Festivals

There’s not a lot left to say about HCMF 2021. In previous instalments i mentioned how continuity, often in tandem with lyricism, played a major role in the music that made the deepest and most long-lasting impression. But from a listening perspective, every piece in every concert at this year’s…

One of my recurring trains of thought during HCMF 2021 was concerned with the notion of continuity. This was, very simply, due to the fact that all of the best things i heard at the festival had an incredibly clear, logical sense running through them that, regardless of their inner…

HCMF always has its fair share of unconventional, genre-defying performances, and this year was no exception. Among the more unusual was Eupepsia/Dyspepsia devised by Austrian composer Eva Reiter. Taking the form of a concert-cum-lecture (or possibly lecture-cum-concert), the focus of the work was on the socio-cultural effects wrought on Bolivia…

Though this year it only lasted five days instead of ten, i came away from the 2021 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with the distinct impression that, somehow, the usual quantity of music had been compressed into a reduced time frame. That’s not, mercifully, because of any attempt to shoehorn many…

In addition to the soundwalks, installations, music theatre, performance art and electroacoustic shenanigans, Ultima 2021 also had its fair share of more conventional ensemble concerts, which took place in two Oslo churches. The beautiful Tøyen Kirke played host to two of Norway’s most prominent new music ensembles, asamisimasa and Cikada.

Not everything i heard at Ultima 2021 was bound up in convolutions of meaning. Ryoji Ikeda‘s forays into the world of percussion (which i previously explored in 2018) are a sidestep away from his more central work in multi-layered representations and interpretations of data, instead concerned much more directly with…

The saying goes that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but in the case of the Ultima festival in Oslo, the latter half of which i experienced last week, i don’t think i truly realised how much i’d missed contemporary music festivals until i was back in…

Two weeks have passed since this year’s Proms season came to an end, so it’s time to take a look at how you responded to each of the new works in the annual 5:4 Proms première polls. i want to thank all of you who voted; there was a healthy-sized…

What is there left to say about the Last Night of the Proms, a.k.a “Now That’s What I Call Classical Music”? Less a concert than a party, for many years now the occasion has begun with a première, presumably intended to act as a champagne cork ‘pop’ to get things…

The penultimate première of this year’s Proms took place yesterday evening, in the form of a short, entertaining concert-opener courtesy of South Korean composer Unsuk Chin. Composed last year as part of the commemorations marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Chin’s Subito con forza flirts with a number of…

As i may have said previously, i have a love-hate relationship with film scores. Being something of a movie addict, i’m obviously encountering them all the time, and at their best, i adore how they don’t merely accompany the on-screen drama but contain their own distinctive parallel narrative, interesting in…

Until i began spending time with George Benjamin‘s new Concerto for Orchestra, given its first performance at last Monday’s Prom concert, i hadn’t realised how tired i’d become with narrative. Not that there’s anything wrong or even problematic about the concepts and conceits that have festooned each of the new…

Last Friday brought the first UK performance of the shortest, and by far the simplest, of this year’s Proms premières, Charlotte Bray‘s Where Icebergs Dance Away. Coming in the wake of some highly complex new works (none more so than George Lewis’ Minds in Flux) this was rather refreshing. In…

A word that rarely comes to mind when listening to Proms premières is “brave”. Bravery in music, to me, involves a demonstration of the composer’s singular vision to the extent that many, even all, of the expectations that i may bring to the piece as a listener are ignored, overturned,…

The second half of tomorrow evening’s BBC Symphony Orchestra Prom concert opens with the first UK performance of Where Icebergs Dance Away, by British composer Charlotte Bray. In preparation for that, here are her answers to my pre-première questions, along with the programme note for the piece. Many thanks to…

Tomorrow night’s Prom concert brings together music by Beethoven and the première of Minds in Flux, a 30-minute electroacoustic work by US composer George Lewis. As an upbeat to that, here are his answers to my pre-première questions, together with his programme for the piece. Many thanks to George for…

More Proms premières, more demands that composers must ‘respond’ to existing music. Perhaps by now the Proms organisers regard this approach as an integral, even defining, part of its commissioning strategy, but it demonstrates a complete lack of faith and trust in composers to forge their own unique conceptions from…

This evening’s Prom concert, in addition to new works from Bernard Hughes and Nico Muhly, features the world première of Aetherworld by UK composer Shiva Feshareki. It’s a rare and very welcome instance of an electroacoustic work of contemporary music at the Proms, and in preparation for it here are Shiva’s answers…

Tomorrow evening’s Prom concert given by the BBC Singers features three world premières, one of which is Birdchant by British composer Bernard Hughes. By way of an introduction to the piece, here are his answers to my pre-première questions, together with his programme note for the piece. Many thanks to Bernard…

One of the things that’s pretty much guaranteed to pull me into a piece of contemporary (or indeed any) music and hold me there is having my expectations raised and then thwarted. In the case of the latest première at this year’s Proms, Parallel Universes by Swedish composer Britta Byström,…