UK

Today, at 1:03am GMT (the same moment this article is published, in fact), is the equinox, when day and night become equal at the midpoint between light and dark, and the season of autumn begins. i’ve always been especially fond of this season, with its split connotations of positive and…

Within the context of new music festivals, it can be rather too easy to assume that installations are a kind of secondary activity, even an optional extra, something to check out if you’ve got some spare time between the really important stuff, i.e. the actual concerts. This misconception is perhaps…

A few weeks back in this year’s Proms season, Sally Beamish’s Hive gave the impression that the occasion was aimed at children, and it was much the same listening to Thomas Adès‘ Märchentänze, given its UK première last Friday. Adès is such a strangely unpredictable composer, capable of extremes of…

i’m not sure whether to interpret the Proms’ decision to place Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s new orchestral piece in a concert alongside Vaughan Williams and Elgar as an attempt to imply some kind of genteel, ‘establishment figure’ status. Yet – would that be wrong? Now in his early 60s, Turnage’s music has…

Voices returned to contemporary music at the Proms on Wednesday evening, with the first performance of Matthew Kaner‘s new vocal work Pearl. The piece, for baritone and orchestra, takes its title from the Middle English poem Pearl, written by the anonymous Gawain Poet, setting portions of the text from Simon…

Finally. Following six premières of, to say the least, wildly varying quality, this year’s Proms season finally struck gold on Monday evening in the form of Gavin Higgins‘ new large-scale work for brass band and orchestra, Concerto Grosso. First things first: it’s a bit of an odd title, as the…

Almost exactly 10 years ago, i coined a new adjective, ‘Faberian’, in reference to Faber Music, to summarise what i later described as “the kind of thing one hears all too often in works from the more mainstream protagonists of that particular publishing house”. On that first occasion i elaborated…

Though i find it a bit hard to believe, today marks the 20th anniversary of one of Autechre‘s most dazzling creations, Gantz Graf. It was the opener on a 3-track EP, but the other two tracks, Dial and Cap.IV, though significantly longer than Gantz Graf‘s mere 4-minute duration, were utterly…

It’s a real pleasure to be able to present another instalment in my ongoing occasional series The Dialogues. This time, my guest is UK composer Naomi Pinnock, whose music has been a persistent highlight on my radar for the last decade or so. We’d been talking about recording this for…

Last night’s Prom was a monarchist’s paradise, waxing lyrical in the Queen’s platinum jubilee year with an evening of music composed for royal occasions. Nestling among all the sonic bowing and scraping and forelock-tugging from the usual early 20th century shower was a short new choral work from Cheryl Frances-Hoad,…

Yesterday evening’s Prom concert wasn’t specifically aimed at children, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was while listening to Sally Beamish‘s new harp concerto, Hive. The work’s narrative is structured in a simple four-movement form, corresponding to the seasons of the year, beginning in winter. This opening movement isn’t…

The opportunity to hear two new works by Laura Bowler within a single week isn’t just a exciting prospect, it’s a daunting one. Her subject matter has oscillated between the personal and the global, at both extremes seeking to address the pain and damage that far too many people are…

In the previous part i highlighted the works heard at BEAST FEaST 2022 that went against the grain and handled their materials with gentleness. However, not surprisingly the dominant compositional attitude was one aspiring to power and heft. Though unassumingly titled, Helena Gough‘s Yolk featured an almost flamboyant display of…

The key word, i think, is “feast”. There was something gloriously gluttonous about the quantity of music performed at BEAST FEaST 2022, though considering the festival was celebrating both the 40th anniversary of the founding of Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre and the recent 70th birthday of its founder Jonty Harrison,…

i’ve crossed paths with the music of Juliana Hodkinson on a few occasions over the last few years, and they’ve always been somewhat discombobulating experiences. My response each time has been ambivalent, primarily due to the way that Hodkinson seeks to harness – and, potentially, rely upon – physical and…

Fractuur, released in 1997, occupies an interesting position in the output of British composer John Wall, coming at a pivotal point in his approach to working with sound. On Wall’s previous album Alterstill, released two years earlier, he had created five ambitious sound sculptures, playfully constructed from samples plundered from…

The penultimate work in this year’s Lent Series is one that ended up having to wait over a quarter of a century from the date of composition to receive its first performance. James MacMillan completed his orchestral piece The Keening in 1987, while studying for his PhD at Durham University.…

The next work i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series is one that, in the six years since i first heard it, has completely changed my opinion about it. At the world première of John Woolrich’s Swan Song, i felt that “the fragmented delivery of transient moments of something cantabile…

The next piece i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series, focusing on grief and loss, is probably the shortest i’ve ever explored on 5:4. Naomi Pinnock’s We are consists of a mere 12 bars of music, lasting around 60 seconds. The piece was part of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Postcards from…

The Lent Series continues today with a short, darkly ruminative work for baritone and ensemble by British composer Colin Matthews. It’s a setting of the poem ‘It rains’ by war poet Edward Thomas, one of two poems that Thomas composed in 1917 concerned with rain. ‘It rains’ is a wistful…