenix SO and its former Music Director, Michael Christie, in March.

Large-scale choral commission debuts in SydneyIt is better to be feared than loved is a huge choral extravaganza, the result of a commission from the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (with funding from the members of the Festival Chorus). The 13-minute piece explores dark fragments of text from Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ and will be unveiled by a choir of over 400 voices in Sydney Opera House’s Concert Hall on 8 and 9 October. They will be joined by the Sydney Youth Orchestra under Brett Weymark.

Innovative orchestral installationThe result of a commission from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, a new orchestral piece, Resonance, was launched as part of the Synaethesia weekend in Hobart’s Museum of Old & New Art, on 16 August. Hindson has written an 18-minute piece designed to be performed by disparately-placed groups of musicians (conducted by Marko Letonja) spread throughout the iconic building.

‘Faster’ – David Bintley ballet comes to TokyoThe National Ballet of Japan has staged the Japanese premiere of David Bintley’s ballet, Faster, set to a commissioned orchestral score by Hindson. The 35-minute celebration of athleticism, inspired by the Olympic motto ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’) shows off the Hindson – Bintley collaboration, spotlighting Bintley’s choreographic powers, fuelled by Hindson’s vibrant orchestral score. The ballet was originally premiered by the Birmingham Royal Ballet in June 2012 and subsequently toured the UK.

‘Hindson’s music was effective in his provoking approach, 20 different percussions playing complicated rhythms, creating a thrilling and edgy sense of athleticism with a mixture of medieval ceremonial music and heavy metal.’

Bachtrack (Naomi Mori), 22 April 2014

The National Ballet of Japan’s production of Faster ran for five nights between 19 and 27 April.

Matthew Hindson

STAGE WORKSFRANCISCO COLLCafé Kafka (2013)chamber opera in one act for 5 singers and 10 players. Duration 45 minutes. Libretto by Meredith Oakes (English). FP: 14.3.2014, Britten Studio, Snape, Suffolk, UK: Suzanne Shakespeare/Daniel Norman/Anna Dennis/William Purefoy/Andri Björn Róbertsson/CHROMA Ensemble/Richard Baker. Commissioned by Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and Royal Opera Covent Garden with support from Arts Council England’s ‘Britten Centenary Fund’. picc(=fl).cl.cbsn (or contraforte) – trbn (with splash.cym ) – perc(1): glsp/crot/small cyms/susp.cym (dark)/large susp.cym/small splash.cym/2 wdbl (small and large)/3 tpl.bl (very small, medium, large)/3 opera gongs (very small, small, medium)/2 tins (small, medium)/very small tuna tin/sleigh bells/tamb/guero/bamboo/wine bottle/flamenco cajón – pno – vln.vla.vlc.db. Score and parts on hire.

JULIAN ANDERSONThebans (2013)opera in three acts. Duration c.100 minutes. Libretto by Frank McGuinness after Sophocles (English). FP: 3.5.2014, London Coliseum, London, UK: English National Opera/Edward Gardner. Directed by Pierre Audi. Commissioned by ENO with support from The Boltini Trust, PRS for Music Foundation and ENO’s Contemporary Opera Group. 9 Singers: Antigone (S)/Jocasta (M)/Oedipus (Bar)/Creon (T)/Polynices (Bar)/Tiresias (B)/Messenger/King Theseus (CT)/Stranger from Corinth/Haemon/ Stranger (T)/Shepherd (Bar)/Chorus of citizens of Thebes. 3(II=picc & fl tuned ¼-tone flat, III=picc & afl).3(III=ca).3(II=cl tuned ¼-tone flat & Ebcl, III=bcl).bcl.cbcl.3(III=cbsn) – 4.3(I=flhn, III=optional tpt in D).3.1 – perc(5) – harp – pno/synth/cel – strings. Vocal score, full score and parts for hire.

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON Wide Slumber (2014)music theatre piece for 3 singers, 4 musicians and electronics. Duration 70 minutes. Text: A Rawlings (English). FP: 24.5.2014, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tjarnarbíó Theatre, Reykjavik, Iceland: Sasha Siem/Alexi Murdoc/Ásgerður Júníusdóttir. viola da gamba – organ(=keyboards) – perc – electronics. Score and parts for hire.

ORCHESTRAFRANCISCO COLLOverture after ‘In Extremis’ (2014)overture for large orchestra after ‘In Extremis’. Duration 4 minutes. FP: 6.9.2014, Palau de la Música, Valencia, Spain: Orquesta Federal/Cristóbal Soler. picc.2.2.ca.ebcl.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 4.3.3.1 – perc(6) – harp – pno.cel – strings. Score and parts for hire.

MATTHEW HINDSONIt is better to be feared than loved (2014)SATB chorus and large orchestra. Duration 13 minutes. Text: Niccolo Machiavelli (English). FP: 8.10.2014, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus/Sydney Youth Orchestra/Brett Weymark. Commissioned by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs with funding from the members of the Festival Chorus. picc.2.2.2.2(II=cbsn) – 4331 – timp – perc(4) – harp – pno – strings. Full score, vocal score and parts for hire.The Returned Soldier: Symphony No 3 (2014)orchestra. Duration 25 minutes. FP: 28.3.2014, Symphony Hall, Phoenix, AZ, USA: Phoenix Symphony Orchestra/Michael Christie. Commissioned for The Phoenix Symphony by the members of The Phoenix Symphony Commissioning Club. picc(=fl).2.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 432.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(3) – pno(=cel) – harp – strings. Score and parts for hire.

GABRIEL PROKOFIEVConcerto for Trumpet, Percussion, Turntables & Orchestra (2014)solo trumpet, solo percussion, turntables, and orchestra. Duration 19 minutes. FP: 5.2.2014, Palais Beaumont Centre de Congrès, Pau, France: Marie Bédat (tpt)/Chantal Aguer (perc)/DJ Switch (turntables)/Orchestre de Pau Pays de Béarn/Faycal Karoui. Commissioned by Orchestre de Pau Pays de Béarn. 2(=picc).2.2(=bcl).2.cbsn – 422.btrbn.1 – perc(4/5) – turntables: two decks/mixer/serato/localised stereo amplification & monitors – strings. Score and parts for hire.Dial 1-900 Mix-A-Lot (2014)orchestra. Duration 9 minutes. FP: 6.6.2014, S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, Seattle, WA, USA: Seattle Symphony/Ludovic Morlot. Commissioned by the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot as part of its Sonic Evolution project that celebrates the past and future of Seattle’s music scene. 2.picc.2.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 4.3.2.btrbn.1 – perc(4-5) – strings. Score and parts for hire.Violin Concerto ‘1914’ (2014)violin and orchestra. Duration 33 minutes. FP: 29.7.2014, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK: Daniel Hope/Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra/Sascha Goetzel. Commissioned by the BBC Proms and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. 2(I+II=picc).2(II=ca).2(I+II=bcl).2.cbsn – 4.2(I=ptpt).2.btrbn.1 – timp(=SD) – perc(5) – strings. Score and parts for hire.

TORSTEN RASCHA Foreign Field (2013) oratorio for soprano and baritone soloists, boy’s choir, chorus and orchestra. Duration c.35 minutes. Text: from the Old Testament (Latin) and Ivor Gurney, Edward Thomas, Rupert Brook (English), Trackl, Rilke (German). FP: 31.7.14, Three Choirs Festival, Worcester Cathedral, UK: Yeree Suh/Roderick Williams/Three Choirs Festival Chorus/Philharmonia Orchestra/Baldur Brönnimann. Commissioned by public subscription for

the Three Choirs Festival 2014 and Städtische Theater Chemnitz, Erich-Schellhorn-Stiftung as part of 14-18 Now, WW1 Centenary Art. 3(II+afl/picc, III=picc).2.ca.2(II=ebcl.).bcl.2.cbsn. – 4.3.3.1 – timp – perc (3) – harp – cel – strings. Vocal score, full score and parts for hire.

JOHN WOOLRICHThe tongs and the bones (2014)orchestra. Duration 10 minutes. FP: 29.11.14, St Mary’s Church, Osterley, London, UK: Hounslow Symphony Orchestra/Scott Wilson. Commissioned by the Hounslow Symphony Orchestra to mark its 60th Anniversary. picc.3.2.2.2 – 4.2.3.0 – timp – perc (3) – strings. Score and parts for hire.

CHAMBER ORCHESTRACOLIN MATTHEWS Spiralling (2014)chamber orchestra. Duration 25 minutes. FP: 26.10.2014, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, UK: Spira Mirabilis. Commissioned by Aldeburgh Music. 2.2.2(II=bcl).1.cbsn – 2.2.0.0 – timp(=glsp) – harp – strings (8.6.5.4.2). Score and parts for hire.

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSON No Nights Dark Enough (2014)chamber orchestra and electronics. Duration 30 minutes. FP: 17.6.2014, Village Underground, London, UK: City of London Sinfonia/Hugh Brunt. Commissioned by Spitalfields Music, November Music and Dark Music Days, with support from Spitalfields Music’s New Music Commission Fund and The Eduard van Beinum Foundation. 1(=picc).1(=ca).1(=bcl).1 – 1111 – pno – harp – strings (55442) – electronics. Score and parts for hire (available after January 2015).

STRING ORCHESTRAJONNY GREENWOODWater (2013)2 flutes, amplified upright piano, chamber organ/sampler, 2 amplified tambura & string orchestra (10 vlns, 3 vlas, 3 vlcs, 1 db). Duration 20 minutes. FP: 2.10.2014, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland: Richard Tognetti/Australian Chamber Orchestra. Score and parts in preparation. European, Australian & US premieres reserved for Australian Chamber Orchestra.

CHAMBER ENSEMBLEDEREK BERMELDeath with Interruptions (2014)piano trio. Duration 18 minutes. FP: 14.7.2014, Seattle Chamber Music Society 2014 Summer Festival, Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA, USA: James Ehnes/Bion Tsang/Anna Polonsky. Commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Music Society Commission Club, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, La Jolla Chamber Music, and LaJolla Music Society for Summerfest, in collaboration with the Bowdoin International Music Festival and Calyx Trio. Score and parts for hire.

HOWARD GOODALLSure of the Sky, Sure of the Sun – Des Himmels sicher, der Sonne sicher (2014)2 SATB choirs and brass ensemble of 5 players. Duration 5 minutes. Text: Charlotte Mew; Goldfeld (English/German). FP: 4.8.2014, St Symphorien Military Cemetery, Mons, Belgium: London Symphony Chorus/Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Chor/brass players from the Coldstream Guards/Simon Halsey. Commissioned by Horsepower International on behalf of Sir Nicholas Kenyon, on the occasion of the St Symphorien WWI Commemoration, August 2014. crt.flhn.tenor horn (or French horn).euph.tuba. Full score, vocal score and parts on special sale.

ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGESong Cycle (2014)a song cycle for SATB choir and jazz quintet. Duration 45 minutes. Text: Alexander L’Estrange, Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, Susan L’Estrange, Alberto A. Bennett, Walter G. Kendall, Walter Parke, George Lynde Richardson (English). FP: 28.6.2014, Yorkshire Festival, York Minster, York, UK: 400 singers from across Yorkshire/The Chapter House Choir/The ‘Call Me Al’ Quintet (led by Alexander L’Estrange)/Stephen Williams. Commissioned by the Chapter House Choir, York, to celebrate the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2014.. fl – tpt(=fl.hn) – drum kit – pno – db(amplified) choir members are required to play bicycle pumps, a variety of bike bells and a klaxon. Vocal score on sale, full score, vocal score and parts for hire.

VALGEIR SIGURÐSSONThe Crumbling (2014)chamber ensemble of 6 players. Duration 5 minutes. FP: 17.6.2014, Village Underground, London, UK: City of London Sinfonia/Hugh Brunt. Arranged for performance alongside the premiere of “No Nights Dark Enough”, at Spitalfields Summer Festival 2014. Pno – 2 vln.vla.vlc.db. Score and parts for hire.Raindamage (2014)string trio and electronics. Duration 5-7 minutes. FP: 30.5.2014, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Library of Water, Stykkishólmur, Iceland: Nordic Affect. In preparation.

CARL VINEFantasia (2013)piano quintet. Duration c.16 minutes. FP: 24.3.2013, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Tucson, AZ, USA: Bernadette Harvey, Shanghai Quartet. Commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, sponsored by Wesley C. Green in memory of his wife, Pearl Green. 2 vln, vla, vlc, pno. Score and parts on special sale.

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NEW WORKS

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JOHN WOOLRICHA Quality of Loss (2014)whispering chorus and wind instruments. Duration 12 minutes. Text: fragments of poems and quotations by Emily Dickinson (English). FP: 15.8.2014, Dartington International Summer School, Great Hall, Dartington Hall, Dartington, Devon, UK: Commissioned by Dartington International Summer School. fl.afl.ca.cl.bcl. Vocal score, full score and parts for hire.Call to the Mirrors (2014)for two brass ensembles with timpani. Duration 11 minutes. FP: 25.10.2014, St Bartholomew’s Church, Orford, Suffolk, UK: Britten-Pears Orchestra/Elgar Howarth. Commissioned by Aldeburgh Music for the Britten-Pears Orchestra.ENSEMBLE 1: 3 hn/3 tpt/trbn/btrbn/tuba – timpENSEMBLE 2: 3 hn/2 tpt/fl.hn/trbn/euph/tuba – timpScore and parts for hire.Pluck from the Air (2013)piano quintet. Duration 10½ minutes. FP: 4.7.2014, Cheltenham Music Festival, Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham, UK: Nash Ensemble. Commissioned by Wigmore Hall and the Cheltenham Festival with funds provided by the Britten-Pears Foundation. Score and parts for hire.

INSTRUMENTALJOHN WOOLRICHA Sort of Heaven (2014)violin and piano. Duration 10 minutes. FP: 21.11.2014 Cliveden House, Maidenhead, UK: Alexandra Wood/Huw Watkins. Commissioned by the Trustees of The Sir Stanley Spencer Memorial Trust. Score and part on special sale.Pianobook XIV (2014)piano solo. Duration 6 minutes. FP: 6.4.2014, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Tom Poster. Score on special sale.

WIND BANDNIGEL HESSChansons de Normandie (2014)symphonic wind band. Duration 4 minutes. FP: 6.6.2014, Friday Night Is Music Night”, BBC Radio 2, UK: The Central Band of the RAF/Duncan Stubbs. Score and parts in preparation.

VOCALTORSTEN RASCHThree Songs (2014)bass voice and piano. Duration 8 minutes. Text: Idiosynkrasie, Romanze and Wankelmut by Wilhelm Busch (German). FP: 21.07.2014, Münchner Opernfestspiele, Prinzregententheater, Munich, Germany: René Pape, Camillo Radicke. Commissioned by Bayerische Staatsoper. Score on special sale.

MARTIN SUCKLINGSongs from a Bright September (2014)bass and piano trio. Duration 13 minutes. Text: David Sergeant (English). FP: 26.3.14, Victoria Hall, Hartley Witney, Hampshire, UK: Matthew Rose/Angell Trio. Commissioned by the Angell Trio in memory of Michael Cuddigan. Score and parts on special sale.

CHORALDAVID MATTHEWSTo what God shall we chant our songs of battle? (2014)unaccompanied choir. Duration 5 minutes. Text: from The Poets are Waiting by Harold Monro/Lamentations 1:12/Luke 19:42 (English). FP: 4.8.2014, Westminster Abbey, London, UK: Westminster Abbey Choir/James O’Donnell. Especially commissioned by the Dean & Chapter of Westminster and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for a service of solemn commemoration marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War on 4th August 2014. Score on special sale.

TORSTEN RASCH...in der Hülse von Schnee... (2014)a Hölderlin cycle for mixed choir. Duration 15 minutes. Text: Friedrich Hölderlin (German). FP: 16.10.14, Kammermusiksalle, Berlin Philharmonie, Germany: RIAS Chamber Choir. ...in der Hülse von Schnee... was commissioned by the RIAS Kammerchor.Vsc on special sale.

NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS

NEW PUBLICATIONS

THOMAS ADÈSTevot

Orchestra. Full Score. 0-571-53674-3 £29.99

JULIAN ANDERSONThebans

Libretto. 0-571-53710-3 £7.99

EVELYN GLENNIEPerpetual Motion

Solo Piano. 0-571-53856-8 £7.99

HOWARD GOODALLThe Lord is my shepherd

SATB. 0-571-53848-7 £2.99The Lord is my shepherd

SS accompanied. 0-571-53849-5 £2.99

GAVIN HIGGINSA Forest Symphony

Brass Band. Score. 0-571-56959-5 £9.99A Forest Symphony

Brass Band. Score and Parts. 0-571-56979-X £49.99

ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGESongs of Wartime

SA accompanied. 0-571-53847-9 £2.00Songs of Wartime

SA/Men accompanied. 0-571-53846-0 £2.00

MATTHEW MARTINJubilate Deo: Oh be joyful in the Lord

SATB. 0-571-52222-X £1.75Score. 0-571-53821-5 £17.99

NEW RECORDINGS

THOMAS ADÈSViolin Concerto/Three Studies From

CouperinPeter Herresthal/Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Andrew Manze

BIS-8003

DAVID MATTHEWS Four Portraits/The Shorter Ring

William Howard NI6275

THOMAS ADÈSPolaris

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Markus Stenz ABC CLASSICS – 481 0862Violin Concerto

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Hannu LintuAugustin Hadelich

AVIE Records – AV2276 (Recently Nominated for a Gramophone Award)

COLIN MATTHEWSNo Man’s Land*/Aftertones+/

Crossing the Alps#/Hallé/ Hallé Choir +/Hallé Youth Choir, dir Richard Wilberforce#/ Ian Bostridge*/Roderick Williams*+/Nicholas Collon CDHLL 7538

Faber Music DiaryFaber Music has produced a limited edition, week-to-view diary to commemorate its 50th birthday in 2015. Beautifully produced in full colour, it presents striking cover designs, composers’ manuscripts and letters. We are offering a 10% discount off the price for Fortissimo readers: contact marketing@fabermusic.com quoting ‘Fortissimo’.

ISBN: 0-571-53850-9 £12.99 (inc VAT)

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Howard Goodall commission at heart of WWI Centenary event at St SymphorienA commission for choir and brass by Howard Goodall was at the heart of one of the UK’s main World War I centenary commemoration events on 4 August in the cemetery of St Symphorien near Mons, Belgium, which played host to 500 invited guests, including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and David Cameron. Simon Halsey conducted members of the London Symphony Chorus, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Chor and musicians from The Coldstream Guards. The 5-minute piece Sure of the Sky, Sure of the Sun – Des Himmels sicher, der Sonne sicher is scored for SATB choir and 5 brass players setting both English and German texts. The score is now on available sale from Faber Music (ISBN 0-571-57156-5).

Union Theatre to stage Goodall triple-billThe exquisite Union Theatre in Southwark is to stage three productions of Howard Goodall’s musicals in the coming months. The dreaming (after Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) will run from 3-27 September, whilst Love Story runs from 1-25 October, to be followed by Girlfriends from 29 October until 22 November.

Anne Lovett signs to Faber MusicFaber Music is delighted to announce the signing of a new exclusive publishing agreement with the French pianist/composer, Anne Lovett. Anne belongs to a new generation of evolving music makers striving to push back the boundaries of classical and contemporary music. Her music has been described as fresh and exciting, akin to a rock or pop concert with the distinctive emotional depth of classical music. It has earned her a steady international following.

Sigurðsson’s music-theatre work, ‘Wide Slumber’, launches at Reykjavik FestivalValgeir Sigurðsson’s musical-theatre work, Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists, received acclaim after its premiere at the Reykjavik Arts Festival, Iceland, in May 2014. The evening-long performance weaves live music composed by Sigurðsson with visuals created by VaVaVoom Theatre into a piece for three singers, four musicians and electronics, inspired by A. Rawlings’s award-winning book of poems ‘Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists’, which tracks the stages of sleep and pairs them with the life cycle of lepidopterae. Within the original text;

The Somnopterist, The Insomniac and The Lepidopterist.

“… the staging was extremely successful and lighting and video design fantastic (...) the music was well composed, some of the best I’ve heard from Valgeir (...) outstanding entertainment, a true feast for eyes and ears, a performance I cannot stop thinking about and long to see again and again”

MBL Morgunblaðið, Á.M.

“Sigurðsson’s music was entrancing and hypnotic (...)

TMM, S.A.

‘No Nights Dark Enough’ – Dowland-inspired orchestral premiere at Spitalfields FestivalSigurðsson’s latest work, No Nights Dark Enough, for chamber orchestra and electronics was premiered by the composer himself (on electronics) and the City of London Sinfonia under Hugh Brunt on 17 June 2014 at the Village Underground, London, as part of the Spitalfields Festival. The 30-minute work was commissioned by Spitalfields Music, November Music and Dark Music Days. The event saw the CLS embrace darkness and melancholy with a John Dowland-inspired programme.

“No Nights Dark Enough with its complicated rhythms and abrupt changes, was a menacing cousin of the Dowland work – Mexican waves of brass sound and a mechanical sound close to that of hydraulics, produced by blowing air and speaking through brass instruments, merged with watery effects from the electronics.”

Planethugill (Hilary Glover), 24 June 2014

Gabriel Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto ‘1914’ premieres at BBC PromsThere has been widespread acclaim for the premiere of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto ‘1914’ at the BBC Proms. A joint commission by the BBC and Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, Daniel Hope launched the 33-minute work with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra.

‘… as anguished, sardonic and disconcerting a musical depiction of that traumatic year as is possible to imagine…

conveyed with musical tools that range from sarcastic pastiche (very Prokofiev!) to extraordinary percussion effects and electronic dance music… it’s the best thing Gabriel Prokofiev has written.’

The Times (Richard Morrison), 31 July 2014

‘Hope’s solo violin created an intense focus, against which battlefields are evoked in shattered orchestral landscapes of eerie high tremolos and sepulchral bass rumbles, but Prokofiev hits his most characteristic vein as marching rhythms accelerate till they reach the manic energy of the disco floor.’

Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 30 July 2014

Hope gives further performances in Russia with Vladimir Jurowski (3 dates in September) and in Luxembourg with the OPL and Sascha Goetzel (22 October).From Valgeir Sigurdsson’s ‘Wide Slumber’

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Prokofiev’s ‘Dial 1-900 Mix-A-Lot’ premieres in Seattle amidst media stormProkofiev’s 9-minute orchestral commission Dial 1-900 Mix-A-Lot was given its world premiere by the Seattle Symphony under their Music Director, Ludovic Morlot, in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall on 6 June. The SSO approached Prokofiev about a commission for its Sonic Evolution project that commissions new orchestral works inspired by the music of Seattle icons. He opted for Sir Mix-A-Lot, a hero from the days when he was a hip-hop producer. The resultant piece explores aspects of Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s music and lyrical character. Rhythms of some of his most famous lines find their way into the orchestral fabric.

Prokofiev had the idea that the orchestra could approach Sir Mix-A-Lot about performing with them. The two met and Prokofiev agreed to orchestrate two of his biggest hits. It doesn’t happen very often that a big-name rapper gets onstage to perform with a professional orchestra, but that’s exactly what happened immediately after the premiere of Dial 1-900 Mix-A-Lot. The fun really began when he invited “a couple of ladies” to join him onstage. They were joined by about 30 ladies who proceeded to dance on-stage whilst he rapped his 1992 No 1 megahit, ‘Baby Got Back.’ The video was posted on YouTube and it was immediately picked up by global media and clocked up over 2.5 million hits.

‘Song Cycle’ – major L’Estrange choral work takes off at Tour de France festivalFollowing the huge success of Zimbe! (now with over 140 performances across the UK since its birth in 2008), and Ahoy! Sing for the Mary Rose, choirs will doubtless be interested to hear about Alexander L’Estrange’s latest large-scale choral venture.

Song Cycle: vive la vélorution was commissioned by the York-based Chapter House Choir to mark the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2014. Composed for massed SATB choirs and jazz quintet, the 45-minute work comprises ten songs on the subject of cycling and the great outdoors. It is an exuberant celebration in music both of this most environmentally friendly mode of transport and of the beauty of the countryside.

The premiere in York Minster on 28 June was part of the Yorkshire Festival 2014 and was performed by 400 singers from across Yorkshire, the Chapter House Choir and The ‘Call Me Al’ Quintet, led by Alexander L’Estrange, conducted by Stephen Williams. The vocal score will be published shortly.

Australian Chamber Orchestra unveil Jonny Greenwood’s new orchestral work ‘Water’ on tours of Europe, Australia and the USAThe Australian Chamber Orchestra unveil Jonny Greenwood’s latest orchestral work on their European tour in October this year.

Water is a 20-minute composition for 2 flutes, amplified piano, chamber organ/sampler, 2 amplified tanpuras & string orchestra. It launches in Dublin on 2 October, with further dates in London (4 Oct) and Birmingham (5 Oct). It will then tour throughout Australia (26 Oct-3 Nov) and there will be a US tour from 10-26 April 2015. More next time.

Live screenings of ‘There Will Be Blood’ in London & New YorkJonny Greenwood’s iconic score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood is being seen and heard in a new light, courtesy of live orchestral screenings in London and New York this year. These unique performances feature big-screen presentations of the film, with the dialogue left in, but all music cues (by Greenwood, Arvo Pärt and Brahms) provided by a live orchestra of over 50 musicians, within which Greenwood himself will perform on Ondes martenot.

The first screenings took place in The Roundhouse, London, where Hugh Brunt conducted the London Contemporary Orchestra on 6 and 7 August. The LCO has a long-standing association with Greenwood: it performed his Doghouse at Reverb in 2012, and recorded the soundtrack to The Master, another Anderson film scored by Greenwood.

The US performances of There Will Be Blood take place just over a month later (19 and 20 September), as part of the ground-breaking Wordless Music Series. The venue is the historic Union Palace Theatre, the second largest theatre in New York City, and which will see the film projected onto no less than a 50-foot movie screen. Ryan McAdams will conduct the Wordless Music Orchestra, with Greenwood once again playing the Ondes martenot. Wordless Music are no strangers to Greenwood’s music either. They gave the US premieres of his Popcorn Superhet Receiver and Doghouse in 2008 and 2011 respectively.

For enquiries about mounting performances of this live film version, please contact musicfornow@fabermusic.com

PHOTOS: (BACKGROUND IMAGE & RIGHT) LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA AT THE ROUNDHOUSE, CAMDEN © LEECH

26 (LEFT) CLARA BOW IN WINGS (RIGHT) CHARLIE CHAPLIN IN ONE A.M. BACKGROUND IMAGE: THE PLAYHOUSE (RIGHT) NAPOLÉON

Faber Silents is a growing collection of 52 classic film titles with scores composed by the BAFTA award-winning composer Carl Davis. It includes joyous comedies by the ‘big three silent clowns’ such as the twelve short films that Chaplin wrote, produced, directed, and starred in for the Mutual Film Corporation, and shorts and features starring Buster Keaton (One Week, The Playhouse, The General) and Harold Lloyd (An Eastern Westerner, The Freshman, Safety Last). Also represented are Greta Garbo (Flesh and the Devil, The Mysterious Lady, A Woman of Affairs), Clara Bow (It, Wings), Lillian Gish (The Wind and her work with ‘the father of film’ D.W. Griffith Broken Blossoms, Intolerance, An Unseen Enemy), Douglas Fairbanks Snr. (The Iron Mask, The Thief of Bagdad), and Rex Ingram’s First World War drama, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which made a star of Rudolph Valentino and his tango skills.

Other highlights include Abel Gance’s five and a half hour epic, Napoléon, which enjoyed its Dutch premiere this summer (see below), Fred Niblo’s legendary Ben-Hur, which has seen over 50 live performances, and the opportunity to enjoy one of Lon Chaney’s ‘thousand faces’ in The Phantom of the Opera.

Presenting films with live orchestra is becoming more and more popular owing to the process becoming much simpler (because of the introduction of DVD/DCP formats). The films vary enormously in length and size of orchestra needed from An Unseen Enemy, which is 16 minutes and orchestrated for piano trio, to Ben-Hur, which lasts nearly two and a half hours and employs a full symphony orchestra and organ so there are plenty of opportunities regardless of the size of your ensemble or budget. If you are interested in performing any of these works please contact Faber Music directly for licensing and music hire and we will also put you in touch with the correct distribution company in charge of the prints for the film you have chosen.You can find full details via Carl Davis’s page at fabermusic.com or contact Helen McLean directly for further information and assistance helen.mclean@fabermusic.com +44(0)20 7908 5332.

UK premiere of ‘The Playhouse’On 9 May the CBSO premiered Davis’ new music for Buster Keaton’s The Playhouse alongside his score for the classic feature, The General, in their Friday Night Classics slot. This 1921 short features ingenious camera trickery enabling Keaton to play every character in the opening 6-minute vaudeville show including a rather inept orchestra, a 9-member minstrel act and a number of different audience members, from children to aristocratic ladies.

‘It really was a special experience to see the

antics of the legendary Buster Keaton while

listening to Davis’s music, beautifully played by the

CBSO’

Birmingham Mail (Paul Marston), 12th May 2014

FABER SILENTS: MORE FROM CARL DAVIS

WWW.FABER.CO.UK

BOOKS ON MUSIC FROM FABER & FABER

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‘Schubert’s Winter Journey – Anatomy of an Obsession’ by Ian BostridgeSchubert’s Winterreise is at the same time one of the most powerful and one of the most enigmatic masterpieces in Western culture. In his new book, Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, Ian Bostridge – one of the work’s finest interpreters – focusses on the context, resonance and personal significance of a work which is possibly the greatest landmark in the history of Lieder. Using each of the 24 songs as a starting point, the book brings the work and its world alive for connoisseurs and new listeners alike.

‘With a heart filled with endless love for those who scorned me, I ...wandered far away. For many and many a year I sang songs. Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried

to sing of pain, it turned to love.’

Schubert, ‘My Dream’, manuscript, 3 July 1822

Hardback £17.99 | 978-0571-282807 | Publication date: 15 January 2015

FABER SILENTS: MORE FROM CARL DAVIS

‘Napoléon’ Dutch premiere goes down a stormIn June Davis conducted the Het Gelders Orkest in the Dutch premiere of Abel Gance’s silent masterpiece, Napoléon, with his extraordinary and complex score at the 17,000-seater Ziggo Dome.

‘This event, part of the Holland Festival and previously hosted in San Fransisco and London, was a rare opportunity to experience the sublime… In a highlight of the performance, during the second act’s finale against the British (including a few notes of Rule Britannia here and there), as Gance superimposes an earlier scene from his childhood snowball fight onto Napoleon’s current battle, Davis flawlessly intersperses the opening melody of Mozart’s Symphony no. 25 throughout Beethoven’s Eroica. Reflecting the superimposition on screen, the composer’s awe-inspiring musical arrangement truly shines here.’

Bachtrack (David Pinedo), 18 June 2014

Upcoming performances include Charlie Chaplin ‘Mutual’, Behind the Screen at the Barrie Film Festival, Canada, performed by the Huronia Symphony Orchestra.

“...a rare opportunity to experience the sublime... Davis flawlessly intersperses

the opening melody of Mozart’s Symphony no. 25 throughout Beethoven’s

‘Eroica’. Reflecting the superimposition on screen, the composer’s awe-inspiring musical arrangement truly shines here.”

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Faber Music is delighted to announce the release of mastering the piano, the first series of books to be launched as part of our major, new piano programme: Lang Lang Piano Academy. Mastering the piano comprises five progressive books for teachers and students, in which Lang Lang—one of the world’s most prolific and highest-profile recording artists—explores and develops piano technique for young players.

This is the first time Lang Lang has worked with a music publisher anywhere in the world; the launch of this series initiates an ongoing global collaboration between Lang Lang and Faber Music through the Lang Lang Piano Academy.

The remarkable reputation of Lang Lang as one of the world’s leading concert pianists precedes him and he was recently included in “Time 100”, Time Magazine’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. He is credited with playing no small part in encouraging more than 40 million children in China to learn to play the instrument.

Comprising five progressive books, mastering the piano captures Lang Lang’s passion, drive and extraordinary mastery of the piano. Each book gives students the chance to learn from this exceptional talent as follows:

• 8 units that develop key aspects of piano technique

• specially devised exercises and studies focussing on each technical area

• a diverse selection of piano repertoire including Lang Lang’s best-loved pieces and studies

• arrangements of music from around the world

• inspirational commentary and guidance from Lang Lang himself

• stunning photo section of the pianist and examples of art that has inspired his own playing

‘I’ve created the mastering the piano series with my partner Faber Music to get today’s kids really enthused about playing the piano: to inspire them to perform with love, energy

and commitment. This series captures my own passion for piano playing and shares my artistic values and technical insights with the next generation of pianists.

“…To me, the piano is like a musical world – it takes me to

a place beyond reality.”

There are no shortcuts to becoming a pianist: good playing can only be achieved through good work. These books set out to give players the advice, resources and the desire to reach this goal. I explore key aspects of piano technique and offer advice and suggestions on the challenges encountered. The books are not tutors. Pick and choose what you would like to focus on depending on your own individual needs and tackle the units in an order that suits you.

To me, the piano is like a musical world – it takes me to a place beyond reality. You, too, will find that it extends your mind, heart, creativity and communication skills. You don’t need a concert hall; you don’t need a big grand piano: any piano is enough – and the world will be yours to embrace.’

For more information please visit: www.langlangpianoacademy.com

AN EXCITING NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH LANG LANG