Of the larger-scale performances at HCMF 2025, the most qualitatively challenged was that given by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Geoffrey Paterson. Laurence Osborn‘s Mute just sounded like early ’90s Thomas Adès, pointlessly rehashed three decades later, also demonstrating how the Faberian sound is not so much alive and (for …
Category:
Festivals
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Most festivals go out of their way these days to jam-pack their weekends with all the best stuff, and that was certainly case at this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. There was so much to enjoy during the opening weekend it felt as if it lasted longer than just a …
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In addition to the solos and duos i discussed previously, there were various ensemble performances at this year’s Sacrum Profanum, though they were very far from being highlights, memorable for the wrong reasons. As far as Stephen O’Malley‘s You Origin was concerned, one already knew what to expect. However, to …
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While the Sacrum Profanum festival’s name hints at its beginnings, mixing sacred and secular music of the 18th and 19th centuries, today’s iteration bears no resemblance. Notions of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ – absurdly outdated and meaningless concepts both – are absent, and the entirety of the festival programme focuses on …
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Though it has the semblance of being international, AFEKT is for the most part a German-oriented festival, in terms of both composers and performers. As usual, members of Ensemble Musikfabrik were in attendance – Marco Blaauw (trumpet), Christine Chapman (horn), Lucy Humphris (trumpet), Stephen Menotti (trombone) and Maxime Morel (tuba) …
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Although this year’s AFEKT festival had a nominal theme, ‘Zwei Gefühle’ – from the eponymous work by Helmut Lachenmann – in practice it was a loose collection of thematic elements, primarily name-checking the 90th birthdays of Lachenmann and Arvo Pärt, and the 100th anniversaries of Berio and Boulez. Nonetheless, the …
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Day 2 Drinking cappuccino while watching the sun touch the tops of the mountains, i realise what i think are the heavily filtered sounds of doves making it through the triple glazing are actually UMS’s recorder, coming from the rehearsal directly below me. JIP’s voice joins in, gently cooing, and …
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Prologue Tewkesbury to Birmingham to Geneva, then on one of the most beautiful train journeys i’ve known, round Lake Geneva and along the Rhône valley into the mountains. Going beyond Leuk, where i’ve always disembarked on my trips to Switzerland, feels weird and wrong. i acknowledge the Schloss on one …
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This year’s Warsaw Autumn festival didn’t so much have a theme as a keyword: “clearing”. Referencing Heidegger’s use of the term (lichtung), the idea was that it “symbolises a new stage, a new opening and chance, in both the social and individual dimension. The word carries the hope that we wish to …
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