orchestra

Symphony No. 8 (1968-1969) Allan Pettersson’s previous two symphonies, though structured as single movements, both featured what amounts to two distinct sections. Symphony No. 8 is the same, though here Pettersson explicitly divides the work into two movements. This is an interesting decision, as it can easily be argued that, …

Symphony No. 6 (1963-1966) i said previously that Symphony No. 5 upped the ante, so perhaps it seems like hyperbole to say that in Symphony No. 6 Pettersson does it again, but there really is no other way of perceiving this vast 60-minute, single span behemoth. By this point in …

Symphony No. 4 (1958-1959) By now, the paradigm is well-established: Pettersson’s music is one of disruptive struggle, where contrasting, sometimes contradictory, musical ideas jostle and collide in a cycle of seemingly unstoppable volatility. In his previous work, the Concerto No. 3 for String Orchestra, Pettersson had allowed himself a greater …

Having spent a little over a decade exploring chamber and vocal music, from 1951 onward the trajectory of Allan Pettersson’s compositional journey changed, and changed permanently. In a similar way to Mahler, as soon as Pettersson began work on his first symphony, in 1951, it evidently became clear to him …

Like many institutions, the Berlin Philharmonic set up their own record label some years ago, and for much of the last decade has been putting out lavish box sets, featuring not only audio recordings but also blu-rays drawn from their enormous video archive (accessible via the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall). …

Perhaps there’s never been a more appropriate time for a music festival to take as its theme, “Border State”. Borders seem more prominent in world events than ever: we’ve seen them being viciously violated, vigorously reinforced, valiantly defended. Conflicts continue to rage, and the resultant feeling is one of separation …

The other conductor filling in the blanks in a symphony cycle is John Storgårds. With the Oslo Philharmonic, Storgårds has previously recorded four of Per Nørgård‘s eight symphonies (numbers 2, 4, 5 and 6) on a couple of discs released by DaCapo in 2016, which i explored at the time. …

There have been a couple of interesting examples recently of conductors filling in the blanks of their respective symphony cycles. Antoni Wit recorded all but one of Krzysztof Penderecki‘s eight symphonies with the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, issued on a series of five discs by Naxos in the noughties. …

It’s a while since there’s been an album devoted to Tōru Takemitsu‘s orchestral music, so it’s been good to spend time with a new release from the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Christian Karlsen, that explores four of the composer’s works from the ’80s and ’90s. One of them is purely …

i wish i could remember who once said to me that composing was like a form of time travel. The finished composition has a certain duration, but while working on the piece, the composer can move freely, forwards and backwards through what we might call the “compositional spacetime”, in the …

Some years ago I was at the Royal Opera House, watching and listening with a growing sense of disbelief and horror as a contemporary opera entirely failed to understand or meaningfully capture the source material upon which it was based. That was Thomas Adès’ wretched The Exterminating Angel, an embarrassingly …

Two years have passed since the Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s previous series of albums, Recurrence, Concurrence, Occurrence, and their latest release, Atmospheriques Vol. I, is the start of a new series. As before, the orchestra is conducted by Daníel Bjarnasson, and the emphasis is again on Icelandic composers, though here they’re …

Staunch conservatives don’t merely hold sway over our current government but also, it seems, our concert halls, judging by the latest desolation of premières at this year’s Proms. In the case of the Prelude and Fugue in G major by Rachel Laurin, posthumously premièred in Isabelle Demers’ organ recital, i …

It’s been a disappointing, demoralising experience spending time with the most recent batch of premières at the Proms. Derrick Skye‘s Nova Plexus, premièred by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the end of last month, was easily the most egregious of them, being yet another example of the cinematised …

Back in April, when i summarised the new music featured at this year’s Proms, i mentioned that the time might have come for me to finally give up trying to find some enthusiasm for its safe, unimaginative offerings. The 2023 season has been up and running for a couple of …

During my recent time in Salzburg, i explored many of the city’s large number of churches. All of them were Catholic, and while they were undeniably impressive – none more so than the absurdly massive cathedral – it was striking to see the extent to which they were almost infeasibly …

A composer i’ve been trying to get the measure of lately is Grażyna Bacewicz. Bacewicz died in 1969, but her output seems to be going through something of a rediscovery of late, with concert performances and new recordings now emerging with increasing regularity. It’s a generalisation, i know, but over …

i was deeply saddened recently to hear about the death, on 2 June, of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. In the days since then, i’ve been reflecting on my relationship with her music, which i’ve come to realise is similar to my relationship with Takemitsu’s music. Every time i encounter her …

Very few performances at Only Connect 2023 failed to impress. Among the exceptions was Caminante by Michael Pisaro, premièred on the opening night by Trondheim Sinfonietta with bassist Michael Francis Duch. Though the work began well, establishing a nicely darkened texture that became almost gritty and dirty, as soon as …

110 years ago today, something extraordinary took place in Berlin. During the previous few years, the young Danish composer Rued Langgaard had been working on his first symphony. He began it in early 1908, at the age of 14, and completed it the following year, though he continued revising the …