Fortissimo Spring 2018

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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’ <strong>2018</strong> 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 <strong>2018</strong>. 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
Page 1 and 2: FABER MUSIC NEWS — SPRING 2018 fo
Page 3 and 4: HIGHLIGHTS ‘I first met Donald in
Page 5 and 6: HIGHLIGHTS Tansy Davies Selected fo
Page 7 and 8: HIGHLIGHTS Julian Anderson celebrat
Page 9 and 10: TUNING IN Anders Hillborg The orche
Page 11 and 12: TUNING IN ‘Written on Skin’ in
Page 13: TUNING IN David Matthews ‘New Fir
Page 17 and 18: TUNING IN Carl Davis Bintley’s
Page 19 and 20: TUNING IN Carl Vine Melbourne resid
Page 21 and 22: TUNING IN Jonathan Harvey ‘Speaki
Page 23 and 24: NEW PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS Ins
Page 25 and 26: A Concerto for Comedian and Orchest
Page 27 and 28: Bärenreiter focus: the music of Mi

Fortissimo Spring 2018

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