The Mahler in Manchester concert series is reaching its climax as we clamber up to the final, vast symphonies whose ambitions outdid all predecessors and Mahler 8 is the largest of them all, combining the forces of BBC Philharmonic, Hallé, Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Choir and CBSO Chorus, not to mention conductor Mark Elder and […]
On 30th April 2010 a new work of mine, Wege & Waldstille, for clarinet, handheld percussion, piano, cello and electronics will be performed by contemporary music group Psappha. Here are a few more thoughts on that and silence in my music.
“If we remain grotesquely unequal, we shall lose all sense of fraternity: and fraternity, for all its fatuity as a political objective, turns out to be the necessary condition of politics itself.” I’ve just got round to finishing Tony Judt’s excellent essay on the importance of the state printed in the Guardian Review the weekend […]
I have been listening a lot to this motet, Adesto dolori meo, Deus, by the late-Renaissance Flemish composer Alexander Utendal recently. The rising chromatic line that forms the basis for the opening imitative entries is mind-blowing in its deployment, displaying freshness and ingenuity despite being nearly 500 years old. By the time the soprano reaches her […]
Helmut Lachenmann in Stuttgart, 13.02.2009 I was visiting Stuttgart, hometown of composer Helmut Lachenmann, to hear a concert of his music presented in the Stadtkirche of the suburb Bad-Canstatt. It seemed like a good omen when, at the head of the menu in the traditional Schwäbische Stube (I suppose this the local equivalent of an […]