orchestra

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, …

Yesterday evening’s Prom concert included the third world première of the season, Augusta Read Thomas‘ orchestral work Dance Foldings. In her very detailed responses to my pre-première questions, Thomas discussed the science-related inspiration for the piece (which formed part of the commission brief) – specifically the “biological ‘ballet’ of proteins …

Last night’s Proms performance of Thomas Adès‘ The Exterminating Angel Symphony wasn’t a première (a so-called “London première” is not a première!) so i’m not technically including it as part of my annual survey of the season’s new works, but there’s a couple of good reasons to say a little …

Yesterday evening’s Prom featured the second world première of the season, Cloudline by US composer Elizabeth Ogonek (whose answers to my pre-première questions you can read here). The title of her piece is interesting as it contains two opposite implications: ‘cloud’ indicates mutability and a concomitant uncertainty of shape, while …

Last night the 2021 Proms season began, featuring – as has been the custom for many years – the world première of a new piece. When Soft Voices Die is a choral work by Scottish composer James MacMillan that brings together two texts by Shelley, Mutability (also known as ‘The …

It’s often felt a bit strange for me that the composer about whose music i’m the most passionate, whose music occupies the largest percentage of my music collection, and whose music i’ve analysed and studied in more depth and therefore know more about than any other composer, is someone i …

Despite its name, it’s important to note that not everything performed at this year’s inaugural Baltic Music Days originated in the Baltic (though all of the performers did). Among the most striking of the international pieces was Spur by Austrian composer Beat Furrer. Composed in 1998, it was especially interesting …

For the next work in this year’s nature-themed Lent Series i’m turning to not so much a fully-fleshed, self-contained composition, but something of a miniature curiosity, an outtake saved from the cutting-room floor that’s subsequently been restored. Olivier Messiaen‘s final orchestral work, Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà…, completed in 1991, was a …

In The Thin Tree (discussed in my last post), Klaus Lang abstracts ideas, patterns and concepts from nature, and creates a soundworld that develops and grows from an opening 4-note idea. Korean composer Unsuk Chin‘s 2019 orchestral work SPIRA – Concerto for Orchestra does something similar, also being concerned with “the …

For me the basic idea how to translate from one field of art into another is not to imitate the surface (like programme music) but to find underlying abstract principles and give them an acoustic representation. These words of Klaus Lang (from a lecture he gave titled ‘Boston Beauties’) refers …

For the next work in this year’s nature-inspired Lent Series, i’m returning to the world of birds. Japanese composer Akira Nishimura‘s 1993 orchestral work Bird Heterophony takes its inspiration, in part at least, from a folk tale from Papua New Guinea, in which a young woman witnesses her brother transformed …

For reasons geographical and pandemical, it’s quite a long while since i’ve had the chance to be by the sea. To a limited extent, i’ve been able to do this vicariously through the opening movement of To Be Beside the Seaside, the first orchestral work by English composer Joanna Bailie. …

One of the first new releases of 2021 to catch my attention is Occurrence featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. According to conductor Daníel Bjarnason, this is “the third and last album of the ISO project” which, if true, is a shame in both a positive and a negative sense. Positive: …

Something that comes up a lot in my writing about music is polarities. Perhaps it’s understandable; many composers strive to establish some kind of drama in their work, which often involves the juxtaposition and/or interplay of polarised types of material or behaviour. A lot of the satisfaction and enjoyment from …

A couple of years ago i wrote about the world première of Erkki-Sven Tüür‘s Symphony No. 9, subtitled ‘Mythos’. It was a fantastic performance of what turned out to be a marvellous piece (i often find myself marvelling while listening to Tüür’s music), so it’s exciting to see that original …