My percussion and electronics piece, The Golden Lion Hotel, premiered at the end of April is being reprised by Steve Pycroft and myself at the Raise Your Voice Collective’s FutureEverything Showcase appearance on Friday 14 May 2010. The programme also includes a whole host of other Manchester-based composers.
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The Quatuor Danel were back in Manchester last week with two composers, Henry Fourès and Catherine Seba, in tow. Their two concerts included Bruno Mantovani’s piano quintet, Blue girl with red wagon (with Richard Whalley on piano), Seba’s string quartet with tape, Quivering, Fourès playing Luc Ferrari’s À la recherche du rhythme perdu, for solo piano and tape, Schubert Quartet in G minor, D.173, Dvořák Piano Quintet in A, Op.81, (with David Fanning on piano) and the world premiere of Fourès’s quartet Méditations sur le scorpion. Read More
Here’s a video, courtesy of Psappha, of my piece Wege & Waldstille, which they premiered with verve and accuracy on Friday night. Enjoy it in HD!
I was in London on Tuesday last week to attend Getting It Right? Performance practices in contemporary music, a day of talks and discussions on performance, composition and all the ways the two interact at LSO St Luke’s. Organised by Julian Anderson and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the various speakers included Helmut Lachenmann, David Alberman, Michael Finnissy, Rolf Hind and Diego Masson, providing a variety of perspectives on the challenges of new music. Read More
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 the eight vocal soloists. The journey has been an interesting one, enlivened by the conceit of pairing each symphony with some new, specially commissioned music, usually bearing some relationship with its symphonic cousin. The new works have been variously successful (as are, of course, the Mahler symphonies) and while the hapless tinkering of Uri Caine’s piano playing frequently being swallowed by the directionless mélange that was his Scenes from Childhood programmed alongside Mahler 5 may not have pleased everyone, it is the potential for serendipity that is appealing. Besides, as Gustav’s granddaughter Marina notes in the programme, ‘an open, curious, demanding ear, willing to listen, always searching for something lovely, something true in the music of our own time — this is truly honouring Mahler’s music.’
Sunday night’s pairing with Mahler 8 couldn’t have been more fitting. The ecstatic religious element of the symphony was echoed in a 20-minute improvisation on the Gregorian hymn ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’, the text of which forms the first part of the Mahler, performed by organist Olivier Latry. Latry has held one of the four posts as organist at Notre Dame de Paris since 1985 and is steeped in the French tradition of organ improvisation as the main musical accompaniment to the Catholic mass. This tradition is strikingly modernist when one compares it to the liturgical organ tradition of the British Isles and Latry’s musical ancestry can clearly be traced back to the devout, if unorthodox, Catholic Olivier Messiaen, who held a similar post at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité for 61 years, until his death. Read More