Fortissimo Spring 2018

FABER MUSIC NEWS — SPRING 2018
fortissimo!
TANSY
DAVIES
Announcing a residency at
the Concertgebouw,
and her new music
theatre work ‘Cave’
Plus
Remembering Donald Mitchell
‘The Exterminating Angel’ at the Met
Oliver Knussen manuscripts acquired by Sacher Foundation
George Benjamin and Tom Coult featured at the Holland Festival
‘Music for Now’ signs Danny Elfman’s Violin Concerto
Highlights • Tuning In • New Publications & Recordings • Music for Now • Publishing News

Donald Mitchell (1925-2017)
Faber Music is sad to announce the death of Dr Donald
Mitchell CBE, our inspirational founder. Mitchell was an
extraordinary person whose expertise stretched far and
wide, and established him as a world expert in the music of
Gustav Mahler and, of course, Benjamin Britten.
The founding of Faber Music in 1965 was one of Mitchell’s most
profound achievements, and the company would not be as it is today
without his vision and energy. He was the first Managing Director,
then Chairman from 1977 to 1988, after which he assumed the role
of President until 1995. Oliver Knussen once said to Mitchell ‘you
may not be a composer, but you think like one’, and it was the sheer
depth of his musical understanding that set him apart from others
in his field. Mitchell was also heavily involved in the work of PRS,
becoming chairman in 1990.
Dear colleagues,
We have dedicated this issue to the memory of Dr Donald Mitchell –
the founder of Faber Music – in gratitude and admiration.
I well remember arriving at Queen Square, after nearly 10 years at
Boosey & Hawkes, and meeting him for the first time. He had trod a
similar path, as have several others since. It was immediately obvious
to me that Faber Music was a very different organisation. Led from
the top, by Donald himself and the indefatigable Martin Kingsbury,
there was a palpable can-do spirit. Enthusiasm, commitment
and engagement were the hallmarks of Donald’s style which was
communicated to all who came into contact with him. One also
enjoyed his wry and often wicked sense of humour, his intelligence,
warmth and loyalty. With the extraordinary support of the Faber
family, this was a publisher for whom the bottom line was less
important than the nature of what we were doing.
Donald was cultured in the broadest sense, a sense which gave his
musical choices space to breathe. I never felt or heard anything from
any of our composers other than respect and affection for him. Those
contracted then were Peter Sculthorpe, Malcolm Arnold, George
Benjamin, Colin and David Matthews, Jonathan Harvey, Nicholas
Maw and Oliver Knussen… What a range of talent! A range surely
encouraged by Benjamin Britten, the company’s co-founder, and the
creator above all who fanned the fire that burned within Donald.
More about Donald and his extraordinary achievements on the next
pages. I know his spirit is still with us, and I believe his legacy is still
an inspiration.
Central to Mitchell’s life was an unqualified admiration for Britten’s
music. He began writing about the composer in the late 1940s,
and never stopped: the immense task of editing the six volumes of
Letters from a Life preoccupied him for well over 30 years, although
by 2012, when the final volume appeared, he had not been directly
involved for some time. Mitchell was the last surviving executor of
Britten’s will, becoming director of the Britten-Pears Foundation
and chair of the Britten Estate: his tireless advocacy of Britten’s
music meant that there was never any posthumous decline in the
composer’s reputation. This devotion to Britten was matched by a
fascination with the life and music of Mahler, on whom we wrote
copiously. Edward Said, in the introduction to Mitchell’s influential
study The Language of Modern Music, praised his writing’s ‘passionate
unflagging energies, its unshakeable faith in communication and
community, its deep love of and concern for music as an aesthetic
and social practice’.
‘As Faber Music’s founder, Mitchell contributed immeasurably
to the world of classical contemporary and serious educational
music publishing. He was an unfailing champion and supporter
of the generations which followed him at the company, including
myself. Faber Music’s unique DNA – quality, integrity and a
fiercely independent, maverick spirit – is epitomised thWrough the
extraordinary list of composers and the single-minded spirit with
which he built the business. It is on his shoulders that we now stand,
and we owe him a great deal.’
Richard King, CEO of Faber Music
Sally Cavender
Performance Music Director|Vice Chairman, Faber Music
2 PHOTOS: SALLY CAVENDER © MAURICE FOXALL; DONALD MITCHELL WITH IMOGEN HOLST, COLIN MATTHEWS, PETER PEARS AND WILLIAM SERVAES AT A REHEARSAL FOR
THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF BRITTEN’S THIRD STRING QUARTET (TWO WEEKS AFTER BRITTEN’S DEATH). © NIGEL LUCKHURST, BRITTEN–PEARS FOUNDATION

HIGHLIGHTS
‘I first met Donald in 1965, shortly after he had founded Faber
Music. He gave me freelance work – he may have warmed to me
because, like him, I didn’t have a music degree, and also I shared
his passion for Mahler. Through Donald I met Britten, for whom I
worked for four years, and also through Donald I eventually became
a Faber Music composer – he encouraged me to write a substantial
work that would impress him, and so I wrote my Second Symphony.
He became a dear friend and I miss the wonderful talks we had about
music. Altogether I think perhaps I owe more to Donald than to any
other person in my life. Without him I would not be where I am
now.’
David Matthews
‘For someone who had had little formal musical education, Donald’s
knowledge of and passion for so many areas of the musical world was
remarkable. His devotion to Britten was paralleled by his obsession
with Mahler, publishing four studies of the music between 1958
and 2005, a pioneering achievement, begun well before Mahler had
reached any kind of general recognition in this country. (‘A very
tolerable imitation of a composer’, had been Vaughan Williams’s
assessment.)
If one had to find one word to characterise Donald it would be
‘enthusiasm’: whether one agreed or not with his always eloquently
expressed opinions, it was impossible not to admire the sharpness of
his mind and the generosity of his spirit.’
Colin Matthews
‘Beyond the intrepid and courageous step of founding the company,
Donald instilled an ethos within Faber Music that remains absolutely
unchanged to this day – to serve new music at the highest level of
excellence in every possible domain, from the quality of orchestral
material to cover design, from exceptional standards of typography to
the most energetic and devoted promotion.
Donald loved the arts – and above all music – in every fibre of his
being, and that passion lay behind the way he ran the firm. He was
also, however, a shrewd businessman and it was the mixture of these
two characteristics which gave the company such a tremendous start
in the world and which has sustained it now for over a half-century.
‘As well as his extraordinary powers of will and persuasion, evident
in the many ways he devised to disseminate those enthusiasms which
truly possessed him, or in the small matter of creating a major music
publishing house for his most beloved composer from scratch, I will
remember Donald’s gentleness, his touching sensitivity to the music
that he loved, the fierceness with which he held his beliefs, and some
great personal kindnesses to me over the years.
I am very proud to have been supported by one of the last of the
great music publishers.’
Oliver Knussen
But finally Donald was also a very dear friend; I will never be able
to describe how much I owe him, nor how much I will miss his
presence.’
George Benjamin
PHOTOS: DONALD MITCHELL WITH BENJAMIN BRITTEN © NIGEL LUCKHURST, BRITTEN–PEARS FOUNDATION
3

Knussen in Basel
Tansy Davies
The Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel has announced the acquisition of
The Oliver Knussen Collection.
Founded in 1973 the foundation developed into a highly recognised
international research centre for the music of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, with some hundred estates and collections
from leading composers and performers including Igor Stravinsky,
Pierre Boulez, Béla Bartók, Edgar Varèse, Anton Webern, György
Ligeti, and Hans Werner Henze – to name just a few. Other British
composers with collections housed there include Sir Harrison
Birtwistle and Jonathan Harvey. Besides Knussen’s musical
manuscripts, the Collection – which has been made possible
thanks to the generous support of André Hoffmann – also includes
correspondence, programme booklets and reviews, as well as sound
recordings. It will be expanded on an ongoing basis.
The acquisition of the collection was marked on 14 February with
a concert by soprano Claire Booth and Ensemble Recherche which
included Knussen’s Reflection, Four Late Poems and an Epigram of
Rainer Maria Rilke, Cantata, and the Whitman Settings, alongside
George Benjamin’s Olicantus (in a previously unpublished version
for piano) as well as music by Carter, Henze and Stravinsky.
The concert also included Patrick Gallois giving the premiere of
the revised version of Knussen’s Study for ‘Metamorphosis’ for solo
bassoon, a 5-and-a-half-minute work originally written in April 1972
and revised especially for the Sacher concert, with a new dedication
‘to the memory of Alan Stout, American composer, teacher and
polymath, a dear friend for 50 years.’ The Metamorphosis of the title
is Kafka’s, on which Knussen had once planned to base a large piece.
Knussen has described this study as ‘a cartoon’ for the larger project.
Since the premiere of her award-winning opera Between
Worlds in 2014, Tansy Davies has been enjoying
increased international exposure, with Forest, her recent
concerto for four horns and orchestra, commissioned
by the Philharmonia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic,
and Warsaw Autumn Festival. Now, with a residency at
Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Cave, a chamber
opera opening this summer, Davies looks set to cement
her position as one of the most interesting and individual
composers of her generation.
Concertgebouw residency
The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam has announced Davies as its next
Composer in Residence for the 18/19 season. The role will truly see
Davies ‘in residence’; residing in Amsterdam for several months,
she will lead workshops with young composers and collaborate on
special performances of her music by students of the Conservatorium
of Amsterdam. To crown the residency, Davies will write a new work
for the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, to be premiered in May 2019.
Other events already announced include a performance of her Song
of Pure Nothingness, as well as the reed quintet Calefax premiering a
new transcription of The Beginning of the World (by their bass clarinet
player Jelte Althuis) in December 2018.
Shedding new light on ‘Undertow’
In early March, members of the London Sinfonietta premiered a
newly revised version of Davies’s Undertow for five players as part
of the London element of Contemporary Music for All’s weekend
festival. Composed in 1999 for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and
viola, Davies’s reworking retains the original structure whilst
recalibrating dynamics, voicings and tempi. New light is shedding
on the material through re-orchestration, and Davies describes
the resulting colours as made ‘more vivid’ and the textures ‘more
visceral and sensual’ than before, all of which accentuates the music’s
dramatic structure.
12 ensemble revive ‘Residuum’
Residuum, Davies’s 10-minute work for two solo violins, solo cello
and strings from 2005, has been selected as part of the PRS Resonate
Project. It will be revived by the London-based 12 ensemble during
their 18/19 season. Davies describes the work as ‘an imaginary replay
of the residual energy of Dowland’s ‘Galliard to Lachrymae’, heard
like an echo of ancient music in a modern time’.
4
IMAGES: OLIVER KNUSSEN © HANA ZUSHI-RHODES, ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC
EXCERPT FROM ‘STUDY FOR METAMORPHOSIS’ BY OLIVER KNUSSEN © FABER MUSIC

HIGHLIGHTS
Tansy Davies
Selected
forthcoming
performances
‘Antenoux’
In July last year the Crash Ensemble premiered Antenoux,
a new 5-minute work for an ensemble of ten players, at
an outdoor location in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Letrim.
Commissioned as part of CrashLands – a ground breaking
project to mark the 20th anniversary of the ensemble which
showcased new work from 20 composers and organised live
performances in unusual rural locations scattered across
Ireland – the work fluctuates between two kinds of energy:
sultry and brooding cycles of highly rhythmic material in
guitar, bass, and percussion, and more linear phrases.
The work was revived at Dublin’s National Concert Hall in
November, and a video of the outdoor premiere – which
quirkily splices shots of the ensemble with nature images –
was shown at the Dublin New Music Festival in March.
‘Cave’
Cave, a new music theatre work by Tansy Davies, to a text
by Nick Drake, will be premiered in the vast warehouse
space of The Printworks, London on 20 June. Staged by the
London Sinfonietta in association with the Royal Opera,
this new work for tenor Mark Padmore and mezzo-soprano
Elaine Mitchener follows a grieving man’s quest for survival
and renewal, in a dystopian future of deserted shopping
malls and melting glaciers. Desperate to connect one last
time with his daughter, he enters a dark cave, triggering a
journey into an underworld of spirits. Geoffrey Paterson
conducts the London Sinfonietta, and Lucy Bailey directs.
The project furthers the successful collaboration between
Davies and Drake following their opera Between Worlds
(2014) which won her a British Composer Award. ‘A
composer is often both architect and engineer,’ Davies
muses, ‘so it’s easy to get caught up in technical details.
Nick’s approach reminds me that it’s all about people,
connection and love, no matter how dark the subject
matter. In my role as opera composer, my strength lies in
my ability to envisage epic, dream-like sound-structures
combined with intimate human drama’.
At the heart of Cave are the talents of two remarkable – and
very different – singers, and Davies cites Padmore’s ‘purity
of tone and direct delivery’ together with Mitchener’s ‘huge
range of extended techniques and her flexibility’ as major
inspirations to her. ‘I’m also drawn to them as personalities,
both on and off-stage. As artists they’re both driven,
focussed and fearless, in difference ways’.
For Davies, the process of writing Between Worlds was a
transformative experience. ‘Composing that work felt like
reaching for the impossible, sometimes in many directions
at once, which led to break-throughs and break-downs,
both personal and artistic’. How has that experience
affected Cave? ‘It has allowed me to relax a little this
time, and take a few risks, trusting in the visions of my
collaborators’, says Davies. ‘A good example in the music is
Elaine’s part; much of which I’ve left quite open for her to
interpret and effectively create her own unique role’.
Harmonically, too, Between Worlds heralded something
of a gear change: a change perhaps felt most strongly in
Davies’s darkly lustrous string orchestra work Dune of
Footprints (2017) – which forms the basis of the electronic
component in the new chamber opera. The electronics
form a very spacious and slow moving sonic ‘cave’, which
Davies compares to ‘large bodies of liquid or air coalescing
and constantly shifting to create new auras of sound; some
soothing, some menacing, some neutral…’ The 15-minute
string orchestra work was inspired by a stretch of dry
riverbed that leads down in to the Niaux Cave in France’,
Davies explains. ‘I was entranced by the ripple patterns and
dunes on the cave floor, and by the human history – of how
many footsteps must have trodden this ancient route’.
And what of The Printworks, the extraordinary venue for
the piece? ‘The voids are mostly very tall and long and filled
with complex industrial detail, the combination of which I
find dramatic and compelling’.
Undertow
first performance of revised version
3.3.18, St Leonard’s Church,
Spitalfields, London, UK: London
Sinfonietta
neon
15.3.18, Ledger Recital Room,
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland,
Glasgow, UK: Red Note Ensemble/
RCS MusicLab/Simon Proust/
June-Sung Park
Destroying Beauty
19.6.18, St George the Martyr,
Borough, London, UK: Olivia Moss/
Clare Simmonds
Cave
World premiere
20-23.6.18 (6 performances),
The Printworks, London, UK: Mark
Padmore/Elaine Mitchener/London
Sinfonietta/Geoffrey Paterson/dir.
Lucy Bailey
The Beginning of
the World (arr. J.R.
Althuis)
World premiere of arrangement
1.12.18, Kleine Zaal, Het
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Calefax Rietkwintet
Song of Pure
Nothingness
2.12.18, Kleine Zaal, Het
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Karin Strobos/
Reinild Mees
new work
World premiere
17.5.19, Kleine Zaal, Het
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Asko|Schönberg
Ensemble
PHOTO: TANSY DAVIES © EDUARDUS LEE
5

‘The Exterminating Angel’ at the Met
Following its world premiere at the 2016 Salzburg Festival,
where The Observer described it as ‘a turning point for Adès
and, it felt, for opera itself’, and a critically acclaimed run of
performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,
Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel received its US
premiere at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in October.
Adès himself conducted a stellar cast of soloists in the original
production by Tom Cairns. Adès’s third opera is based on Luis
Buñuel’s surrealist classic El ángel exterminador, and sees a collection
of society’s grandees inexplicably trapped in a room. The libretto,
adapted from the original Buñuel-Alcoriza screenplay by the
composer together with the director Tom Cairns, brilliantly captures
their descent into anarchy.
Featuring a cast who all remain on stage for the majority of the piece,
this is a true ensemble opera, and the skill with which Adès delineates
the many intricacies and undercurrents present over its denselypacked
span is breathtaking. A large and masterfully deployed
orchestra is coloured by guitar, piano and ondes martenot – the latter
soaring above proceedings as an eerie manifestation of the nameless
force that ensnares the guests. Like the shipwrecked characters of
The Tempest, the cast of this compelling new opera are held in a state
of entrapment and dramatic stasis. Like the glittering high-society
world of Powder Her Face, the dinner party guests are denizens of
a nightmarish world of aristocratic pretension. ‘In a sense, this is a
child of those two operas,’ Adès observes, ‘but that comparison has
receded, and this opera is a very different animal. Probably a scarier
animal.’
The opera travels to The Royal Danish Opera on 23 March, where
Robert Houssart conducts a brand new cast in the original Tom
Cairns production.
‘A magical, transporting experience, almost like it was
coming out of my own mind. We came out two hours later
and it felt like no time at all had passed. In preparation we
watched the Buñuel movie it’s based on, and the opera was
a textbook example of how you do an adaptation beautifully.
Sometimes you go to the opera and you think you’re going
to a museum, seeing this thing that used to be current, but in
this case it felt so new. I think Adès is a genius.’
‘a masterpiece in every sense’
‘Adès’ second premiere at the Met showed once again
that he is undoubtedly one of the foremost composers of
our time… Even with so strong a cast, the real stars are
Adès and the brilliant score that he led from the pit… a
masterpiece in every sense.’
New York Classical Review (Eric C. Simpson), 27 October 2017
Stunningly inventive… In this audacious opera the music
digs deep. Adès’s wild, searing score explores the emotional
undercurrents of the story and fleshes out the horror of the
characters’ situation… Two tragic guests, in the face of
unreality, seek solace together. Beatriz and Eduardo are
engaged and utterly absorbed in themselves. But Adès
enshrouds them in the opera’s most rapturous music,
an extended duet with sighing vocal lines and quizzical
orchestral sonorities… Over all, this riveting, breathless,
score — full of quick-cutting shifts, pointillist bursts, and
episodes of ballistic intensity — may be his best work. If you
go to a single production this season, make it this one.’
The New York Times (Anthony Tommasini), 28 October 2017
‘…a major cultural event in New York’s music world.’
The Huffington Post (Wilborn Hampton), 27 October 2017
‘Adès’s score adds a new layer of meaning: it demonstrates
that music of exquisite craftsmanship can touch all that is
most primal in us. I can’t think of another living composer
who can conjure fear, contentment, bitterness, disgust, and
joy with a few quick measures.’
NY Magazine (Justin Davidson), 27 October 2017
‘This is an opera that builds to a satisfying climax; it has
cumulative power… his blend of Bergian underpinnings with
diverse historical and popular idioms ultimately coheres, his
orchestration is dazzling and the dystopian outbursts truly
chilling.’
The Financial Times (John Rockwell), 31 October 2017
The Observer (George Saunders), 4 February 2018
6
IMAGE: 2017 MET PRODUCTION OF ‘THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL’ © KEN HOWARD, THE METROPOLITAN OPERA

HIGHLIGHTS
Julian Anderson celebrated by BBC
In October 2017, the music of Julian Anderson was
celebrated by the BBC in one of their Total Immersion
festivals. Featuring over ten works across three concerts,
as well as talks and a film screening, the day – a highlight
of Anderson’s 50th birthday year – was the largest
retrospective of his music to date.
The BBC Singers under Nicholas Kok presented Anderson’s choral
music, including the Four American Choruses and the Bell Mass,
whilst students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
(where Anderson is a Professor of Composition and also Composer
in Residence) performed Poetry Nearing Silence, Ring Dance, Van
Gogh Blue, Alhambra Fantasy and The Colour of Pomegranates.
The day culminated in a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra
under Edward Gardner – the conductor who oversaw the premiere
of Thebans, Anderson’s critically acclaimed opera, back in 2014.
Fantasias, the 23-minute orchestral showpiece abounding in vivid
contrasts, was heard alongside Eden, Imagin’d Corners, the poem for
violin and orchestra In lieblicher Bläue, and his Symphony.
The day was accompanied by a one-day conference devoted to
Anderson’s music, ‘Heaven is Shy of Earth: Julian Anderson at 50’,
presented by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Guildhall
School of Music and Drama.
‘Everywhere there is light, glistening in radiant textures.
When Anderson writes a nocturne, even that comes alive with
constant flashes of moonlight… dazzling orchestration. This
light-filled stream of sounds meant an evening of ceaseless
hard work for the high wind instruments… Imagin’d Corners,
with virtuoso roles for five solo horns, rises to an exultant
tumult at the end. Symphony is a musical narrative in a
glinting, wintry climate.’
The Financial Times (Richard Fairman), 23 October 2017
‘There are so many gripping aspects of Anderson’s
orchestral writing: folky eastern European influences
(adding quarter tones to his already rich harmonic palette),
colossal energy, intriguing textures and flamboyant theatrical
gestures – sending four horns around the hall in Imagin’d
Corners, for instance.’
The Times (Richard Morrison), 24 October 2017
‘newly and richly imagined sounds’
‘When reminded by Eden just how seductive a manipulator
of orchestral textures Anderson is, and how superb his
ear, one only wanted more of the sumptuous same to
the concert’s end. His originality lies, I’m tempted to say,
more than anywhere in that precision of ear. There are
few contemporary composers whose harmonic sense, no
matter what outré tuning system he might be using, is so
patently assured, and whose music, if stopped in its course
at any moment, would reveal such impeccable vertical
credentials… I realised I couldn’t pin down the instrumental
combination [in Symphony] and was delighted to be left
unsure; intrigued by newly and richly imagined sounds
that weren’t obtruded by the composer but were the small
change of his inventiveness available any time. There was
plenty of it, too, in Imagin’d Corners and in the Fantasias, the
first of which, for brass alone, had a spluttering, exhilarating
crispness that was yet more proof of a faultless ear.’
The Sunday Times (Paul Driver), 29 October 2017
‘Symphony, a Winter-to-Spring piece, begins from nothing,
with the lightest touches of sounds. Expressive woodwind
melodies ensue, there are percussion riffs, one might hear
the cacophony of birdsong and there is glorious lyricism;
there are momentous passages that might relate to icecracking
– with at least one stupendous outburst – and if this
all sounds outside the Symphony as we know it, Anderson
says that the work is of “continuous transformation… neither
atonal nor tonal but freely evolving” – certainly towards the
end when the return of Spring is sensed, a rebirth, and not
without the pain of delivery.’
Classical Source (Colin Anderson), 22 October 2017
‘The highlight of the choral concert was Anderson’s Bell
Mass. From the assertive opening, to the gorgeous Amen in
the Gloria, a fantastic aleatoric climax to the Sanctus and
the shaded microtonal solos of the Benedictus, I was carried
along very enjoyably… the work of a very impressive choral
composer.’
The Artsdesk (Bernard Hughes), 23 October 2017
PHOTO: DETAIL FROM JULIAN ANDERSON’S ‘IMAGIN’D CORNERS’ © FABER MUSIC
7

Colin Matthews
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Hidden Agenda
World premiere of complete version
4.5.18, Winchester Chamber Music
Festival, Winchester Discovery
Centre, Winchester, UK: London
Bridge Trio
Meditation
17.5.18, St George’s Church, Hanover
Square, London, United Kingdom:
Tabea Debus
Grand Barcarolle
26.5.18, St John’s Smith Square,
London, UK: Morley Chamber
Orchestra/Charles Peebles
Turning Point
Japanese premiere
26.6.18, Tokyo Opera City, Tokyo,
Japan: NHK Symphony Orchestra/
Stefan Asbury
Pluto, the renewer
6.7.18, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester,
UK: Chethams Symphony Orchestra/
Jac van Steen
As Time Returns
London premiere
7.12.18, Purcell Room, Southbank
Centre, London, UK: London
Sinfonietta
Arrangements
Mahler – Lieder
eines fahrenden
Gesellen
South Korean premiere
6.3.18, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul,
South Korea: Ian Bostridge/Members
of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra
Debussy – Preludes
Le vent dans la
plaine, La puerta del
vino, Les collines
d’Anacapri
15-16.3.18, Kongresshaus, Innsbruck,
Austria: Tiroler Symphonieorchester
Innsbruck/Jac van Steen
La Cathédrale
engloutie
24.3.18, Symphony Hall,
Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra/Mirga
Gražinyte-Tyla
Général Lavine -
eccentric/Minstrels
25.3.18, Symphony Hall,
Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra/Mirga
Gražinyte-Tyla
Voiles
4-6.5.18, Parco della Musica, S.
Grande, Rome, Italy: Orchestra
dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa
Cecilia/Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla
Ravel – ‘Oiseaux
tristes’ from Miroirs
26,28.4.18, Symphony Hall,
Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon
Colin Matthews
‘Turning Point’ in Tokyo
In July Colin Matthews’s Turning Point receives its
Japanese premiere from the NHK Symphony Orchestra
and Stefan Asbury.
Commissioned in 2006 by the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, this 25-minute journey from complex
momentum to expressive simplicity displays all the
ingenious craft we have come to expect from Matthews,
together with a startling emotional directness. Out of a
whirring, motoric scherzo comes a jolting sea change: an
austere, glacial string chorale of searing intensity that, with
gritty resilience, gradually comes to overwhelm everything
else.
Two works for the London Sinfonietta
Works for solo alto flute are a rarity, and Matthews’s
Bell-wether, a commission from the London Sinfonietta
in memory of their ex-flautist Sebastian Bell, is rarer still
in that it mostly eschews the more languorous side of the
instruments character in favour of its hidden, mercurial
qualities. The three-minute work was premiered as part of
the Sinfonietta’s 50th anniversary celebrations in January.
The Sinfonietta will premiere a new song cycle for baritone
and chamber ensemble, a setting of poems by exiled Czech
poet Ivan Blatný, in December.
Debussy 100
As the Hallé Orchestra’s Composer in Association,
Matthews spent five years making orchestral versions of
all 24 of Debussy’s Preludes for piano – a remarkable
achievement. In this, the 100th anniversary of Debussy’s
death, the Preludes will receive performances across the
world. Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla has programmed a selection
in Rome and Birmingham, the BBC Philharmonic
performed a number with Ben Gernon in late February,
and in March Jac van Steen conducts three with the Tiroler
Symphonieorchester in Innsbruck.
Matthews has just completed an orchestration of the first
book of Debussy’s Images, which will be recorded for
the Pentatone label by the Orchestre Philharmonique de
Luxembourg in July.
Composer of the Week
As part of BBC Radio 3’s New Year, New Music season,
which this year sought to make connections between
contemporary pieces and music of the past, Matthews was
featured as Composer of the Week at the beginning of
January, visiting the studio to discuss his work in person.
From its links to Britten, to influences as wide-ranging as
Mahler and Minimalism, Matthews’s music is a fascinating
case study in how the music of today can enjoy a rich and
fruitful dialogue with the past. Each programme focussed
on a particular influence, and the week also included
orchestrations of music by Britten and Debussy.
‘Hidden Agenda’
Following the premiere of his second piano trio Hidden
Agenda by the London Bridge Trio last year, Matthews has
now extended it to create a three-movement work of 11
minutes duration. The Trio will give the premiere of the
completed work in May at the Winchester Chamber Music
Festival.
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 debt to his English forebears are clearly signposted
in this kaleidoscopic 19-minute work – the brassy
extravagance of the first dance sounds like Walton and
the tangy woodwind writing later like Britten – and the
whole is breathtakingly scored, filled with a profusion of
scintillating invention.
Premiered by Daniel Harding and the Philharmonia
Orchestra, but not performed since 2004, this colourful
work – showing Maw at his most generous and upbeat – is
ripe for a reappraisal.
8
PHOTO: COLIN MATTHEWS © MAURICE FOXALL; NICHOLAS MAW © MAURICE FOXALL

TUNING IN
Anders Hillborg
The orchestra as sound animal
In March Anders Hillborg’s Beast Sampler received its
French premiere with Leonard Slatkin conducting the
Orchestre National de Lyon.
The title of this dazzling 11-minute work refers to
Hillborg’s frequent characterization of the orchestra as a
‘sound animal’ – where individual instrumental identities
dissolve into one huge sound organism – and the influence
of electronic music processes on his work with acoustic
instruments. It is an ideal introduction to Hillborg’s
language, taking in everything from Xenakis, Ligeti, hints
of jazz and orchestrated ‘rewind’ effects, in a myriad of
remarkably well-heard textures, built up of glistening
sheets of sound. ‘I wanted to focus just as much on sound
and noise as on pitch and harmony,’ writes Hillborg
before explaining that the work also draws on a number of
‘(sound-)beast samples’ from earlier pieces.
A singing, whistling, take on Bach
Following performances of Bach Materia in Sweden, the
Netherlands and Germany, and a nine-performance US
tour with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pekka Kuusisto
continues to travel the world with this inventive piece for
violin and strings. Commissioned by the Swedish Chamber
Orchestra as a companion to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto
No. 3, and tailor-made for Kuusisto’s extraordinary range
of abilities, including improvisation, the 14-minute piece
receives its Norwegian premiere in April.
‘A voice entirely his own… a fascinating patchwork
of baroque and contemporary soundworlds…
Every performance will be different but there
are touchstones that will remain constant, like
the surprise opening, in which the strings seem
to be tuning before pulling order unexpectedly
from chaos… There’s a lot of jazz, reminiscent of
West Side Story at its most tense and urgent…
There’s twittering birdsong, Kuusisto singing and
whistling, violas played with drumsticks, and a slow
movement full of sadness. A very exciting work.’
Pioneer Press (Rob Hubbard), 10 November 2017
A prize for Violin Concerto No. 2
In 2017, Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No. 2 saw
performances in Helsinki, London, Minneapolis and
Seoul. Described as music of ‘directly speaking, timeless
beauty’ at its 2016 premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus,
the concerto was composed for Lisa Batiashvili and has also
been championed by James Ehnes and Viviane Hagner.
The powerful 24-minute work, which alternates between
melancholy, almost glacial, calm and driving passages
of extraordinary muscle and bite, won Hillborg a
Musikförläggarnas Pris at the 2017 Swedish Music
Publishers Awards. A broadcast of the Finnish premiere of
the concerto in November, featuring Batiashvili and the
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu,
can be viewed online at arte.tv.
‘A work of rare mystery and beauty. Moments of
intense lyricism, suggesting eternity, alternate
with vigorous, lusty, up-tempo, rock-influenced
passages — mind vs. body.’
StarTribune (Michael Anthony), 15 September 2017
‘the most absorbing of journeys’
‘Captivating… both calming and disquieting,
rippling with conflict, contrasting moods layered
one atop another… it was among the most exciting
new violin concertos I’ve encountered in recent
years… the most absorbing of journeys, one both
troubling and transcendent, often within a single
phrase… I found Hillborg’s unpredictable flow
fascinating.’
Twin Cities (Rob Hubbard), 14 September 2017
‘Was it going to be generic contemporary? The
skeetering strings at the beginning suggested as
much. But their headlong collision with a chorus of
sustained chords proved arresting: what sounded
like a pre-recorded ambience turned out to be
those same strings turned to calm seas. In effect
much of the concerto was searing cadenza from
the compellingly intense Batiashvili, punctuated by
two wild eastern dances – part Turkish sanat, part
Bollywood, with Hillborg making and needing no
apologies for the populism. The intensity held; the
ear was led through ever-unexpected harmonic
shifts. Filmic in effect, but never merely film music.’
The Artsdesk (David Nice), 30 November 2017
Two new works for the LPO
Hillborg’s orchestral homage to Stravinsky, Mantra – Elegy,
will be premiered by Vladimir Jurowski and the London
Philharmonic Orchestra in April, with a US premiere at
the Aspen Festival in July. A second work for the LPO, a
Concerto for Orchestra, will be premiered in January 2019
with Marin Alsop conducting.
Anders Hillborg
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Peacock Tales
5.4.18, Great Guild Hall, Riga.
Latvia: Latvian National Symphony
Orchestra/Karlis Kundrats (original
version)
26.4.18, NDR Grosser Sendesaal,
Hannover; 27.4.18, Theater Wolfsburg,
Wolfsburg, Germany: Martin Fröst/
NDR Radiophilharmonie/Andrew
Manze (Millennium version)
Bach Materia
Norwegian premiere
8.4.18, Aula, Universitetet i Oslo,
Oslo, Norway: Pekka Kuusisto/Det
Norske Kammerorkester
Six Pieces for Wind
Quintet
14.4.18, Syracuse, NY; 20.5.18,
Bunker Hill Presbyterian Church,
Sewell, NJ, USA: Imani Winds
Brass Quintet
18.4.18, Independent Theatre,
Sydney, NSW; 4.9.18, Elisabeth
Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital
Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia:
Australian Brass Quintet
Mantra – Elegy
World premiere
21.4.18, Royal Festival Hall,
Southbank Centre, London, UK:
London Philharmonic Orchestra/
Vladimir Jurowski
US premiere
22.7.18, Benedict Music Tent, Aspen,
CO, USA: Aspen Festival Orchestra/
Christian Arming
Concerto for
Orchestra
World premiere
16.1.19, Royal Festival Hall,
Southbank Centre, London, UK:
London Philharmonic Orchestra/
Marin Alsop
PHOTO: ANDERS HILLBORG © J-O WEDIN
9

George Benajmin
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Ringed by the Flat
Horizon
25.3.18, Symphony Hall,
Birmingham, UK: City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra/Mirga
Gražinyte-Tyla
Dance Figures
30.3.18, Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul,
South Korea: Seoul Philharmonic
Orchestra/Peter Eötvös
3.8.18, Symphony Hall, Birmingham,
UK: National Youth Orchestra of
Great Britain/George Benjamin
Viola, Viola
8.4.18, Mary Norton Hall, Old South
Church, Boston, MA, USA: Scott
Woolweaver/Mark Holloway
29.5.18, Purcell Room, Southbank
Centre, London, UK: German
Tcakulov/Timothy Ridout
Sometime Voices
20.4.18, Northwestern University,
Evanston, IL, USA: Northwestern
University Orchestra/Donald Nally
At First Light
22.4.18, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory
of Music School, Singapore: Opus
Novus/Zhangyi Chen
Lessons in Love and
Violence
World premiere
10-26.5.18, Royal Opera House,
London, UK: Degout/Hannigan/
Orendt/Hoare/Björn Róbertsson/
France/Szabó/Boden/The Orchestra
of the Royal Opera House/George
Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell
Dutch premiere
25.6-5.7.18, Het Muziektheater,
Amsterdam, Netherlands: (cast
as WP)/Dutch National Opera/
Radio Filharmonisch Orkest/George
Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell
Into the Little Hill
23.5.18, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht,
Netherlands: Ensemble Insomnio/
Ulrich Pohl
Three Inventions for
Chamber Orchestra
9.6.18, Musica Viva,
Prinzregententheater, Munich,
Bavaria, Germany: Chamber
Orchestra of Europe/David Robertson
Dance Figures/
Bach – Canon &
Fugue (from The Art
of Fugue)*/Sometime
Voices*
*Dutch premieres
23.6.18, Holland Festival, Het
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Audun Iversen/Groot
Omroepkoor/Netherlands Radio
Philharmonic Orchestra/Martyn
Brabbins
George Benjamin
‘Lessons in Love and Violence’
Following the ground-breaking success of Written on Skin,
expectation continues to grow ahead of the premiere of
Benjamin and Crimp’s third opera Lessons in Love and
Violence at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on
10 May 2018.
The work will be directed by Katie Mitchell, with designs
by Vicki Mortimer, and a cast comprising baritone
Stéphane Degout, soprano Barbara Hannigan, baritone
Gyula Orendt, tenor Peter Hoare, tenor Samuel Boden,
soprano Jennifer France, mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó,
and bass-baritone Andri Björn Róbertsson.
Lessons in Love and Violence is co-commissioned and
co-produced with Dutch National Opera (June 2018),
Hamburg State Opera (April 2019), Opéra de Lyon (May
2019), Lyric Opera of Chicago (Autumn 2020), Gran
Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (March 2021) and Teatro Real,
Madrid (April/May 2021).
Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla conducts
‘Ringed By the Flat Horizon’
Who are these hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the Flat Horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and burst in the violent air.
In March Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla will conduct Ringed by the
Flat Horizon as part of the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra’s Debussy Festival.
Inspired by a dramatic photograph of a storm breaking
over the New Mexico desert and lines from T. S. Eliot’s The
Wasteland, this 20-minute work is dedicated to Benjamin’s
teacher Olivier Messiaen, and catapulted its composer to
fame after its London premiere at the 1980 BBC Proms.
After over 160 performances around the world – including
a memorable version by choreographer Anne Teresa De
Keersmaeker – it still seems like a wondrous achievement,
with a formal confidence, subtle understanding of
timbre, and lucid harmonic sense that have since become
synonymous with Benjamin’s work as a whole.
Holland Festival Focus
The 2018 Holland Festival has announced Benjamin
as their Composer in Focus, with a number of events
including the national premiere of Lessons in Love and
Violence, conducted by Benjamin, at Dutch National
Opera. Other events include the Dutch premiere of
Sometime Voices at the Holland Festival Proms, with
Martyn Brabbins conducting the Netherlands Radio
Philharmonic Orchestra, a performance of Written on Skin
by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and a rare opportunity
to hear Benjamin improvise a live soundtrack on piano (to
Fritz Lang’s silent film Der müde Tod).
‘Dream of the Song’ in Berlin
In February Benjamin replaced an indisposed Zubin
Mehta to conduct the first Berlin performances of Dream
of the Song, his beguiling 20-minute work for countertenor,
women’s voices and orchestra from 2015. Soloist Bejun
Mehta was joined by the women of the Chor der
Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Staatskappelle Berlin.
Employing a reduced orchestra (two oboes, four horns,
two percussionists, two harps and strings), the work sets
three major poets who spent formative years in Granada;
two Hebrew poets of mid-11th century, Samuel HaNagid
and Solomon Ibn Gabirol (sung by countertenor in
English versions by Peter Cole), and Federico García Lorca
(sung by the female chorus in the original Spanish).
The volatile and frenetic first movement ‘The Pen’ displays
the remarkable, transparent density which has become
one of Benjamin’s hallmarks; blaring horns cut through an
intricate web of string textures, whilst the countertenor’s
florid melismas recall Upon Silence (a quite different
mode from Benjamin’s operatic style). The soundworld
of Written on Skin is more apparent elsewhere, whilst the
baleful gongs and lacerating string harmonies of the fourth
movement for women’s voices and orchestra only, which
sets an incendiary passage of Lorca, owe something to the
last of the Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra.
From the instrumental musics superimposed in Palimpsests
to Written on Skin where ‘the white lines of the Saturday
car park cover the heaped up dead’, the layering of past and
present has been a recurring preoccupation for Benjamin.
The inspired pairing of texts in Dream of the Song creates a
rich, melancholy and strange poetic conjunction, expressed
most beautifully in the final movement which, overlaying
soloist and choir, offers two simultaneous visions of dawn,
conceived a millennium apart.
‘The latest in a series of effective, large-scale vocal
works by Benjamin. The poems are held together
by a colourful and expressive musical language.
The composer animated the Staaskapelle to
create clear structures that were surprisingly
transparent…’
Der Tagespiegel (Isabel Herzfeld), 21 February 2018
10
PHOTOS: GEORGE BENJAMIN © MATTHEW LLOYD; LAUREN SNOUFFER AS AGNÈS IN ‘WRITTEN ON SKIN’ © KELLY & MASSA FOR OPERA PHILADELPHIA

TUNING IN
‘Written on Skin’ in Philadelphia
Opera Philadelphia presented four performances of Written
on Skin in February in a new production by William
Kerley. Lauren Snouffer, Mark Stone, and Anthony
Roth Costanzo headed the cast, who were conducted by
Corrado Rovaris. This was the sixth original production of
the work since its premiere in 2012, and the first to have
originated in the USA.
‘Perhaps the most significant opera of this century
so far… Each scene has its own distinctive
orchestral character, like the haunting glass
harmonica of the seduction scene and the all-out
frenzy of the murder… kaleidoscopic color and
precision.’
Wall Street Journal (Heidi Waleson), 12 February 2018
‘One of the most extraordinary operas of the 21st
century… The piece is a terrific feat of harmony and
orchestration.’
Hyperallergic (John Sherer), 15 February 2018
‘Mesmerizing and fascinating… This may be his
first full-length opera, but there is nothing tentative
in his work. Benjamin and Crimp have collaborated
seamlessly.’
Broadway World (Richard Sasanow), 13 February 2018
‘a contemporary masterpiece’
‘Kerley’s vision quickly produces an overwhelming
effect that seamlessly couples with Benjamin’s
intriguing and surprising score… a contemporary
masterpiece.’
Broad Street Review (Cameron Kelsall), 11 February 2018
‘Vocally, musically, visually and conceptually, Written
on Skin is thrilling.’
phindie (Toby Zinman), 11 February 2018
Matthew Hindson
A new sonata for Ray Chen
Matthew Hindson is to pen a new violin sonata for
Taiwanese-Australian virtuoso, Ray Chen. Commissioned
by Musica Viva Australia, the sonata premieres as part of
a 9-date national tour in August, with Chen joined by
French pianist Julien Quentin.
‘Celebration’ at the Sydney Festival
As part of an all-Australian programme, the Goldner String
Quartet gave two performances of Hindson’s most recent
quartet, Celebration (String Quartet No. 5) in January as
part of the Sydney Festival. The work featured alongside
pieces by other Faber composers, Peter Sculthorpe and
Carl Vine.
The Australian Ballet revive ‘Ellipse’
Hindson’s music will once again be centre-stage in the
repertory of The Australian Ballet, when the country’s
leading dance group revive extracts from his 2002
full-evening ballet Ellipse, as part of a tribute evening
to the work’s choreographer, Graeme Murphy. The
production ‘Murphy’ celebrates Murphy’s 50-year ballet
career (including 31 as Artistic Director of the Sydney
Dance Company). There will be 12 performances at the
Melbourne Arts Centre, before the company travels to
Sydney to give a further 19 shows in the Sydney Opera
House.
Hindson’s Ellipse draws on several earlier concert works
(including Homage to Metallica, In Memoriam, Speed
and the Violin Concerto No. 1. It was given over 80
times throughout Australia and the USA between 2002
and 2004 by Sydney Dance Company under Murphy’s
direction.
‘Hindson’s score makes a wonderful racket. The
score for one dance sounds like a band playing
‘Hold That Tiger’ in competition with a wailing siren.
The music is shamelessly big and juicily orchestral;
then, just as you begin to wonder where the
accompanying movie is, Hindson turns broodingly
and sometimes achingly intimate, introducing
rattling, whistling, thunking sounds that might come
from indigenous Australian instruments.’
The New York Times (Jennifer Dunning), 20 February 2004
‘He could probably wring a
concerto from the sound
of a doorbell’
‘Hindson has amazing range. He could probably
wring a concerto from the sound of a doorbell. His
source material ranges from classical to Metallica
to soothing melodic riffs that may have been
extracted from an elevator. Best of all, it all works.’
San Francisco Chronicle (Janice Berman), 15 March 2004
George Benjamin
Selected
forthcoming
performances
(cont.)
Shadowlines
27.6.18, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence,
Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède, Aix-en-
Provence, France: Alphonse Cémin
24.7.18, Santa Fe Chamber Music
Festival, St. Francis Auditorium, New
Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe,
NM, USA: Gilles Vonsattell
Duet
2-4.8.18, Sala São Paulo, São Paulo,
Brazil: Pierre-Laurent Aimard/
Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de
Sao Paulo/David Robertson
Written on Skin
28.6.18, Holland Festival,
Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ, Amsterdam:
Jarman/Iversen/Mead/Szabó/
Murray/Mahler Chamber Orchestra/
Lawrence Renes/dir. Benjamin Davis
(semi-staged)
Matthew Hindson
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Ellipse (extracts)
20-26.3.18, Arts Centre, Melbourne,
VIC; 6-23.4.18, Sydney Opera House,
NSW, Australia: The Australian
Ballet/ch. Graeme Murphy
Piano Trio
German premiere
13.5.18, Theater Freiburg, Freiburg,
Germany: Catherine Bottomley/Barry
Luo/Daniel Carter
New work for violin
and piano
World premiere
9.8.18, Newcastle Conservatorium,
NSW, Australia: Ray Chen and Julien
Quentin (part of a 9-concert Musica
Viva Australia national tour)
Septet
11.8.18, Sir John Clancy Auditorium,
University of New South Wales,
Sydney, NSW, Australia: The
Australia Ensemble
New work
World premiere
16.9.18, City Recital Hall, Angel
Place, Sydney, NSW; 17.9.18,
Melbourne Recital Centre, VA: ACO
Collective
11

Martin Suckling
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Candlebird
6.4.18, The Gulbenkian, University of
Kent, Canterbury; 7.4.18, Kings Place,
London, UK: Mark Stone/Aurora
Orchestra/Nicholas Collon
‘Meditation (after
Donne)’
World premiere
7.11.18, Younger Hall, University of
St Andrews, St Andrews; 8.11.18,
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh; 9.11.18,
City Halls, Glasgow, Scotland, UK:
Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Nicolas
Altstaet
Malcolm Arnold
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Concerto for Two
Pianos (3 hands)
25.3.18, Brighton Dome, Brighton,
UK: Worbey and Farrell/Brighton
Philharmonic Orcherstra/Barry
Wordsworth
13-14.4.18, Filharmonia Narodowa
Warschau, Warsaw, Poland: Lucas
and Arthur Jussen/Diego Matheuz
Concerto for Clarinet
No. 2
9.4.18, Capitol Betriebs, Mannheim,
Germany: Julius Kircher/Deutsche
Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/
Frank Dupree
Peterloo
14.4.18, King’s Church, Amersham,
UK: Buckinghamshire County Youth
Orchestra/Tom Horn
Trumpet Concerto
29.4.18, Aylesbury Vale Academy,
Aylesbury, UK: Matilda Lloyd/
Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra/
Ben Palmer
Concerto for Viola
19.5.18, St Mary’s Church, Hitchin,
UK: Helen Sanders-Hewett/Hitchin
Symphony Orchestra/Paul Adrian
Rooke
The Three
Musketeers
4.10-3.11.18, Theatre Royal,
Nottingham, UK: Northern Ballet/
chor. David Nixon (UK tour: 23
performances)
Martin Suckling
‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’
Ideas of memory, cutting-edge technology, Schubert,
and the poems of Emily Dickinson and Frances Leviston
have all fed into Martin Suckling’s String Quintet
‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’ which received its premiere by
members of Aurora Orchestra in January. A substantial
25-minute work in four movements, it formed part of an
event organised by Poet in the City which explored the
piezoresistive effect, where a material under sufficiently
high pressure changes state from a resistor to a conductor
of electricity.
The quintet opens with a highly energetic dance, whilst the
second movement, based around Leviston’s poem ‘White
Box’, presents microtonal harmonies, all in harmonics,
held in a floating stasis. In the third movement, the
instrumentalist lines ‘speak’ the Dickinson poem, ‘After
great pain…’, their rhythm and contour taken from an
audio analysis of Suckling’s own voice reading the poem.
In the final movement, a viola melody is surrounded by a
filigree tapestry of echoes, fragments and distorting mirrors
across a series of compressions until all that remains of
the available space is a single trill. At this point of extreme
pressure, the properties of the material suddenly change:
bright, gleaming, sudden bursts of sound in a highly
microtonal environment. All of this is haunted by the
ghost of Schubert, above all the incomparable Adagio
from his String Quintet in C major, which increasingly
asserts itself on the musical surface until the quintet’s final
passages become as if hypnotised by Schubert’s harmonies,
crystallising around them, writes Suckling, ‘like frost on a
fallen leaf’.
The quintet’s last, longest, movement was premiered in
October as part of a live Radio 3 broadcast from London’s
Wellcome Collection, with the full work (which makes a
fantastic companion to the Schubert Quintet) unveiled at
Kings Place in January.
Scottish Music Award shortlist
Suckling’s flute concerto, The White Road, has been
shortlisted for a 2018 Scottish Award for New Music.
Described as a ‘sonic feast’ by The Scotsman after its
premiere by Katherine Bryan and the Royal Scottish
National Orchestra in February, the 14-minute concerto
is a work of great subtlety and delicacy. Melody is the
guiding force, and the soloist leads us through a number
of beguiling landscapes, often inventively coloured with
metallic percussion. An extended song, marked ‘almost a
lullaby’, leads to a short virtuoso conclusion, gruff brass
chords launching the flute into the stratosphere.
A tapestry of tolling bells
As part of the Armistice Centenary commemorations,
Suckling is working with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
to create, Meditation (after Donne), which will take as its
inspiration the massed ringing of bells as Armistice was
declared. Suckling envisions ‘a simple song for orchestra,
with performers and audience surrounded by a constantly
evolving tapestry of tolling bells created by live electronics’.
The piece receives three performances in November.
The SCO are extending an open invitation to people to
send in recordings of their local bells to be included in the
electronics part of the work. More details can be found at
armisticebells.com
‘Candlebird’
Candlebird, Suckling’s exquisite song cycle for baritone
and ensemble from 2011, is being championed by
the PRS Foundation’s Resonate Scheme. In April the
Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon will perform the
25-minute work in Canterbury and London with soloist
Mark Stone. Collon is no stranger to the work, having
conducted its premiere with the London Sinfonietta as well
as a series of well-received performances with the Scottish
Chamber Orchestra back in 2015.
Malcolm Arnold
Shibe champions Guitar Fantasy
A new recording of Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for guitar
by one of the instrument’s rising stars has brought renewed
attention to this rich and complex work. Sean Shibe’s
recording of the Fantasy was named Editor’s Choice in
Gramophone, and was recently shortlisted for a BBC
Music Magazine Award.
With his extensive series of Fantasies for solo instruments
Arnold made an invaluable contribution to the repertoire
of many a recitalist, crafting short approachable pieces that
continue to be programmed internationally. Composed for
Julian Bream in 1971, this enthralling 10-minute work is
‘exceptional’ says Shibe because ‘it has such contrast – from
his most tender writing ever in the ariettas to some of the
most pointed, jagged, cynical stuff going on in other parts’.
12
PHOTO: MARTIN SUCKLING © TESSA OKSANEN

TUNING IN
David Matthews
‘New Fire’
In April the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra under Dennis
Russell Davies will premiere a 6-minute work by David
Matthews in the opening concert of their Easter Festival
of Sacred Music. The title of the piece, New Fire, refers
to the new fire kindled at the start of the Easter Saturday
service. From this new fire the Paschal candle is lit and,
from this candle, other candles held by each member of
the congregation, until the whole church is filled with
renewed light.
New Fire, then, begins in darkness. The first part is mostly
for muted strings, which take up a rising scale figure
initially presented on oboe and cor anglais. The second
half of the piece starts with a sustained pedal, over which
is projected, first on solo cello and then on all the violins,
the plainsong melody for Psalm 116, ‘Laudate Dominum
omnes gentes’. At the same time, points of light appear,
on glockenspiel, crotales, piano, harp and then high
woodwind; they gradually proliferate, until the trumpets
(ideally sited above the rest of the orchestra) enter with the
three rising notes of the plainsong. The work culminates in
what Matthews describes as ‘a triumphant celebration of
light’ by the full orchestra.
A Ninth Symphony
The long-awaited premiere of Matthews’s Ninth Symphony
was chosen by The Spectator as a musical highlight of
2018. Kenneth Woods will conduct the English Symphony
Orchestra on 9 May at St George’s Hall, Bristol.
The Ninth Symphony began in a modest way on 21
December 2015 when Matthews wrote a small carol for
his wife Jenifer, with words about the coming of spring.
The 27-minute piece unfolds in five movements, and takes
the carol as a starting point. Two scherzos frame the slow
movement, a slightly extended version of the string piece
‘A June Song’ that Matthews wrote in 2016 for Martin
Anderson’s project ‘Music for My Love’, in memory of his
partner Yodit Tekle.
The finale opens with solo violin recalling the ending of
the first movement, then plunges into a long passage of
uncertainty, with much use of tremolo strings. A more
confident central section in compound time leads to a
recapitulation and an aggressive climax, which subsides
into an extended repeat of the carol in C major. It ends
with an exultant proclamation of the carol as a brass
chorale. Spring has arrived.
‘Matthews’s modernism is rooted in a lyrical
impulse that he shares with Tippett, and there are
signs that he’s finally starting to get his due.’
The Spectator (Richard Bratby), 6 January 2018
In other news, Matthews’s Eighth Symphony will be
performed by the Ulster Orchestra and Jac van Steen in
April as part of the PRS Foundation’s Resonate Scheme.
Muriel Spark in music
Muriel Spark is best known for her darkly witty novels
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Ballad of Peckham
Rye, but she began as a poet and it remained a constant
throughout her creative life. The inscription she chose
for her gravestone was the single word ‘poeta’. To mark
the centenary of Spark’s birth in 1918, a new work for
voice, piano and string quartet has been commissioned
by her close companion Penelope Jardine. Entitled White
Flame, the work will be premiered by mezzo-soprano Sarah
Connolly and the Nash Ensemble on 13 October.
75th Birthday Celebrations
Matthews’s 75th Birthday will be marked with several
performances at the 2018 Presteigne Festival in August.
Full details will be announced in April.
Peter Sculthorpe
Sculthorpe on stage
Imbued with the sounds and rhythms of Balinese music
– particularly the rice-pounding dance, ketungan, and the
popular arja – Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 8 makes
an ideal work for choreographers. Sculthorpe at his very
finest, this 16-minute work is framed by movements for
cello alone, written in a spatio-temporal notation in order
to create the feeling of improvisation. In March a version
of the second movement by Israeli choreographer Itzik
Galili will open at Theaterhaus Stuttgart.
‘One of his finest works… music of great beauty
and economy.’
The Australian (Kenneth Hince), 27 December 1971
For more information about David Matthews’s
upcoming projects, and to obtain recordings of
recent works, please contact:
promotion@fabermusic.com
David Matthews
Selected
forthcoming
performances
New Fire
world premiere
8.4.18, Königskloster, Brno, Czech
Republic: Brno State Philharmonic
Orchestra/Dennis Russell Davies
Symphony No. 8
13.4.18, Ulster Hall, Belfast, Northern
Ireland, UK: Ulster Orchestra/Jac
van Steen
String Quartet No. 8
15.4.18, Pushkin House, London, UK:
Villiers Quartet
Adagio for String
Orchestra
20.4.18, St Clement Danes Church,
London, UK: London School of
Economics Orchestra/Matthew Taylor
Symphony No. 9
world premiere
9.5.18, St George’s, Bristol, UK:
English Symphony Orchestra/
Kenneth Woods
Piano Trio No.2
1.7.18, St Mary the Virgin Church,
Cratfield, Suffolk, UK: Leonore
Piano Trio
Sonatina for viola
and piano
world premiere
5.10.18, William Alwyn Festival, Holy
Trinity Church, Blythburgh, Suffolk;
8.10.18, Little Missenden Festival,
St John the Baptist Church, Little
Missenden, UK: Sarah Jane Bradley/
Nathan Williamson
White Flame
world premiere
13.10.18, Purcell Room, Southbank
Centre, London, UK: Sarah Connolly/
Nash Ensemble
Peter Sculthorpe
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Djilile/Cello
Dreaming
6.3.18, Capitol Theatre, Tamworth,
NSW, Australia: Critical Stages (11
performances in touring theatre
production ‘Thomas Murray and the
Upside Down River’
String Quartet No. 8
21.3-13.5.18, Theaterhaus, Stuttgart,
Baden-Württemberg, Germany: chor.
Itzik Galili (2nd movement only)
Harbour Dreaming
25.4.18, Firth Hall, University of
Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Alex Raineri
From Irkanda III
13.5.18, Theater Freiberg, Freiberg,
Germany: Catherine Bottomley/Barry
Luo/Daniel Carter
Djilile/First Sonata
for Strings
23.10.18, Barbican Hall, Barbican
Centre, London, UK: Australian
Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti
PHOTO: DAVID MATTHEWS © CLIVE BARDA
13

Thomas Adès
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Powder Her Face
18.3,7.4.18, Landestheater Detmold,
Detmold, Germany: Landestheater
Detmold/Lutz Rademacher/dir.
Christian Poewe
31.3-25.5.18, Theater Magdeburg,
Magdeburg, Germany: Theater
Magdeburg/Magdeburgische
Philharmonie/Jovan Mitic/dir.
Magdalena Fuchsberger
28,30.6.18, Nevill Holt Opera, Nevill
Holt, UK: Nevill Holt Opera/Britten
Sinfonia/Ian Ryan/dir. Antony
McDonald/dir. Danielle Urbas
Totentanz
Czech premiere
21-23.3.18, Dvorák Hall, Rudolfinum,
Prague, Czech Republic: Christianne
Stotijn/Simon Keenlyside/Czech
Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas
Adès
22.4.18, Grosser Saal, Philharmonie,
Berlin, Germany: Christianne
Stotijn/Simon Keenlyside/
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/
Thomas Adès
Swedish premiere
27-28.4.18, Berwaldhallen,
Stockholm, Sweden: Jennifer
Johnston/Mark Stone/Swedish Radio
Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding
The Exterminating
Angel
Danish premiere
23.3-6.5.18, Operaen på Holmen,
Copenhagen, Denmark: Royal
Danish Opera/Robert Houssart/dir.
Tom Cairns
Dances from Powder
Her Face
5.4.18, Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago
de Compostela; 6.4.18, Auditorio, La
Coruña, Spain: Orquestra Sinfónica
de Galicia/Dima Slobodeniouk
Powder Her Face
Suite
UK premiere
11.4.18, Royal Festival Hall,
Southbank Centre, London, UK:
London Philharmonic Orchestra/
Thomas Adès
Danish premiere
17,19.5.18, DR Konserthuset,
Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish
National Symphony Orchestra/
Juanjo Mena
28.5.18, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg,
Germany: Philadelphia Orchestra/
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
21,22.7.18, Koussevitzky Music Shed,
Lenox, MA, USA: Boston Symphony
Orchestra/Thomas Adès
...but all shall be well
12-13.4.18, Beethoven-Saal, Kulturund
Kongresszentrum Liederhalle,
Stuttgart; 14.4.18, Rheingoldhalle,
Mainz Congress, Mainz; 15.4.18,
Konzerthaus, Freiburg im Breisgau,
Germany: SWR Symphony
Orchestra/Thomas Søndergård
Thomas Adès
Adès pens first film score
Thomas Adès recently composed his first film score, for
Wash Westmoreland’s Colette, starring Keira Knightley
as the once-controversial French novelist and Dominic
West as her husband. The film, in many ways timely in its
thematic concern with the inequality of power between
the sexes, was screened at the Sundance Festival in January,
prompting rave reviews, with Variety proclaiming ‘One
of the film’s strongest assets is its score’ (it also garnered
much other press attention including a mention in The
Times newspaper). Colette will be released in the US this
Autumn, and in the UK in January 2019. Plans are afoot
for concert versions of the score.
‘Totentanz’
2018 will see Daniel Harding conduct the Swedish
premiere of Totentanz with the Swedish Radio Symphony
Orchestra, whilst Adès himself will conduct the work
with both the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
Bringing together baritone and mezzo-soprano soloists
with a large orchestra, Totentanz is based on a thirty-metrelong
hanging of painted cloth made in 1463 for the church
of St Mary in Lübeck. Following the lead of the frieze
(and setting its original German text), the piece unfolds
as a dialogue between a charismatic and gleefully macabre
Grim Reaper (baritone) and the procession of his many
victims (mezzo) who we meet in strictly descending order
of importance, from Pope and Cardinal to Maiden and
Child. Adès paints each character vividly; clangorous anvils
and military side-drum herald the Knight whilst rustic,
off-kilter horn writing signal the Peasant. ‘The dance of
death is not an optional dance’, observes Adès, ‘it’s the one
we all have to join in. It’s supposed to be at the same time
terrifying, levelling and also funny – it’s absurd… the thing
that makes it comic is the total powerlessness of everybody,
no matter who they are’.
New works for Boston and LA
The LA Philharmonic has announced an ambitious
Adès dance project with The Royal Ballet and Wayne
MacGregor as part of its 18/19 season. Conducted by
Adès in July 2019, the evenings will include Outlier
(MacGregor’s existing choreography to the Violin
Concerto), In Seven Days, and a new score that the
orchestra will have premiered with Gustavo Dudamel in
May of that year. Adès is currently at work on a Piano
Concerto for Kirill Gerstein and the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, which will be premiered in March 2019.
The complete music for string quartet
Few contemporary chamber works can boast 7 commercial
recordings, but with the Doelen Quartet’s new release
featuring Adès’s complete music for string quartet,
Arcadiana becomes one of them. The release on Cybele
Records, which also features The Four Quarters and
the Piano Quintet (with Dimitri Vassilakis), has been
universally praised and was awarded a Diapaison d’Or.
‘Adès’s is a highly personal music which, by virtue
of its charm, skill and rigorous procedures, is
capable of drawing us into its world of affections.
It is this, above all, which endows his music with
every bit the same kind of ‘‘just rightness’’ that
one experiences in Chopin and Webern. And yet,
unlike these composers, who always feel so fully at
home in their material, with Adès one has more the
sense of a figure who is constantly travelling. He is
perhaps most like Fauré, in that sense, endlessly
mining the musical subjunctive for a glimpse of
something truly unspoiled.’
Guy Dammann (liner notes for the Doelen release)
‘Powder Her Face Suite’
Commissioned by Sir Simon Rattle as one of a string of
new works to mark the end of his 16-year tenure with
the Berlin Philharmonic, Adès’s Powder Her Face Suite
incorporates four newly-orchestrated sections of the opera,
interpolated between new orchestrations of the three
existing Dances from Powder Her Face, to make an extended
30-minute work. Adès himself conducts the UK premiere
with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in April.
Revisiting ‘...but all shall be well’
In April Thomas Søndergård and the SWR Symphony
will give four performances of ...but all shall be well. Lines
taken from the last of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets provided
the title for this, Adès’s first large-scale orchestral score.
Composed in 1993, this ten-minute work is built around
a single melody which, after emerging from a delicate,
airy tintinnabulation is transformed through numerous
ingenious combinations and permutations. The composer
calls this intricately crafted work a ‘consolation’ for
orchestra and the work ends with an allusion to Liszt. The
work also exists in a version for chamber orchestra.
14
PHOTO: THOMAS ADÈS CONDUCTING THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA © HILARY SCOTT

TUNING IN
Tom Coult
Études featured in New York
In January, Tom Coult’s Études for solo violin were
featured as part of Lost Dog New Music Ensemble’s
Festival of British Music in New York.
Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta in 2014, the
third and fourth etudes are hugely contrasting pieces,
the first obsessive and strident, the later more unusual –
serene, meditative, and utilising novel playing technique.
By pressing down the middle of three strings anywhere
reasonably high up the fingerboard and bowing sul tasto,
the player can play comfortably on two open strings that
aren’t next to one another (the middle one being taken
out of commission). By carefully positioning the bow at
the right position in relationship to where the middle
string is stopped, the violinist can then sustain, at a low
volume, both the two open strings and the stopped string
in the middle. Coult fills this short study with sustained
three-note chords (theoretically impossible and visually
disarming), and the fragility that this technique prompts
in the sound certainly informs its Zen-like meditative
atmosphere.
String Quartet
Coult’s new work for the Arditti Quartet will be premiered
as part of the opening concerts of the newly refurbished
Purcell Room at London’s Southbank Centre in May 2018.
Commissioned by the Hepner Foundation in memory of
Leo Hepner, the 12-minute work is characterised by the
unusual tunings of half of the instruments – the 2nd violin
has all its strings tuned down a semitone, and the viola has
all its strings tuned down a tone. This greatly expands the
number of different pitches available to be played as open
strings – unlike the conventional tuning of a quartet, this
combination contains 16 unique strings – and all of the
piece’s five movements are in some sense explorations of
the distinctive timbre of open strings.
Schumann for chamber orchestra
Coult has made an arrangement of Schumann’s Studies
in Canonic Form Op. 56 for the Britten Sinfonia
Academy. The 17-minute work will be premiered in July.
‘These pieces show great contrapuntal skill and canonic
technique, but the severity of the title belies the character
of the music – this is music of great wit, charm, beauty
and elegance,’ says Coult. ‘My arrangements, for chamber
orchestra, aim to match these qualities through orchestral
colour – sometimes highlighting the canonic structure,
sometimes disguising it.’
Coult’s music has often involved canons, from his Beautiful
Caged Thing for soprano and chamber orchestra to his Four
Perpetual Motions, which was programmed in March with
Aldeburgh Young Musicians.
‘Sonnet Machine’ at Holland Festival
Sonnet Machine, a BBC Philharmonic commission
from 2015-16 will receive its Dutch premiere as part
of the Holland Festival in June, with Martyn Brabbins
conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
Orchestra.
Recalling Alan Turing’s fascination with the idea of
machines writing sonnets, Coult describes the piece as
‘a creative misunderstanding of sonnet form – 14 bits of
music that “rhyme’’ in various ways, as if an early computer
had arbitrarily applied the rules of sonnet form to a piece
of music.’ Over the course of the work’s riproarious 10
minutes, whipcracks articulate many jolting gear changes
and non sequiturs, whilst the front desks of violins and
violas double on instruments whose scordaturas lend a
blazing rawness to the open-string sonorities of the work’s
arresting point of departure. A succession of dazzling
textures once again testify to the maturity of this young
composer’s craft. Later, the glint of open strings returns to
initiate a breathless coda which hurtles forward to its close.
Sonnet Machine is not the only work of Coult’s to be
revived in coming seasons; composed for the BBC
Symphony Orchestra in 2013, his Codex (Homage to
Serafini) will be performed by the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra in their 18/19 Season, as part of the PRS
Resonate Scheme.
towards an opera...
Coult continues to develop a chamber opera with the
award-winning playwright Alice Birch, as part of their
Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship supported by Snape
Maltings. A showcase is planned on 19 April.
Birch’s recent work includes Ophelia’s Zimmer (Royal
Court and the Schaubühne Theater Berlin) and Anatomy of
a Suicide (Royal Court), both directed by Katie Mitchell,
and a BAFTA-nominated screenplay to Lady Macbeth (dir.
William Oldroyd). Anatomy of a Suicide was described
by the Guardian as ‘radically experimental’ and ‘a rich,
haunting, technically dazzling script’ by Time Out.
Thomas Adès
Selected
forthcoming
performances
(cont.)
Three Studies from
Couperin
25-26.4.18, Taulumäki Kirkko,
Jyväskylä, Finland: Jyvaskyla
Sinfonia/Ville Matvejeff
27.4.18, Grosser Saal, Philharmonie,
Berlin, Germany: Berliner
Philharmoniker/Alan Gilbert
Traced Overhead
4.5.18, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall,
New York City, NY, USA: Daniil
Trifonov
Lieux retrouvés*/
Three Studies from
Couperin
*Dutch premiere of orchestration
26.5.18, Het Concertgebouw,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands:
Steven Isserlis/Britten Sinfonia/
Thomas Adès
piano concerto
New York premiere
20.3.19, Carnegie Hall, New York
City, NY, USA: Kirill Gerstein/Boston
Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Adès
new work
world premiere
10-12.5.19, Walt Disney Concert
Hall, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Los
Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/
Gustavo Dudamel
Violin Concerto/In
Seven Days/
new work
12-13.7.19, Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion, The Music Center, Los
Angeles, CA, USA: Leila Josefowicz/
Kirill Gerstein/The Royal Ballet/
Company Wayne McGregor/Los
Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/
Thomas Adès/chor. Wayne McGregor
Tom Coult
Selected
forthcoming
performances
String Quartet
World premiere
29.5.18, Purcell Room, Southbank
Centre, London, UK: Arditti Quartet
Sonnet Machine
Dutch premiere
23.6.18, Holland Festival, Het
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Netherlands Radio
Philharmonic Orchestra/Martyn
Brabbins
Arrangements
Schumann – Studies
in Canonic Form
Op. 56
World premiere
12.7.18, St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich;
13.7.18, Mumford Theatre, Anglia
Ruskin University, Cambridge;
14.7.18, Latitude Festival, Suffolk,
UK: Britten Sinfonia Academy
PHOTO: TOM COULT © MAURICE FOXALL
15

Francisco Coll
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Cantos
German premiere
22.7.18, Kreuzgangkonzerte,
Offenburg, Germany: Dalia Quartet
Four Iberian
Miniatures
US premiere
26.7.18, Tanglewood Festival of
Contemporary Music, Lenox, MA,
USA: Augustin Hadelich/Tanglewood
Festival Orchestra/Thomas Adès
Rizoma
World premiere
30.7.18, Gstaad, Bern, Switzerland:
Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Sol Gabetta
Francisco Coll
Valencia Residency
Francisco Coll has been announced as the inaugural
Composer-in-Residence of the Palau de la Música and the
Orchestra of Valencia, a position spanning the 2018/19
and 2019/20 seasons. The residency will see the Orchestra
of Valencia programme a number of existing pieces, as well
as premiering a new symphonic work. Coll – a native of
Valencia who now lives in Lucerne – will work with young
composers, and will also advise the orchestra on new music
programming in general. A CD recording documenting
the residency is also planned.
Iberian Miniatures in Spain and USA
When Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures for violin and
chamber orchestra were performed at the BBC Proms,
with Augustin Hadelich and the Britten Sinfonia under
Thomas Adès, The Financial Times described them as
‘like images of Spain seen through an insect’s eye’. The
12-minute work, which flickers with light, colour and
rhythm, received its Spanish premiere in February, with
Chloë Hanslip and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia
under Eugene Tzigane. Hanslip is the fourth violinist
to tackle these flamenco-inspired virtuoso showpieces,
the others being Hadelich, Pekka Kuusisto and Noa
Wildschut (a protégé of Anne-Sophie Mutter). Hadelich
and Adès will give the US premiere of the miniatures at the
Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music in July.
A recording of ‘Mural’
In January the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España and
Cristóbal Soler recorded Coll’s Mural after a performance
in Zaragoza. The recording vividly captures this impressive
work, particularly in the finale, which opens up vast,
almost Brucknerian vistas before its unsettling conclusion,
where a glimpse of E-major evaporates, leaving a dark
cluster in the lower strings.
The 24-minute piece – Coll’s most ambitious to date –
premiered in 2016 by the Orchestre Philharmonique du
Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno, then toured the UK
in 2017 with Thomas Adès conducting the National Youth
Orchestra of Great Britain.
Duo for Kopatchinskaja and Gabetta
Coll has composed a violin-cello duo, entitled Rizoma, for
Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta. The five-minute
work will be premiered in Bern in July, and Coll describes
it as the rhizome of a Double Concerto ‘Les Plaisirs
Illuminés’, that he is currently writing for the duo.
‘Stella’ impresses
Faber Music has published the score of Coll’s imposing
motet Stella to coincide with its premiere in late February.
Commissioned by Stephen Fry for Suzi Digby OBE and
the Singers of ORA, the five-minute reflection on Tomás
Luis de Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella has been recorded for
release next year. Full details can be found on page 28.
‘Stella impressed with its emotional range, volatile
dynamics and transitory grinding harmonies.’
The Times (Geoff Brown), 27 February 2018
Guitar concerto channels Flamenco
Turia, a new guitar concerto in five movements
commissioned by Christian Karlsen and Norrbotten NEO,
received three performances in Sweden in December with
Jacob Kellermann as soloist. The 18-minute work for
guitar and seven players takes its name from the dried-up
river in Valencia which now hosts gardens, fountains, cafés,
and even an opera house by architect Santiago Calatrava.
‘As a child,’ Coll explains, ‘I used to walk in this unusual
river, full of light, flowers and people. I always thought
that one day I would write the music of this river. When
Christian Karlsen contacted me, I immediately knew
that this was my opportunity to write a piece for guitar
and ensemble with Spanish luminosity. This soundscape
evokes the light and the respective shadows of my country.’
Flamenco is very much in the surface of this work,
although it is always filtered through Coll’s distinctive
sonorous imagination.
Speaking to Valencia’s Levante newspaper, Karlsen said:
‘It has a very Spanish flavour without falling into clichés
and its use of flamenco is very personal. It is definitely one
of the most important concertos for guitar, and a great
addition to the existing pieces by Rodrigo and Villalobos.
I hope I can give the Spanish premiere of this mystical,
expressive and exciting work soon’.
16
PHOTO: FRANCISCO COLL © JUDITH COLL; CHRISTIAN KARLSEN, FRANCISCO COLL AND JACOB KELLERMANN REHEARSING ‘TURIA’

TUNING IN
Carl Davis
Bintley’s ‘Aladdin’ revived
A UK tour of Carl Davis’s score to Aladdin, by David
Bintley’s Birmingham Royal Ballet, received a rapturous
reception last year, with The Stage praising the music’s
‘lush vivacity’. To coincide with the tour, The Carl Davis
Collection reissued the classic recording of the ballet, with
the Malaysian Philharmonic conducted by the composer.
Speaking in Maestro, the recent book dedicated to Davis’s
life and music, Bintley said: ‘I love Aladdin from beginning
to end. There are no clouds in the sky, and we know it’s
going to end well. It’s so redolent of nineteenth-century
Orientalism, and Carl’s original music captured that
atmosphere perfectly… The company really took to it…
The whole score just dances’.
‘La Dame aux Camélias’ in Naples
Alexandre Dumas’s The Lady of the Camelias has inspired
a wealth of plays, films, ballets and operas – most
famously Verdi’s La Traviata. Davis’s ballet version was
commissioned by the National Ballet of Croatia and
premiered in 2008 and went on to sell out two successive
seasons. The opulent score, which brilliantly encapsulates
the story’s high emotions, will receive its Italian premiere
in September at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, with
choreography by Derek Deane.
‘The Mysterious Lady’
In March Davis conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in
his score to The Mysterious Lady, the classic 1928 Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer silent starring Greta Garbo. Garbo, the
lady of the title, is Tania Fedorova, a Russian spy who falls
for an Austrian soldier. The concert also featured the UK
premiere of Davis’s score to Scene from The Divine Woman
– a single reel that was unearthed in a Russian archive in
1993 in which Garbo plays Marianne, a young actress in
1860s Paris who must choose between the love of a young
soldier and the attentions of a wealthy impresario.
Davis conducts The Mysterious Lady again at
Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg in May.
A new ‘Gatsby’ for Pittsburgh Ballet
Having already won plaudits in 2000 for his evocative
score to a TV adaptation of The Great Gatsby, Davis is set
to return to the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s brilliant fable
of hedonistic excess and tragic reality of 1920s America in
a new original ballet score for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.
Choreographed by Jorden Morris, the new show will
open in February 2019, and should provide Davis ample
scope to conjure both the shimmering Jazz Age, and
the destructive obsession which forces Gatsby’s world to
unravel.
‘Charlie’s Flea Circus’
Davis composed Charlie’s Flea Circus, a delightful 5-minute
work for saxophone and piano, for the sixtieth birthday
of leading performer John Harle. Taking in waltzes and
mazurkas, it makes a wonderful addition to the repertoire
and has been published by Faber Music in a volume
comprising two forms of the work: the original for alto
doubling sopranino saxophone and piano, and a more
accessible version for alto saxophone and piano.
Writing about the inspiration behind the piece, Davis
said: ‘sometime in the early 1980s a mysterious barrel was
exhumed from an old Hollywood house which contained
rare Chaplin footage. This discovery sparked a TV series
– Unknown Chaplin – released in 1983, utilising not
only the newly discovered material but also much more
material unearthed from the Chaplin archive including a
short sketch named ‘‘The Professor’’ for which I wrote the
music. Chaplin often explored characters other than the
ubiquitous little tramp and this was one of them, though
he never developed it. We see the Professor lugging a heavy
suitcase to a shabby dosshouse. The suitcase contains a
flea circus which soon escapes infesting all the denizens
of the dosshouse including a dog and the landlord. From
a musical point of view, the score seemed to require two
themes – a dreary minor key tune for the Professor, and
something very jolly for the airborne fleas’.
Carl Davis
Selected
forthcoming
performances
An Eastern
Westerner/Safety
Last
10-11.3.18, Schrott Center for
the Arts, Indianapolis, IN, USA:
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra/
Matthew Kraemer
Pride and Prejudice
Theme
8.4.18, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
Kent, UK: Philharmonia Orchestra/
Carl Davis CBE
Nijinsky
18.4.18, Slovak National Theatre,
Bratislava, Slovakia: Orchestra of the
Slovak National Theatre/chor. Daniel
de Andrade
Paul McCartney’s
Liverpool Oratorio
22.4.18, Christuskirche,
Bremerhaven, Germany: Städtische
Orchester Delmenhorst/Eva Schad
The Mysterious Lady
Luxembourg premiere
4.5.18, Cinémathèque de
la Ville de Luxembourg,
Luxembourg: Cinémathèque de
la Ville de Luxembourg/Orchestre
Philharmonique du Luxembourg/
Carl Davis CBE
The Kid
Luxembourg premiere
5.5.18, Cinémathèque de
la Ville de Luxembourg,
Luxembourg: Cinémathèque de
la Ville de Luxembourg/Orchestre
Philharmonique du Luxembourg/
Carl Davis CBE
Safety Last
Ukranian premiere
14.7.18, Odessa International Film
Festival, Potemkin Stairs, Odessa,
Ukraine: Odessa Symphonic
Orchestra/Igor Shavruk
The Lady of the
Camellias
Italian premiere
15-22.9.18, Teatro di San Carlo,
Naples, Italy: Orchestra Teatro
San Carlo/Nicola Giuliani/chor.
Derek Deane
PHOTOS: CARL DAVIS © JASPER FRY
17

Oliver Knussen
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Symphony No. 2
16.3.18, St Alfege Church,
Greenwich, London, UK: St Paul’s
Sinfonia/Andrew Morley
The Way to Castle
Yonder/Violin
Concerto
12.4.18, Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland:
Leila Josefowicz/Lahti Symphony
Orchestra/Oliver Knussen
Where the Wild
Things Are
15.4-3.7.18, Opernhaus, Düsseldorf,
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany:
Deutsche Oper am Rhein/Duisburger
Philharmoniker/Jesse Wong/dir.
Philipp Westerbarkei
Masks
2.7.18 Salon, Melbourne Recital
Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia:
Melissa Doecke
Julian Anderson
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Piano Études
Nos. 1-3
12.3.18, Milton Court, Guildhall
School of Music and Drama, London,
UK: Clare Hammond
The Bearded Lady
11.5.18, Victoria Hall, Grange-over-
Sands, UK: Richard Uttley/Olivier
Stankiewicz
Oliver Knussen
A new recording of the Horn Concerto
‘More concert aria than concerto’ is how Oliver Knussen
once described his Horn Concerto, which has just
been released on CD, in a live recording by the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra and their principal horn Felix
Dervaux under conductor Ryan Wigglesworth.
Composed for the legendary Barry Tuckwell, Knussen’s
13-minute concerto was originally envisaged in two parts,
‘Fantastico’ (a sonata-allegro) and ‘Adagio’ (variations on
a ground bass), framed and connected by cadenza-like
passages. In the process of composition, however, these
designs telescoped unexpectedly, resulting in a single
movement in which the interlocked old forms are only the
vestigial frames for a rich exploration of the horn’s many
characters, from Mahlerian Nachtmusik to moments of
clear, Mozartian brilliance.
Described as ‘a masterpiece of lucidity’ by the Guardian
the concerto has received over 80 performances since its
premiere in 1994, most recently with Knussen himself
conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with
soloist Jukka Harju.
Revisiting the Second Symphony
In March Knussen’s Second Symphony receives a
performance from the St Paul’s Sinfonia and Andrew
Morley. Written in 1970-71 when its composer was still in
his teens, Knussen’s Symphony No. 2 may only clock in at
17 minutes, but its brevity belies the enormous emotional
world it creates. In the symphony, a high soprano joins
the chamber orchestra for a pale, moonlit journey of a
dreaming sleeper, setting words by Sylvia Plath alongside
Georg Trakl (whose words Knussen has also set in his
Rosary Songs and Trumpets). Filled with shimmering,
spectral textures, this is an uneasy piece which combines
an eerie, glacial brilliance with a burning expressionist
intensity. One of Knussen’s strongest early statements, this
compelling work deserves to be much better known.
‘Every note in this intricate work is fastidiously
placed.’
The Independent (Michael Church), 31 July 2012
Julian Anderson
‘Seadrift’ in New York
In January, Julian Anderson’s Whitman setting Seadrift
was featured as part of Lost Dog New Music Ensemble’s
Festival of British Music in New York.
A world away from Delius’s work of the same name or,
indeed, Per Nørgård’s 1978 version for soprano and
ensemble, Anderson’s bracing, windswept setting of lines
from ‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking’ displays
terrific energy and economy of gesture. Scored for soprano,
flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet and piano, the 10-minute
work begins by allowing the effulgence of Whitman’s
words to speak for themselves, though towards the end the
music grows ever more rich and resonant.
Boston residency
Already familiar to Boston audiences through his
relationship with the Symphony Orchestra, Anderson has
been announced as the Composer-in-Residence for the
2018 Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance
Practice at the New England Conservatory. The
Callithumpian Consort directed by Stephen Drury, will
present a number of chamber and ensemble works. Full
details will be announced in late Spring.
Revisiting ‘Heaven is Shy of Earth’
With Anderson’s Tombeau, a setting of Emily Dickinson,
being premiered by members of the Birmingham
Contemporary Music Group in March, what better time
to revisit Heaven is Shy of Earth for mezzo-soprano, chorus
and orchestra, which sets poems by Dickinson alongside
the High Mass and Psalm 84.
Commissioned for the 2006 BBC Proms (where The
Sunday Times described it as ‘a revelation’), this 30-minute
‘secular mass’ is a beautiful and curious work. In 2008
it won a British Composer Award, then in 2010 it was
extended with a further movement, ‘Gloria (with Bird)’,
which highlights the piece’s intention to reflect and
celebrate the natural world. It is this latter version which
will soon be released on the Ondine label, alongside
Anderson’s ballet score The Comedy of Change.
18
PHOTOS: OLIVER KNUSSEN © HANA ZUSHI-RHODES, ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC; JULIAN ANDERSON © MAURICE FOXALL

TUNING IN
Carl Vine
Melbourne residency
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has announced a
major Carl Vine residence as part of their 17/18 season
which will culminate in the premiere of his Symphony
No. 8 conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. The project
highlights Vine’s position as one of the most respected
Australian composers working today. It will feature his
Smith’s Alchemy, Concerto for Orchestra, The Tree of Man
for voice and strings, and the orchestral fanfare V (as part
of the Last Night of the Melbourne Proms in addition to
performances on tour in China).
Lyrical, direct and exhibiting a masterful understanding
of vocal writing, Vine’s secular cantata for soprano and
strings, The Tree of Man, is a gift to audience and musicians
alike. The 11-minute work, written in 2012 for the
Australian Chamber Orchestra and soprano Danielle de
Niese, is based on a passage from a novel of the same name
by the Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick White.
Vine knew White personally (having written music for
several of his stage plays in the 1980s) and his setting
perfectly complements the simplicity and sincerity of the
prose. The music moves in an arc from its quietly insistent
beginnings and rhapsodic central section to a haunting
conclusion, where the brooding opening returns before
evaporating into the air.
Double Piano Concerto
A skilled pianist himself, Vine has created a body of piano
works which occupies a central place in the contemporary
repertoire of many pianists through its scintillating
command of sonority and space, not to mention its
versatility and wit.
He is currently at work on a Concerto for Two Pianos
and Orchestra, commissioned by the West Australian
and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras with support from
philanthropist Geoff Stearn. It will be premiered in Perth
this May by outstanding international pianists Piers Lane
and Kathryn Stott, with Rory Macdonald conducting.
Australian Ballet’s ‘The Silver Rose’
An extract from Vine’s The Silver Rose will be staged
by The Australian Ballet in March as part of its tribute
to renowned choreographer Graeme Murphy. A
reinterpretation of Hugo von Hoffmannsthal’s scenario
for Der Rosenkavalier, Graeme Murphy’s The Silver Rose is
a lavishly told story of love trysts, revenge and bittersweet
romance. Vine, a long-time collaborator of Murphy’s,
revisited his extensive orchestral catalogue to compile the
90-minute score, a section of which will be heard as part
of this tribute evening when it travels to Melbourne and
Sydney in the coming months.
Musica Viva
After nearly two decades at the helm of Musica Viva – the
world’s largest chamber music organisation – Vine will
step down as Artistic Director in late 2019. ‘Musica Viva
has now engulfed half of my adult life, and it has been an
unbelievable honour to devote these years to exploring
the supreme creative social phenomenon that is classical
chamber music,’ said Vine.
Gergiev conducts Piano Concerto
In December Valery Gergiev conducted Vine’s Piano
Concerto No. 2 in the closing concert of the 2017
Mariinsky International Piano Festival, St Petersburg, with
the Mariinsky Orchestra and soloist Mira Yevtich.
First performed by Piers Lane and the Sydney Symphony
Orchestra in 2012, Carl Vine’s vibrant concerto is an
attractive 25-minute work comprising three movements.
A Rhapsody and Nocturne lead to a finale entitled
‘Cloudless Blue’, a dazzling presto that captures all the
brilliance of the Australian summer.
Carl Vine
Selected
forthcoming
performances
The Silver Rose
(excerpts)
20-26.3.18, Arts Centre, Melbourne,
VIC; 6-23.4.18, Sydney Opera House,
NSW, Australia: The Australian
Ballet/ch. Graeme Murphy
V
25.3.18, Last Night of the Melbourne
Proms, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre
Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia:
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir
Andrew Davis
Piano Trio
29.3.18, Daniel and Joanna S Rose
Studio, Lincoln Center, New York
City, NY, USA: Sitkovetsky Trio (2
performances)
Toccatissimo
25.4.18, Salon, Firth Hall, University
of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Alex
Raineri
Double Piano
Concerto
World premiere
10-11.5.18, Perth Concert Hall,
Perth, WA; 19.5.18, Federation
Concert Hall, Hobart, TAS, Australia:
Piers Lane/Kathryn Stott/West
Australian Symphony Orchestra/Rory
Macdonald
Concerto for
Orchestra
10-11.5.18, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre
Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC; 12.5.18,
Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash
University, Clayton, VIC, Australia:
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir
Andrew Davis
Smith’s Alchemy
9-10.8.18, Melbourne Recital Centre,
Melbourne, VIC; 10.8.18, Robert
Blackwood Hall, Monash University,
Clayton, VIC, Australia: Members of
the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/
Dale Barltrop
Symphony No. 8
World premiere
30.8,1.9.18, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre
Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC; 31.8.18,
Deakin’s Costa Hall, Geelong
Performing Arts Centre, Geelong,
VIC, Australia: Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis
The Tree of Man
8.9.18, Iwaki Auditorium, ABC
Southbank Centre, Melbourne, VIC,
Australia: Greta Bradman/Members
of the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra
PHOTO: CARL VINE © KEITH SAUNDERS; VALERY GERGIEV © OLEG ZOTOV
19

Torsten Rasch
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Die Formel
world premiere
2.3-14.4.18, Stadttheater, Bern,
Switzerland: Vokalensemble
ardent/Camerata Bern/Jonathan
Stockhammer/dir. Gerd Heinz
…in umbra…
world premiere
22-23.3.18, Centro Cultural Miguel
Delibes, Valladolid, Spain: Orquesta
Sinfónica de Castilla y León/Andrew
Gourlay
Violin Concerto
28.4.18, Koger Center for the
Arts, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC, USA: Mira Wang/
South Carolina Philharmonic/
Morihiko Nakahara
Benjamin Britten
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Death in Venice
19.5-6.7.18, Landestheater Linz, Linz,
Austria: Landestheater Linz/Roland
Böer/dir. Hermann Schneider
13.6-5.7.18, Opernhaus, Stuttgart,
German: Staatsorchester Stuttgart/
Marco Comin/dir. Demis Volpi
The Sword in the
Stone: Concert Suite
26-27.5.18, Théâtre d’Orléans, Scène
Nationale, Orléans, France: Orchestre
Symphonique d’Orléans/Marius
Stieghorst (‘Bird Music’ only)
Paul Bunyan
3-8.9.18, Wilton’s Music Hall,
London, UK: English National Opera/
Matthew Kofi Waldren/dir. Jamie
Manton
String Quartet No. 3
8.9.18, South Melbourne Town Hall,
Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Australian
String Quartet
Torsten Rasch
Looking back to 1918
In March and April 2018 Konzerttheater Bern will stage
Die Formel, an ambitious interdisciplinary work for
singers, actors and orchestra with music by Torsten Rasch.
100 years after the end of the First World War and the
October Revolution, Doris Reckewell’s text takes Bern’s
important role as a neutral waystation and imagines
an encounter between seven of the twentieth century’s
most culturally important figures who passed through
the city: the revolutionary exile Lenin with his wife; the
emancipated social pedagogue Nadeshda Krupskaja; the
as-yet-unknown physicist Albert Einstein and his wife
Mileva Marić; the artist Paul Klee and his pianist wife
Lily; as well as the young, uprooted poet Robert Walser.
Jonathan Stockhammer will conduct Camerata Bern and
Vokalensemble ardent in a production directed by Gerd
Heinz.
from the depths…
A commission from Andrew Gourlay and the Orquesta
Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Rasch’s latest orchestral work,
…in umbra…, is based on the Lutheran chorale ‘Aus
tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir’, also known as ‘De Profundis’.
Rasch chose the chorale, he writes, out of a desire ‘to
convey the meaning of its text; of its sense of being lost
and crying out from the depths of a dark place – a place
in the shadows’. The work is not a set of variations in the
traditional sense, but rather sees Rasch take each of the
chorale’s seven phrases as the starting point for far reaching
extemporisations, which radically re-cast the material and
make it thrillingly resonant with today.
…in umbra…will be premiered in Valladolid, Spain in late
March, with Andrew Gourlay conducting the Orquesta
Sinfónica de Castilla y León.
Explore the Music of Torsten Rasch with our
Online Score Library:
scorelibrary.fabermusic.com
myth, magic, music, and madness
Rasch’s dramatic Violin Concerto ‘Tropoi’ received its US
premiere in January with two performances by Mira Wang
and the Spokane Symphony under Eckart Preu. Wang
performs the work again in April with the South Carolina
Philharmonic and Morihiko Nakahara.
This substantial four-movement work – the composer’s
first concerto – was inspired by Helmut Krausser’s
captivating 1993 novel Melodien, in which myth, magic,
music, and madness interact in a dark, and increasingly
disturbing narrative. Unfolding over 20 minutes, this
weighty statement is everything we have come to expect
from Rasch: a large orchestra is masterfully handled, whilst
the hefty solo part, with its many knotty twists and turns,
offers violinists numerous opportunities to showcase their
technical – and interpretative – virtuosity.
‘The entire world of music has been made richer
by the addition of an important new violin concerto
by Rasch… Its reception was enthusiastic, due in
no small degree to the blazing advocacy of the
soloist… Rasch’s mastery of orchestral effect allows
him to exploit the obvious cinematic potential of
the tale, from the eerie, timeless stillness from
which the powerful tropoi emerge to their wild
confrontation, and ultimate conquest, of the forces
of destruction and disorder. Both the source and
target of this potent energy is the violinist, who is
required to exploit resources of the instrument that
Paganini never dreamed of. Wang brought even the
most bizarre and strenuous of Rasch’s imaginings
before us as things of beauty: colorful, evocative
and consoling. From the lowest chest tones of her
Stradivarius to its stratospheric harmonics, her
command of bow speed and pressure produced
tropes of delight and amazement.’
The Spokesman-Review (Larry Lapidus), 28 January 2018
Benjamin Britten
Britten in America
In September English National Opera will present a new
production of Benjamin Britten’s first work for stage, Paul
Bunyan, at Wilton’s Music Hall. The production will be
directed by Jamie Manton, designed by Camilla Clarke
and conducted by ENO Charles Mackerras Conducting
Fellow Matthew Kofi Waldren.
Britten created Bunyan with W. H. Auden in 1941 during
his self-imposed American exile, and sought to capture the
spirit of the booming, forward-looking country around
them with a mixture of affection and irreverence. Auden’s
lyrical, subtle satire interweaves with a score that sees the
young Britten at his most playful and inventive: folk, blues
and Broadway are incorporated into a musical language
that remains distinctively his.
20
PHOTO: TORSTEN RASCH © MAURICE FOXALL

TUNING IN
Jonathan Harvey
‘Speakings’
In January one of Jonathan Harvey’s late masterpieces
received a rare performance from the Basel Sinfonietta,
SWR Experimentalstudio and Baldur Brönnimann.
Speakings for orchestra and electronics was composed in
2008 during Harvey’s time as Composer in Association
with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and utilises a
unique process of electronic transformation developed at
IRCAM to explore the possibility that an orchestra could
be made to ‘speak’.
Winner of the prestigious Monaco Prize, the 25-minute
work belongs to that fascinating clutch of works composed
around the time of Harvey’s final opera, Wagner Dream,
which contain musical allusions to Wagner, in this case
Parsifal. Unfolding over three continuous movements, the
music moves from the babbling of a baby and the frenetic
chatter of human life in all its expressions, to music of
unity, a hymn which is close to Gregorian chant in which,
in Harvey’s words ‘the paradise of the sounding temple is
imagined’.
Faber Music has developed a new typeset edition of
Speakings that was used for this performance and will be
released on sale soon.
From chaos to stasis
In Wheel of Emptiness, Harvey’s 1997 ensemble work for
16 players, the often chaotic foreground instrumental
activity is heard against the background calm of a sampler’s
harmonic spectra, resulting in a gradual progression from
ever-changing to measured stasis. Commissioned by
the Belgian ensemble Ictus – who later recorded it – the
16-minute work will be performed in Paris this April by
Ensemble intercontemporain and Daniel Harding.
Choral Publications
Faber Music is pleased to announce the publication of two
new editions of Harvey choral works: Forms of Emptiness,
and Plainsongs for Peace and Light.
For full details, see page 28.
John Woolrich
Revisiting the Oboe Concerto
All concertos are built from a mismatch of forces: the
individual against the crowd, solo against tutti. Many
composers have intensified this discrepancy by banishing
the solo instrument from the orchestra, so that the colour
of the solo and the tutti are as different as possible. John
Woolrich, however, takes a different approach in his Oboe
Concerto: rather than isolating the soloist, he has filled
the orchestra with the mournful noise of its singing: the
oboe is surrounded by an attendant group of three oboes
and their more extrovert second cousin, the soprano
saxophone. But the oppositions are still there – the drama
and the poetry of the work flow from the contrast between
the fragile keening of the oboe and the brutal power of a
large symphony orchestra.
The 26-minute work was premiered, and recorded, by
Nicholas Daniel, who revived it in January with the BBC
National Orchestra of Wales under Jonathan Berman.
‘A real tour de force… Quiet passages contrasted
with sections that seemed to explore the outermost
limits of dramatic expression and sheer decibel
content… not only musically satisfying but
dramatically exciting.’
Seen and Heard (Paul Corfield Godfrey), 2 February 2018
‘It had an immensity which I have heard little of in
contemporary music… simply astounding.’
Mozart refashioned
The Sprout (Weeping Tudor), 21 February 2018
Whilst many will be familiar with Woolrich’s Ulysses
Awakes – an achingly beautiful reworking of Monteverdi
for viola and strings which receives performances in the
UK, Australia and the Netherlands in the coming months
– fewer may know his The Theatre Represents a Garden:
Night which will be performed by the Morley Chamber
Orchestra and Charles Peebles in May.
A 19-minute journey through Mozart, which Woolrich
describes as ‘a necklace of fragments, transcriptions and
recompositions’ the work was composed in 1991 for the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. All the material
comes, in one way or another, from Mozart (principally
unfinished or sketched pieces) which Woolrich artfully
stitches together, twisting the classical harmonies to relate
to each other in sly modern ways, teasing out extra beats
in the bar, and slipping in ‘wrong’ chords and improbable
orchestrations.
Jonathan Harvey
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Bhakti
17.3.18: Great Guild Hall, Riga, Latvia:
Sinfonietta Riga/Normunds Sne
Wheel of Emptiness
5.4.18, Philharmonie, Paris, France:
Ensemble Intercontemporain/Daniel
Harding
Bird Concerto with
Pianosong
15.4.18, Barnes Hall, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY, USA: Ryan
MacEvoy McCullough/Ensemble X/
Timothy Weiss
Mortuos Plango,
Vivos Voco/String
Quartet No. 4
24.4.18, Firth Hall, University of
Sheffield, Sheffield, UK: Ligeti
Quartet
Ricercare una
melodia (oboe)/
Tombeau de
Messiaen/Run
Before Lightning
2.7.18, Salon, Melbourne Recital
Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia:
Inventi Ensemble/Melissa Doecke/
Ben Opie/Peter de Jager
John Woolrich
Selected
forthcoming
performances
Ulysses Awakes
2.5.18, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ,
Amsterdam, Netherlands:
Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Daniel Bard
11.5.18, Max Richter’s Sounds and
Visions, Barbican Centre, London,
UK: 12 ensemble
14.6.18, Melbourne Recital Centre;
16.6.18, South Melbourne Town Hall,
Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Lawrence
Power/Australian National Academy
of Music
The Theatre
Represents a
Garden: Night
3.5.18, Morley College, London, UK:
Morley Chamber Orchestra/Charles
Peebles
Scarlatti Sonatas
Set 2
11,13.5.18, Emmanuel United
Reformed Church, Cambridge;
13.5.18, Binham Priory, Binham,
Norfok, UK: Anglia Ruskin University/
Christopher Tarrant
A Book of Studies
Set 1
28.6.18, Collegiate Church of the
Holy Cross, Crediton; 6.12.18,
Assembly Room, The Council House,
Chichester, UK: Magnard Ensemble
Pianobooks II, VI, VII,
IX, XII, XIV, XV
World premiere of XV
15.11.18, University of Sheffield,
Sheffield, UK: Clare Hammond
PHOTOS: JONATHAN HARVEY © LAURIE LEWIS; JOHN WOOLRICH © MAURICE FOXALL
21

NEW WORKS
Stage Works
GEORGE BENJAMIN
Lessons in Love and Violence (2015-17)
opera in two parts. c.100 minutes
Text: Martin Crimp (Eng)
8 Singers: Baritone/Soprano/Baritone/Tenor/High Tenor or Haute-contre/High Col S/Mezzo soprano/Bass Baritone
2(I+II=picc).2.ebcl.2(I=A+ebcl.II=A+basset horn).bcl.3(III=cbsn) – 4.2(I+II=ptpt).2.btrbn.cbtrbn.0 – perc(4): 2 crot/5
t.bells/2 gongs/4 timp/2 bongos/2 SD/talking drum/2 tombaks/2 TD/2 tumbas/BD/claves/3 mokubios/2 tpl.bl/3 tgl/2
tamb/3 susp.cym/whip/2 pairs of machine cast/2 vibraslaps/4 guiros – 2 harps – cel – cimbalom – strings (suggested
10.8.8.8.6 double basses require low C extensions)
Co-commissioned and co-produced by the Royal Opera Covent Garden London, Dutch National Opera Amsterdam, Hamburg
State opera, Opéra de Lyon, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona and Teatro Real Madrid
10.5.2018, Royal Opera House, London, UK: The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/George Benjamin/dir. Katie Mitchell
Full score, vocal score and parts in preparation
Text 0-571-54055-4 and first edition vocal score 0-571-54054-6 will be on sale from 10th May 2018
TORSTEN RASCH
Die Formel (2017)
theatre work for solo voices, chorus, childrens’ choir and ensemble. c. 60-70 minutes music (c.120 minutes total)
Text: Doris Reckewell (Ger)
Singers: MILEVA (col S)/NADEZHDA (S)/LILY (M)/WALSER (BBar)/SATB chorus/Childrens’ choir
perc(3): crot/glsp/vib/t.bells/tuned gongs/mar/timp/tuned steel drums/bongos (pair)/4 tpl.bl OR 4 log drums/3 tom-toms/
claves/tgl/2 susp.cyms/china.cym/2 tam-t/BD – cimbalom(=percussion 3) – accordion – strings
FP: 2.3.2018, Stadttheater, Bern, Switzerland: Vokalensemble ardent/Camerata Bern/Jonathan Stockhammer/dir. Gerd Heinz
Commissioned by Cihan Inan, on behalf of Stattheater Bern
Full score, vocal score and parts for hire
Orchestra
NED BIGHAM
Archipelago Dances Set 1 (2016)
orchestra. 22 minutes
3(III=picc).2.ca.3(III=bcl).2.cbsn – 4331 – timp – perc(4) – 2 pno(II=cel) – 2 harp - strings
FP: Feb 2016/June 2017: Royal Scottish National Orchestra recording sessions, Glasgow, UK: Royal Scottish National
Orchestra/Jean-Claude Picard
Score and parts for hire
Archipelago Dances Set 2 (2017)
orchestra. 22 minutes
3(III=picc).3(III=ca).3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) – 4331 – timp – perc(4) – cel – harp – strings(DB with C extension)
FP: Feb 2016/June 2017: Royal Scottish National Orchestra recording sessions, Glasgow, UK: Royal Scottish National
Orchestra/ Jean-Claude Picard
Score and parts for hire
Two Nightscapes (2017)
orchestra. 10 minutes
picc.2(I=picc.II=afl).2.ca.3(III=bcl).3(III=cbsn) – 4.3.2.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(3) – cel – harp – strings
FP: Feb 2016/June 2017: Royal Scottish National Orchestra recording sessions, Glasgow, UK: Royal Scottish National
Orchestra/Jean-Claude Picard
Score and parts for hire
DEBUSSY orch. COLIN MATTHEWS
Images Book 1 (2017-18)
orchestra. c.14 minutes
2(I=optional picc.II=picc).afl.2.ca.2(I+II=cl in A).bcl.2.cbsn – 4231 – timp – perc(3): crot/glsp/tgl/clash.cym/susp.cym/siz.
cym/tam-t/BD – 2 harps – cel – strings
Commissioned by Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg & Philharmonie Luxembourg
FP: Recording 3-5 July 2018, Philharmonie Luxembourg
Score and parts in preparation
DANNY ELFMAN
Concerto for Violin & Orchestra (Eleven Eleven) (2017)
violin and orchestra. 40 minutes
3(III=picc).2.ca.2.bcl.3(III=cbsn) – 4.3.2.btrbn.1(=cimbasso) – timp – perc(4) – harp – cel – strings
Commissioned by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Live, Stanford University and the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra.
FP: 21.6.2017, Prague Proms, Smetana Hall, Prague, Czech Republic: Sandy Cameron/Czech National SO/John Mauceri
Score and parts for hire
ANDERS HILLBORG
Mantra – Elegy (2017)
Homage to Stravinsky for orchestra. 6½ minutes
3(II+III=picc).2.2.2(II=cbsn) – 4230 – timp – perc(1): vib/t.bells/large tam-t – strings
Commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and the
Aspen Music Festival
FP: 21.4.2018, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski
Score and parts in preparation
DAVID MATTHEWS
New Fire (2018)
orchestra. 6½ minutes
3(III=picc).3(III=ca).3(III=bcl).2.cbsn – 4.4(IV ad lib.).3.1 – timp – perc(2): I: glsp/Chinese.cym II: crot/t.bells – harp
(doubled if possible) – pno – strings
FP: 8.4.2018, Königskloster, Brno, Czech Republic: Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra/Dennis Russell Davies
Score and parts in preparation
DAVID MATTHEWS
Symphony No. 9 (2016)
orchestra. c.27 minutes
2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2(II=bcl).2(II=cbsn) – 4230 – timp – perc: crot/tgl/3 susp.cym/SD – harp – strings
FP: 9.5.2018, St George’s, Bristol, UK: English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods
Score and parts in preparation
TORSTEN RASCH
…in umbra… (2017)
Variations on ‘Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir’ for orchestra. c.17 minutes
picc.2(II=afl).2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn – 4331 – timp – perc(3): crot/glsp/vib/t.bells/2 tuned gongs/mar/cyms/susp.cym/ch.cym/2
tam-t/claves/tpl.bl/2 BD – harp – pno(=cel) – strings (suggested number of players: 14.12.10.8.6)
Commissioned by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León
FP: 22.3.2018, Centro Cultural Miguel Delibes, Valladolid, Spain: Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León/Andrew Gourlay
Score and parts in preparation
VIKKI STONE
Concerto for Comedian & Orchestra (2017)
comedian and orchestra (chamber or large). 50 minutes
1(=picc).1(=ca).1.1 – 2110 – timp – perc(2) – cel – amalgamated keyboard – harp – strings
OR 2(II=picc).2(II=ca).2.2 – 4.2.2.btrbn.1 – timp – perc(2) – cel - harp – strings
FP: 25.6.2017, Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, Somerset, UK: Vikki Stone/Wells Cathedral School Symphony Orchestra/Ben
Glassberg
Score and parts for hire
Ensemble
FRANCISCO COLL
Turia (2017)
concerto for guitar and ensemble. 18 minutes
fl(=picc+afl).cl(=bcl) – perc(1): glsp+bow/xyl/crot/cajon/3 tpl.bl/cast/metal guiro/susp.cym/mark tree/large tin – pno –
vln.vla.vlc
FP: 14.12.2017, Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden: Jacob Kellerman/Norrbotten NEO/Christian Karlsen
Commissioned by Christian Karlsen, Jacob Kellermann, Föreningen Kammarmusik NU and the Norrbotten NEO Ensemble with
kind financial support from the Swedish Arts Council and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Score and parts in preparation
Exclusive to Christian Karlsen and Jacob Kellermann until 14 December 2020
Chamber
TOM COULT
String Quartet (2018)
string quartet. c.12 minutes
Commissioned by the Hepner Foundation
For Leo Hepner
FP: 29.5.2018, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Arditti Quartet
Score and parts in preparation
TANSY DAVIES
Undertow (1999 rev. 2018)
chamber ensemble of 5 players. c.6 minutes
fl.cl.vln.vlc.pno
Commissioned by Chroma
Score and parts for hire
MATTHEW HINDSON
Celebration (String Quartet No. 5) (2017)
string quartet. 10 minutes
Written for the Goldner String Quartet
FP: 28.7.2017, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Townsville, QLD, Australia: Goldner String Quartet.
Score and parts on special sale from the Hire Library
COLIN MATTHEWS
Hidden Agenda (2017-18)
Piano Trio No. 2. c.11 minutes
Commissioned by the Winchester Chamber Music Festival with financial support from the Friends of the Festival together with
Hinrichsen Foundation and Winchester City Council
First two movements FP: 28.4.2017, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester, UK:
London Bridge Trio
Complete premiere: 4.5.2018, Winchester Chamber Music Festival, Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester, UK:
London Bridge Trio
Score and parts in preparation
MARTIN SUCKLING
String Quintet ‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’ (2017)
for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos. 25 minutes
Commissioned by Aurora Orchestra and Poet in the City
IV movement FP: 15.10.2017, Wellcome Collection, London, UK: Aurora Orchestra
Complete FP: 12.1.2018, Hall 1, Kings Place, London, UK: Aurora Orchestra
Score and parts in preparation
22

NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS
Instrumental
FRANCISCO COLL
Rizoma (2017)
violin and cello. 4½ minutes
FP: 30.7.2018, Gstaad, Bern, Switzerland: Patricia Kopatchinskaja/Sol Gabetta
Commissioned by Patricia Kopatchinskaja
Score in preparation
COLIN MATTHEWS
Meditation (2017)
after Telemann’s 12th Fantasie for solo tenor or soprano recorder. 2½ minutes
Commissioned for Tabea Debus by City Music Foundation
FP: 6.1.2018, Baroque at the Edge Festival, St James’s Church, Clerkenwell,
London, UK: Tabea Debus
Score in preparation
Bell-wether (2017)
solo alto flute. c.2 minutes
In memory of Sebastian Bell
Bell-wether was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, with the generous
support of Lark (Group) Ltd.
FP: 24.1.2018, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, UK: Michael Cox
Score in preparation
Vocal
THOMAS ADÈS
Four Purcell Realizations (2012/2017)
voice and piano. 12 minutes
By Beauteous Softness, Come unto these yellow sands, Full Fathom Five and An
Evening Hymn
By Beauteous Softness and An Evening Hymn were co-commissioned by Simon
Yates and Kevin Roon, and Carnegie Hall.
FP: Come unto these yellow sands and Full Fathom Five: 26.10.2012, Le Poisson
Rouge, New York, NY, USA: Iestyn Davies/Thomas Adès
By Beauteous Softness and An Evening Hymn: 15.10.2017, Zankel Hall, Carnegie
Hall, New York, NY, USA: Iestyn Davies/Thomas Adès
Score on special sale from the Hire Library
Choral
FRANCISCO COLL
Stella (2016)
A reflection on Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella for SATB a cappella choir in 8 parts.
c.5 minutes
FP: 24.2.2018, LSO St Luke’s, London, UK: ORA Singers/Suzi Digby
Commissioned by Stephen Fry for Suzi Digby OBE and the singers of ORA
Score 0-571-53652-2 on sale
HOWARD GOODALL
Invictus: A Passion (2017)
soprano and tenor soloists, SATB chorus and small orchestra. 55 minutes
ssax – 2 hrn – pno(= elec pno) – (organ) – 2 string quartets.db
Texts: Æmelia Lanyer née Bassano; Christina Georgina Rossetti; Ella Wheeler
Wilcox; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper; William Wilberforce; Lamentations of
Jeremiah; Psalm 142; Antiphon for Maundy Thursday; William Ernest Henley; A.E.
Housman; John 20:1; Isaac Watts; W.B. Yeats; George Herbert (English & Latin).
Commissioned by St. Luke’s Friends of Music for the Chancel Choir of St. Luke’s
United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, Sid Davis, Director.
FP: 25.3.2018, St Luke’s United Methodist Church, Houston, TX, USA: St Luke’s
United Methodist Church Choir/Howard Goodall.
Vocal score on sale (in preparation), full score, vocal score and parts for hire
ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGE
Wassail! Carols of Comfort & Joy (2017)
unison children’s choir, SATB choir and band. 40 minutes.
Text: Robert Herrick; Traditional; Anon; Joanna L’Estrange; Nahum Tate (Eng)
descant recorder(=treble+sopranino) – piano accordion – pno (or gtr) – perc(1)
– db
Commissioned by United Learning
FP: 27.11.2017, Southwark Cathedral, London, UK: United Learning/Call Me Al Jazz
Quintet/Alexander L’Estrange.
Vocal score (0-571-54038-4) is available for hire, and on sale. Full score and parts
available for hire. Children’s choir resources (a separate children’s part PDF and set
of rehearsal MP3s) are also available on sale.
New Publications
GEORGE BENJAMIN
Lessons in Love and Violence
Vocal score 0-571-54054-6 £34.99
Text 0-571-54055-4 £9.99
(Both available from 10th May)
FRANCISCO COLL
Stella
Score 0-571-53979-3 £3.99
CARL DAVIS
Charlie’s Flea Circus (saxophone and piano)
Score and parts 0-571-54049-X £14.99
JONATHAN HARVEY
Plainsongs for Peace and Light
Score 0-571-52214-9 £4.50
Forms of Emptiness
Score 0-571-54013-9 £6.50
New Recordings
THOMAS ADÈS
Arcadiana; The Four Quarters; Piano Quintet
Dimitri Vassilakis/DoelenKwartet
Cybele SACD 261603
MALCOLM ARNOLD
Fantasy for Guitar
Sean Shibe
Delphian DCD34193
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Cello Suites Nos. 1-3 (arranged for solo viola)
Laura Menegozzo
In Alto SSP2019
Nocturnal after John Dowland
Sean Shibe
Delphian DCD34193
CARL DAVIS
Aladdin
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra/Carl Davis CBE
Carl Davis Collection CDC029
JONNY GREENWOOD
Water (premiere recording)
Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti
ABC Classics
JONATHAN HARVEY
The Angels
Taipei Chamber Singers/Chen Yun-Hung
TCS-P12-1712
OLIVER KNUSSEN
Horn Concerto
Felix Dervaux/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth
RCO 17004
PETER SCULTHORPE
Djilile (arranged for piano and strings)
Tamara-Anna Cislowska/Australian Chamber Orchestra
ABC Classics 481 5781
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (arranged for
two pianos)
Mark Bebbington/Rebeca Omordia
SOMMCD 0164
23

Danny Elfman signs to Faber Music
Faber Music is thrilled to announce the signing of a publishing
agreement with legendary Hollywood composer, Danny Elfman, in
respect of his new Violin Concerto ‘Eleven Eleven’.
The 40-minute work was written for the American soloist Sandy
Cameron, who gave the premiere in Prague in June 2017. It was
co-commissioned by the Prague Proms, Royal Scottish National
Orchestra and Stanford Live, Stanford University. Cameron was
joined by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and John
Mauceri for the Prague performance and the German premiere given
three months later in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. She also gave
the US premiere in March, with two performances by the Stanford
Symphony Orchestra.
In June, Cameron and Mauceri join the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra to record the work for commercial release, and there are
three live performances planned in September by Cameron with the
Virginia Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta.
In the meantime, a short 9-minute promotional video taken from
the premiere, which includes highlights from all four movements can
be obtained by emailing musicfornow@fabermusic.com. A complete
score can be viewed at scorelibrary.fabermusic.com.
Meredith to open BBC Proms and Edinburgh
International Festival
Five Telegrams is a unique collaboration between acclaimed composer
Anna Meredith, and 59 Productions, the Tony Award-winning
design company whose work includes the London 2012 Opening
Ceremony and the National Theatre’s hit War Horse. Part of 14-18
NOW, Five Telegrams is a co-commission from 14-18 NOW, the
BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival – the first time
these two major festivals have worked together in this way. It will be
performed at both festivals later this year. More in the next issue…
Seattle Symphony take up Khan Concerto
Indian sitar maestro Nishat Khan gave the US premiere of his 2012
sitar concerto The Gate of the Moon as part of Seattle Symphony’s
‘Celebrate Asia’ festival on 11 February. In a packed Benaroya Hall,
Khan and the orchestra were conducted by DaYe Lin.
Ned Bigham: new works for orchestra
Further to the recent success of Ned Bigham’s multi-screen orchestral
work Staffa (given at the Edinburgh International Festival last year),
Faber Music is happy to announce that we are publishing other
works by this acclaimed British composer. Staffa was the title track
of Bigham’s latest album, and we have now made available the
remaining two works featured: Archipelago Dances Sets 1 and 2 and
Two Nightscapes.
‘Hugely enjoyable, brilliantly orchestrated and performed…
post-minimalist abounding with good tunes, tightly
constructed, wonderfully accessible… it is wonderful to have
a composer once again embracing dance forms in concert
music… Bigham has a remarkable gift for orchestral colour
and the RSNO under Picard clearly relish bringing the score
to life. It is so refreshing to hear a disc by a British composer
who is not afraid to write work for an audience to engage
with. Britten, who was so keen that his music should be
‘useful’, would be proud.’
British Music Society Magazine (Paul Jackson), 2017
Greenwood’s ‘Water’ released on ABC
The premiere recording of Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral piece,
Water (2012), has been released by ABC Classics, in a performance
by the group that commissioned the work, the Australian Chamber
Orchestra. The release, which couples Greenwood’s work with
Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, is the first classical vinyl release in
Australia for over 20 years.
Written following Greenwood’s stint as the ACO’s Composer-in-
Residence in 2012, Water is inspired by Philip Larkin’s poem of the
same name, which alludes to a glass of water ‘where any-angled light
would congregate endlessly’. Scored for strings, flutes, keyboard,
piano and two Indian tanpura, it takes the form of a continuous
15-minute movement.
Kristjan Järvi included Water in a programme he gave with MDR
Sinfonieorchester in Leipzig earlier this year.
Meanwhile, one of the high points of the opening events of the
newly-restored Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank will
be a ‘Varmints Live’ evening, taking place on 28 April. Meredith
and her band will be joined by the Southbank Sinfonia under Simon
Dobson in an electronic/orchestral reimagining of her award-winning
debut album, ‘Varmints’, plus a number of brand-new tracks.
24
PHOTO: DANNY ELFMAN © BRIAN AVERILL

A Concerto for Comedian and Orchestra
Vikki Stone has followed an unusual career path to date. Following
her training as a singer at the Royal Academy of Music in London,
she went on to develop her career as a stand-up comedian, singer,
actor and composer. Well-known as a comedy musician she has now
branched out even further, having penned a Concerto for Comedian
and Orchestra.
Originally workshopped at Wells Cathedral School (she is a former
pupil), she has now performed the 50-minute work at the Latitude
and Glastonbury Festivals, and most recently at the 2017 Edinburgh
Fringe where she was accompanied by the National Youth Orchestra
of Scotland Camerata under Ben Glassberg.
Mixed in amongst extracts of Lanyer’s long-form poem are texts
from various periods of historic turmoil, written or inspired by
women, which describe human suffering and persecution but which
emphasise the human capacity for humility in the face of tyranny –
themes that hold a profound universal resonance. These texts include
‘Gethsemane’ by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, ‘Mary Magdalene and the
Other Mary’ by Christina Georgina Rossetti and ‘Slave Auction’ by
Ellen Watkins Harper.
Writing about Invictus, Goodall said: ‘In writing a setting of the
Passion story, in the 21st century, I felt it important to look at
its ideas, its format and its message afresh… I wanted to reflect
musically on what this story has to tell us, now.’
A vocal score (0-571-53653-0) will be released in May.
Jessica Curry
As the title suggests, the Concerto is a vehicle for Stone’s own
comedic talents but it has been written in such a way that it can be
performed by other comedians, with the script able to be adapted
as necessary. It is in four movements, with a narrative, and it also
introduces the audience to the orchestra and issues of concert
etiquette! Highlights include ‘The Arrival of the Dishwasher’ and
there’s even a ‘March of the Latecomers’…
The Concerto is available in versions for large and small orchestra.
Contact us for perusal materials (musicfornow@fabermusic.com)
Howard Goodall’s ‘Invictus: A Passion’
Howard Goodall’s new work for chorus and orchestra, Invictus: A
Passion is to launch in both the US and UK later this year.
The 50-minute work premieres on 25 March (Palm Sunday) in
Houston, Texas, and is the result of a commission from long-time
Goodall advocates, St Luke’s United Methodist Church (Music
Director, Sid Davis). The composer will travel to the US to conduct
St Luke’s UMC Chancel Choir in the premiere performance.
Immediately prior to this, the work will be recorded for release
in August by The Sixteen’s Coro label, performed by the Choir of
Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford conducted by Stephen Darlington
with soloists from The Sixteen (Kirsty Hopkins and Mark Dobell)
accompanied by the The Lanyer Ensemble.
The same forces give the work’s European premiere at St John’s Smith
Square, London on 25 May (the day before the Goodall’s 60th
birthday), a performance that will also be broadcast on Classic FM.
Invictus: A Passion explores the role and perspective of women in
particular, and juxtaposes poems by various authors with the 1611
verse narrative of the biblical Passion by Æmelia Lanyer, one of the
first books published in the English language by a female poet.
Faber Music is proud to announce the release of Jessica Curry’s first
printed publication, ‘The Light We Cast’. The book comprised a
collection of three short unaccompanied choral pieces: ‘The Light We
Cast’ (from the acclaimed video game score Everybody’s Gone to the
Rapture), ‘So Let Us Melt’ (the title track from the eponymous video
game) and ‘Kiss the Bairns’ (from The Durham Hymns, a setting of
a poem by Carol Ann Duffy). It is on sale now in both printed and
digital formats (ISBN 0-571-54042-2).
Curry is best known as a composer for video games and presenter of
a show dedicated to the genre on Classic FM. Indeed her score for
So Let Us Melt has been nominated for several awards at the 2018
GANG (Game Audio Network Guild) Awards, taking place on 22
March. The Dear Esther Live UK tour, in which the titular video
game was played in real-time alongside musicians, recently concluded
after performances at the Sage Gateshead, Usher Hall, Liverpool
Philharmonic, The Anvil Basingstoke, Colston Hall, Bristol, and the
Brighton Dome. Future outings include the Holland Festival in June
and Musikfest Bremen in September.
PHOTOS: VIKKI STONE © EDWARD MOORE
25

Success for Faber Music composers at The Music Teacher Awards
On receiving the award, composer L’Estrange said: ‘I’m incredibly
proud of Wassail! From writing the work, recording and rehearsing
it across the country with hundreds of amazing students and their
brilliant teachers, to conducting the premieres – the whole process
has been a complete joy. Thank you to everyone at United Learning
and our supporters!’
Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy vocal score
ISBN 0-571-54038-4 | Price: £12.99
Faber Music is delighted to be the publisher of two winners of
2018 Music Teacher Awards. Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy
by Alexander L’Estrange won the public vote to receive the Best
Classical Music Education Initiative Award, sponsored by Classic
FM, and authors Heather Hammond & Karen Marshall won Best
Print Resource for their series The Intermediate Pianist.
Wassail! Carols of Comfort and Joy, which was commissioned by
United Learning and premiered in December, brought together
over 1,000 staff and students from across the UK. The piece was
created to inspire collaboration, musical excellence and joy through
choral singing. Performers from United Learning academies and
independent schools across the country took part in the premieres in
London and Manchester, side by side with acclaimed vocal ensemble
Apollo 5.
Media & Film
Composer news
The Intermediate Pianist by Heather Hammond and Karen Marshall
was been specifically written to help students progress through the
tricky intermediate stages of learning the piano, offering a ‘one-stop
shop’ for Grade 3–5 level pianists. Marshall said: ‘This intermediate
stage of learning the piano – and indeed any instrument – is a
notoriously tricky period, when many teachers may find students
dropping off, losing interest and quitting lessons. The Intermediate
Pianist tackles the issues faced by students and teachers through these
stages and provides a music curriculum to engage, excite, enthuse
and educate pupils, helping them to understand the music that they
are playing and developing them into well-rounded musicians.’
‘A fresh and ground-breaking approach.’
The Intermediate Pianist is available to buy now.
Book 1 | ISBN: 0-571-54001-5 | Price: £8.99
Book 2 | ISBN: 0-571-54002-3 | Price: £8.99
Book 3 | ISBN: 0-571-54003-1 | Price: £9.99
Synchronisation licensing news
Andrew Eales (pianodao.com)
The soundtrack recording of Carl Davis’s score for Ethel and Ernest,
the 2016 animated film based on the graphic novel by Raymond
Briggs, is shortly to be released on the Decca/Verve label. This
touching film has now won three international awards and been
nominated for six others – including, most recently, Best Voice
Performance (for actors Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent), Best
Long Form and Best Sound at the British Animation Awards which
take place in March.
Congratulations are due to Dan Jones, whose score for the BBC’s SS-
GB has been nominated for an RTS Award. Dan recently completed
his score for BBC Films’ feature On Chesil Beach, based on Ian
McEwan’s novel and directed by Dominic Cooke.
Since acquiring the copyright in Icelandic composer Þorkell
Sigurbjörnsson’s Heyr, Himna Smiður (‘Hear, Smith of Heavens’) in
2015, Faber Music has enjoyed particular success in licensing this
exquisitely beautiful choral hymn. It featured in two episodes of MGM
TV’s acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
(broadcast on Channel 4 in 2016). It is featured in a scene in Baltasar
Kormákur’s 2016 film Eidurinn (‘The Oath’), and was recently used by
Terence Malick in his documentary film Awaken.
‘Ecstasio’, the third movement of Thomas Adés’s Asyla has been used
in the Amazon comedy series Mozart in the Jungle. The storyline
of episodes 409 and 410 concerns the premiere of a new work by a
fictional composer – and Asyla is that new work!
26 PHOTOS: SAM JACKSON (CLASSIC FM), CATHERINE BARKER (UNITED LEARNING), ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGE
STILL FROM ‘ETHEL AND EARNEST’ © ETHEL & ERNEST PRODUCTIONS LTD 2016; THE HANDMAID’S TALE ©MGM TV

Bärenreiter focus: the music of Miroslav Srnka
With a body of work which combines intellectual rigour and a
searching human conscience, Czech composer Miroslav Srnka is
making waves across Europe. Last season saw the Czech premiere of
his Piano Concerto by Nicolas Hodges and Czech Radio Symphony
Orchestra under by Tomáš Netopil, and the world premiere of moves
03 by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice conducted by Pierre-
André Valade. A new work for the LA Philharmonic New Music
Ensemble and Susanna Mälkki will be premiered in November.
Salzburg focus
Six Srnka works were the principal focus of the 2017 DIALOGUES
Festival in Salzburg. The festival’s opening concert featured My Life
Without Me, a 35-minute monodrama for soprano and ensemble
inspired by Isabelle Coixet’s 2003 film of the same title. Johannes
Kalitzke directed the Austrian Ensemble for New Music with soprano
Laura Aikin. Elsewhere Srnka was programmed with other Czech
composers. Quatuor Diotima performed Janáček alongside two Srnka
works they recently recorded for a portrait disc on Naïve Records:
the quartet Engrams, and the Dvořák-inspired piano quintet Pouhou
vlnou (with Wilhem Latchoumia). More recently, in January Quatour
Diotima premiered a new quartet, Future Family, in Paris.
A flair for opera
A New Release from Faber & Faber
DEBUSSY – A Painter in Sound
Stephen Walsh
Central to Srnka’s creative life is a collaboration with the awardwinning
Australian playwright Tom Holloway. Make No Noise, their
first chamber opera was commissioned by the Bayerische Staatsoper
and supported by Aldeburgh Music through Jerwood Opera Writing
Fellowship, and premiered at the 2011 Munich Opera Festival. The
full-evening opera tells the story of a young woman who is caring for
a man seriously injured in a fire on an oil platform. She is almost deaf,
and he bears the blame for the death of his best friend. Both have
found a bearable way of dealing with their respective pasts – silence.
Make No Noise is the story of a coming together, the beginning of a
communication, a healing.
Srnka and Holloway’s next collaboration, South Pole, was
commissioned by the Bavarian State Opera and was premiered in
2016 with Kirill Petrenko conducting a cast starring Rolando Villazón
and Thomas Hampson. A ‘double opera’ in two acts, South Pole is
based on the legendary Antarctic race between Robert Falcon Scott
and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, it unfolds in a tremendous
arc of tension. The drama takes place in an atmosphere of deadly ice,
loneliness, the disorientation in storms and snow blindness in sunshine
– in short, the ups and downs of hope and despair.
Just a year after its critically acclaimed world premiere, South Pole
received further performances in a reduced and revised version at
the Staatstheater Darmstadt last May and June. The theatre’s artistic
director Karsten Wiegand directed a new production.
Faber Music is the exclusive UK hire agent for Bärenreiter
Claude Debussy was that rare creature, a composer who reinvented the language of music without
alienating the majority of music lovers. He is the modernist everyone loves. How did he achieve this?
Was it through the association of his music with visual images, or was it simply that, by throwing out
the rule book of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied, his music put beauty of sound above the
spiritual ambitions of the German tradition from which those rules derived.
Stephen Walsh’s thought-provoking biography, told partly through the events of Debussy’s life and
partly through a critical discussion of his music, addresses these and other questions about one of
the most influential composers of the early twentieth century. Elegantly written, with a wit and
transparency worthy of its subject, it assumes a serious interest on the reader’s part while largely
avoiding technicalities and musical jargon. Above all, the intention is to send the reader hurrying back
to the music, revisiting the familiar and exploring the unfamiliar.
Publication date 1 March 2018 | 0-571-33016-9
Hardback £20.00
PHOTOS: MIROSLAV SRNKA © VOJTECH HAVLÍK;
27

Choral Scores from Faber Music
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and Rachel Topham
Designed by Sam Wigglesworth
COVER IMAGE: TANSY
DAVIES © EDUARDUS LEE
Jonathan Harvey: Forms of Emptiness
In Jonathan Harvey’s imaginative and multi-layered Forms of
Emptiness, a main a cappella choir (often divided and employing
internal conductors) sings three poems by E. E. Cummings at
different speeds and tonalities, referencing numerous sacred musics
of the past from chant to Palestrina and even Messiaen. Against
these vivid flashes of joy and colour is set the Buddhist Heart Sutra
performed by a quartet of soloists in the original Sanskrit. At times
a speaking voice simultaneously intones the same text in English.
The resulting 13-minute work is thrillingly audacious, with joyous
clouds of voices coalescing effortlessly into mysterious, hushed
homophonies.
Score | 0-571-54013-9 | £6.50
Francisco Coll: Stella
Francisco Coll’s imposing 5-minute motet Stella was written for ORA and Suzi
Digby in 2016. Inspired by, and subtly drawing on a renaissance masterpiece –
Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Ave Maris Stella – this arresting work for 8-part choir is
ideal for disciplined ensembles looking for a new challenge. ‘Victoria has been
always a model for me as a composer’, says Coll. ‘I especially admire his music’s
textural clarity, the luminosity of its harmony, and the personal expression of its
melodic lines.’
‘Stella impressed with its emotional range, volatile dynamics and
transitory grinding harmonies.’
Score | 0-571-53652-2 | £3.99
Jonathan Harvey: Plainsongs for Peace and Light
Predominantly hushed and serene, Plainsongs for Peace and Light proved
to be Jonathan Harvey’s final work. It sees Harvey re-examining the very
fundamentals of his craft – superimposing lines of plainsong, relishing the
simple clash of note against note and creating rich, otherworldly sonorities
through an elaborate use of canon. Harvey was a composer who always
embraced and sought-out the very latest in musical technologies but the
simplicity of the a cappella choir became something of a constant to which
he returned throughout his life. Writing in Tempo, Paul Conway noted this
work’s ‘understated but extremely affecting, numinous power’. The piece is for
mixed voices of SATB in 16 parts.
The Times (Geoff Brown), 27 February 2018
Full Score | 0-571-52214-9 | £4.50
fabermusic.com