Fortissimo Autumn 2019

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Tansy Davies Forthcoming performances grind show (electric) Australian premiere 26.9.19, Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Syzygy Ensemble Antenoux/Falling Angel US premieres 26.9.19, Auer Performance Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana New Music Ensemble/ David Dzubay Plumes World premiere 27.9.19, The Sage Gateshead, UK: Royal Northern Sinfonia/Giedre Slekyte Dark Ground 31.10.19, Wigmore Hall, London, UK: Colin Currie Soul Canoe UK premiere 1.11.19, Sound Festival, The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, UK: Red Note Ensemble German premiere 7.2.20, Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Munich, Germany: ensemble oktopus/Konstantia Gourzi Iris 6.11.19, St George’s Hall, Liverpool: Rob Buckland/Ensemble 10/10/ Clark Rundell The Beginning of the World 9.11.19, Aberdeen Music Hall; 10.11.19, Caird Hall, Dundee; 12.11.19, SWG3 Galvanizers Yard, Glasgow; 13.11.19, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Ensemble new work World premiere 9.11.19, Kings Place, London, UK: Elaine Mitchener/London Sinfonietta German premiere 17.10.20, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Germany: Elaine Mitchener/ Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik grind show (electric)/ Undertow/Loopholes & Lynchpins/salt box/ neon 9.11.19, Kings Place, London, UK: London Sinfonietta/Richard Baker Christmas Eve 7.12.19, Kings Place, London, UK: The Choir of St Catherine’s College, Oxford/Edward Wickham neon 7.2.20, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK: Musicians from the Royal Academy of Music loure 19.5.20, Imperial College London, UK: Darragh Morgan Tansy Davies Bloomington appointment The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music has appointed Tansy Davies Associate Professor of Composition, effective from 1 August 2019. ‘Davies has established herself as a highly individualized voice in composition today,’ said Gwyn Richards, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean. ‘Her music doesn’t reside in an airtight box, but is, rather, out on the street, friendly, aggressive, mingling with rock. Her arrival at Indiana University is highly anticipated.’ The Indiana New Music Ensemble and David Dzubay will present the US premieres of Antenoux and the Anselm Kiefer-inspired Falling Angel on 26 September. Jolts and Pulses, Cycles and Circles Following the huge success of Davies’s chamber opera Cave, and the remarkable part Elaine Mitchener played in it, the London Sinfonietta and Kings Place have commissioned a new work for voice and ensemble of 5 players, to be premiered on 9 November 2019. The work will be premiered as part of a portrait concert entitled ‘Jolts and Pulses’ which will also include neon, grind show (electric) and Undertow. The work is a co-commission with the 2020 Donaueschinger Musiktage, where Mitchener will be joined by players from Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik. Davies has been generating material for the piece using numbers from sacred geometry – inspired by the writings of Plato and harmonious forms from nature – whilst Sylvia Wynter’s writings on colonial repression provide a contemporary undercurrent. ‘The piece is very much about rhythm’ says Davies. ‘The voice begins as a drum; a percussive utterance. Elaine will play drum kit and the vocal part emerges as another layer of her (4-part) drum pattern. Rhythms and patterns cycle and circle around each other in ever-changing internal relationships.’ Other forthcoming works include Plumes, a 5-minute chamber orchestra work commissioned by Royal Northern Sinfonia to mark their 60th anniversary. A contemporary carol Christmas hath a darkness Brighter than the blazing noon In her imaginative and thoughtful response to Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Eve, Davies has created a beguiling 6-minute carol. Premiered at the 2011 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, this modern but accessible work for unaccompanied SATB choir would make an interesting pairing with the betterknown Rossetti setting In the Bleak Midwinter. The work will be performed at Kings Place, London this December by the Choir of St Catherine’s College, Oxford under Edward Wickham Crash Ensemble record Antenoux The Crash Ensemble, who premiered Davies’s Antenoux last year will release a recording of the 5-minute work in September on their own label Crash Records. Commissioned as part of CrashLands – a ground-breaking project to mark the 20th anniversary of the ensemble – the work is scored for ten players and fluctuates between two kinds of energy: sultry and brooding cycles of highly rhythmic material in guitar, bass, and percussion, and more streamlined linear phrases. Variation on a round In November the Scottish Ensemble will give four performances of Davies’s The Beginning of the World for strings. Commissioned for the 2013 BBC Proms as part of a suite of variations on Sellinger’s Round, this 5-minute work pulsates with energy. Fresh, vigorous textures maintain a poise and momentum throughout. Like Davies’s other works for strings, Residuum and Dune of Footprints – the music is both elegant and highly personal. The latter work, a beguiling and richly sonorous 15-minute work, received its New Zealand premiere in April, with the Auckland Chamber Orchestra conducted by Peter Scholes. 6 PHOTO: TANSY DAVIES © RIKARD ÖSTERLUND; THE SCOTTISH ENSEMBLE
TUNING IN David Matthews Ninth Symphony recorded The English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods have released a disc of David Matthews’s music on Nimbus. His Symphony No.9 features alongside the Variations for Strings and the Double Concerto for violin, viola and strings (where Sara Trickey and Sarah-Jane Bradley are the soloists). ‘The Variations deserve a place in the canon of celebrated English string literature from Purcell through to Elgar, Bridge and Tippett.’ Gramophone (Peter Quantrill), July 2019 ‘This is easy music to love… we’re beguiled at Matthews’ ability to write defiantly tonal music which nonetheless sounds contemporary. [The Symphony] is a compelling work and an irresistibly positive musical statement… The euphonious Double Concerto is another find.’ The Artsdesk (Graham Rickson), 29 June 2019 ‘Matthews is a genuine symphonist and squeezes every drop of interest out of his theme.’ Limelight (Phillip Scott), 13 August 2019 ‘A work unafraid to be in dialogue with tradition.’ BBC Music Magazine (Rebecca Franks), September 2019 This latest addition to the extensive Matthews discography will soon be joined by a release on Signum featuring the Eighth Symphony, Sinfonia, Towards Sunrise and A Vision of the Sea with the BBC Philharmonic and Jac van Steen. Towards Opera Generous support from the PRS Composers Fund will help Matthews to realise a long-awaited dream in one of the few genres he has yet to tackle: opera. The proposed piece – to be workshopped next year – is set in a central European country during the 1989 revolutions, and deals with the seismic fall of communism, with its unforeseen and disturbing consequences. It’s a subject close to the hearts of Matthews and his librettist Sir Roger Scruton, who knew Czechoslovakia well in the communist period when they were part of an underground university and met many dissidents. PHOTO: DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA; NICHOLAS MAW © MAURICE FOXALL Revisiting: Dark Pastoral With Matthews’s Dark Pastoral – an 11-minute work based on the surviving fragment of the slow movement of Vaughan Williams’s Cello Concerto (1942) – cellists have gained a fascinating addition to the repertoire. The work was premiered by Steven Isserlis and the BBC Concert Orchestra at the 2010 BBC Proms, and in the past year has been performed in Cologne (by Piotr Skweres, the WDR Funkhausorchester and Frank Strobel) and in Glasgow (by Dai Miyata, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard). Matthews, who has a close link with Vaughan Williams, both as an editor of his music and as a fellow member of the English symphonic tradition, orchestrated the four minutes of music that make up the extant short score before adding around six minutes of original music. Other Matthews works with Vaughan Williams links include the Sixth Symphony from 2007 – which is permeated by his hymn tune ‘Down Ampney’ – and Norfolk March for chamber orchestra (2016), which is a creative reconstruction of the lost Norfolk Rhapsody No.3. Nicholas Maw Revisiting: Dance Scenes An exuberant and vigorous set of four orchestral dances, Nicholas Maw’s Dance Scenes (1995) might almost be called a concerto for orchestra in the way it imaginatively puts each group of instruments through their paces. Maw’s debts to his English forebears are clearly signposted in this kaleidoscopic 19-minute work – the brassy extravagance of the first dance sounds like Walton whilst later the tangy woodwind writing recalls Britten. The whole piece is breathtakingly scored, filled with a profusion of scintillating invention. David Matthews Forthcoming performances Sinfonia 16.11.19, Princes Hall, Aldershot, UK: Farnborough Symphony Orchestra/ Johann von Stuckenbruck White Flame 27.1.20, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, UK: Nash Ensemble Nicholas Maw Selected forthcoming performances Dance Scenes 30.6.20, St John’s Smith Square, London, UK: Kensington Symphony Orchestra/Russell Keable 7
Page 1 and 2: FABER MUSIC NEWS — AUTUMN 2019 fo
Page 3 and 4: HIGHLIGHTS Martin Suckling Forthcom
Page 5: HIGHLIGHTS Kopatchinskaja and Gabet
Page 9 and 10: TUNING IN Carl Vine Hymns to Earth,
Page 11 and 12: TUNING IN Jonathan Harvey …toward
Page 13 and 14: TUNING IN Tom Coult New piano piece
Page 15 and 16: TUNING IN Torsten Rasch John Woolri
Page 17 and 18: TUNING IN Carl Davis 40 years of Na
Page 19 and 20: TUNING IN Julian Anderson Revisitin
Page 21 and 22: TUNING IN ‘The opera fascinates,
Page 23 and 24: NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS Sol
Page 25 and 26: EDUCATIONAL, MEDIA AND BÄRENREITER
Page 27 and 28: Keaton Henson’s ‘Six Lethargies

Fortissimo Autumn 2019

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