October 2017

Dean at Glyndebourne & beyond Brett Dean’s new Hamlet won acclaim at its Glyndebourne premiere in June, tours in the UK this autumn and travels to the Adelaide Festival in March.

Shakespeare’s classic play has been successfully put it on” – discussions are already underway recast by composer Brett Dean as a powerful with leading opera houses in Europe and North and multi-layered opera, attracting acclaim from America to schedule territorial premieres. press and public alike at its premiere in June. The Glyndebourne staging of Hamlet by Neil Armfield Matthew Jocelyn’s for Hamlet is a masterly featured a starry cast led by Allan Clayton in the title distillation of the various versions of Shakespeare’s role, , Sarah Connolly, Rod Gilfry text, reduced from 30,000 words into a two-act and John Tomlinson, with the London Philharmonic opera. The dramatic focus points towards family under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski. dynamics rather than affairs of state, allowing Dean to probe characters and inner conflicts while walking the tightrope between tragedy “…it rises to the challenge and comedy. set by Shakespeare’s great “A magnificent new opera onHamlet. .. Forget play…” Cumberbatch. Forget even Gielgud. I haven’t seen a more physically vivid, emotionally affecting or psychologically astute portrayal of the Prince of The production was webcast, screened in than Allan Clayton gives in this sensational production. UK cinemas and returns this autumn on Dean’s skill at creating a supercharged orchestral subtext Glyndebourne’s tour, visiting Canterbury, Norwich, to each scene is matched by his immense theatricality.

Milton Keynes and Plymouth. Hamlet will be Quite apart from his unerring pacing of the story, he also Hubert Smith Photo: Richard screened on BBC4 TV and a DVD is planned for creates at least a dozen moments where sheer sonority Hamlet at Glyndebourne with Jacques Imbrailo (), John Tomlinson (Gravedigger) and Allan Clayton (Hamlet) future release on the Opus Arte label. The Armfield alone sends shivers up the spine.” staging will be a highlight at the Adelaide Festival “…a dark, complex, sometimes wryly postmodern slant in March when Hamlet receives its Australian “Brilliant music, rapturously received... Dean is rare on the play… there are no limits to where Dean finds his premiere with Allan Clayton repeating his star among contemporary opera composers in understanding “…a fascinating spectrum music – amplified chattering noises, singing groups from turn as the moody Dane. The Times summed up how to present people singing together – the forceful of colour and unerring the balconies, and a virtuoso array of orchestral effects Hamlet as “an opera audiences will want to hear duets, ensembles and choruses are highlights of the like the gravedigger’s otherworldly whistling.” The Sunday Times again, and the world’s theatres will queue up to score...” Daily Telegraph virtuosity…”

Arnesen Jenkins requests for a full SATB version, thus including Chin on Rattle tour male voices. In response to this, I considered signs with B&H new Decca contract changing the orchestration, expanding the original instrumentation of string orchestra to that of the Norwegian composer ‘Romantic’ period of music history, resulting in a Kim André Arnesen has basic orchestra of 84 musicians before adding a signed a new publishing galaxy of ‘world’ percussion. contract with Boosey & Hawkes. Specialising in “There is a school of percussion playing that choral music, Arnesen has is rarely heard with an orchestra, even in a growing reputation on contemporary works, but which is featured on Photo: Priska Ketterer both sides of the Atlantic Symphonic Adiemus, and that is hand percussion Simon Rattle has commissioned a new work from thanks to his accessible which is common in ‘world music’. Some of the Unsuk Chin for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s melodic style and rich expressive vein. Latest instruments used are: from Africa the shekere, tour to the Far East this autumn, a major musical works include the Holy Spirit Mass for choir, djembe and the caxixi which is also found in journey in the conductor’s final season with the piano and strings, composed for the National South America; from Afro-Cuban culture, congas, orchestra. Chorós Chordón is dedicated to Rattle, Lutheran Choir in commemoration of 500 years maracas and ‘shaker’; and from Arabic culture, who has conducted a number of Chin’s works over since the Reformation, receiving its premiere riq and darbuca. The drum patterns generated the past 15 years including Acrostic-Wordplay, in Washington DC on 22 October with further here are more generic than specific to these the Violin Concerto and Le Silence des Sirènes. performances in Minneapolis and St Paul. cultures and employ a multitude of techniques Following its premiere at the Philharmonie in Berlin to create a varied palette of sounds and colours.” on 3 November, the new score travels to Hong Born in 1980 and now resident in Oslo, Arnesen Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Kawasaki and . grew up in Trondheim, singing as a chorister at the Nidaros Cathedral and studying at the Music The title Chorós Chordón is literally translated Conservatory. He composed his first works for Karl Jenkins has signed a new exclusive contract “Adiemus can now be as Dance of the Strings, though the music performance by the choirs at the cathedral, the with Decca and the first recording under the sung in concert by mixed proliferates beyond the to the full St Olaf Festival and for the award-winning TV agreement is Symphonic Adiemus, released last orchestra. The ten-minute work also carries special Christmas in Norway. His output includes month (Decca 5793828). This new incarnation voice choirs.” Karl Jenkins hints of celestial music with the cosmological a Requiem, Magnificat, anthems, carols and of Adiemus rescores hits from his best-selling theme continuing from Chin’s recent Le Chant secular choral works. series for SATB choir and full symphony orchestra, des Enfants des Étoiles. As the composer notes, making the music available for concerts by The autumn tour programme also includes “physical and biological processes have been a In the USA Arnesen’s music has been performed mixed choirs for the first time. Selections from numbers from The Peacemakers and a full constant source of inspiration, and a number of at Carnegie Hall in conjunction with DCINY, by Symphonic Adiemus were also heard in concert performance of The Armed Man: A Mass for my scores offer musical and poetic reflections on the St Olaf Choir in Minnesota, at the Oregon at the Royal Festival Hall in London last month, Peace in the lead up to the centenary of the end natural phenomena and our physical relationship Bach Festival, and at The White House for touring in the coming months to Symphony of World War I hostilities in 1918. One of the with the cosmos”. president Barack Obama. A recent album, Hall in Birmingham and the Bridgewater Hall in most popular works by a living composer, The collecting his music written as composer-in- Manchester. A new vocal score of Symphonic Armed Man has received over 2000 performances Chin’s music is profiled in Melbourne this season, residence for the Denver-based choral ensemble Adiemus is published this month. around the world and has been a fixture on the with the Australian premiere of Mannequin Kantorei, is released by Naxos later this year. For classical charts ever since the CD was released for orchestra last month and a feature at the further information visit www.kimarnesen.com. Since it was first heard in 1994, Karl Jenkins’s in 2001. Metropolis festival in April. Adiemus has captured the imaginations of music Contemporary Choral sampler lovers worldwide thanks to its unique combination A new 2CD sampler has been released exploring of classical principles with the flavours of ethnic the Boosey & Hawkes Contemporary Choral music. The first release in the series,Adiemus: Inside this issue… Series, with 73 audio clips from 19 composers. Songs of Sanctuary, has sold over 1.5 million Music ranges from well-established international albums worldwide. The new Symphonic Adiemus figures such as Henryk Górecki, Einojuhani draws on numbers from the first three CDs in the Rautavaara, Karl Jenkins and James MacMillan series – Songs of Sanctuary, Cantata Mundi and to the finest emerging composers of our time Dances of Time – all of which topped the charts. including Will Todd and Kim André Arnesen. As well as recasting the new version for traditional The sampler features music for mixed choir mixed SATB choir, Jenkins has rescored the and upper voices and highlights latest choral accompaniment for full symphony orchestra: Clyne Birtwistle Chen Andriessen publications for the Christmas season. To Interview explores Deep Time Orchestral works Theatre of the request a free copy of the sampler visit “The original was scored for female singers only creative impulses revealed in Berlin travel from China World released www.boosey.com/CCSsampler. but over the years I’ve been inundated with beyond music and London to the West on Nonesuch Coming to orchestral composition from an This very evocative imagery was a natural point electroacoustic background has also brought of departure for an orchestral work, with all the a different perspective historically. colours and textures at hand. Movement, such as running, and the sounds of the air and waltzes How do you view the pre-compositional translate very naturally into music. phase? You are just as likely to be talking to choreographers, or painting ideas on a wall, than How was the experience of creating the BBC sketching on manuscript. Proms theme music from your Last Night The process may begin with a conversation with commission Masquerade? an artist or a choreographer, an image, a poem It was a great honour, and an exciting process, – many things. Recently I’ve been exploring a to re-compose Masquerade for the TV and more visual approach, which I’ve found helpful for radio themes for the BBC Proms, and I hope envisioning the overall structure and trajectory of to compose more music for film going forward. a piece before starting to write the actual notes. Being a very visual composer, I find the experience In my home-studio I pin lots of images or sketches fascinating – creating sounds and music that to the wall, sometimes within a timeline, and then complement a moving image. I start composing the actual music at the piano. Your new orchestral work Beltane has a distinctly My work subsequently moves between the piano Scottish background. Where do you see yourself and my laptop, using Finale and/or ProTools, as positioned between the UK and US? the music evolves. Beltane is inspired by the dramatic Beltane Fire Cross-Atlantic composer A lot of your creative impetus comes through Festival which is held in Edinburgh annually to collaborating with other artists. How did this celebrate the death of Winter and the birth of work with Three Sisters, your new concerto for Summer, and was commissioned as part of Anna Clyne mandolin and strings? a series of new works inspired by Scotland. Collaboration is often at the core of my work It was a great opportunity to recall my time at describes her curious route to and Three Sisters was inspired by mandolinist Edinburgh University, during which time I attended Avi Avital, whose incredible virtuosity, dexterity Beltane. Although I live in , I still feel symphonic music, fusing a rich and sensitivity as a performer and interpreter very connected to my home roots in the UK and range of artistic impulses. provided a great starting point. Avi shared a wide am thankful that my music is being performed on range of recordings and scores of existing works both sides of the ocean. My music often includes Photo: Javier Oddo for mandolin, which was very helpful to get a elements of English folk music, but it is also You sometimes seem genuinely surprised to be a and adding reverb and delays, by means of the sense of its capabilities. It was a challenge influenced by the current new music scene in the symphonic composer. How did your career evolve? orchestration. This work became my window onto to write for what is essentially quite an intimate US, and specifically that of New York. I’ve composed music from a young age, though the orchestral world, leading to a residency with and intricate instrument, and to find a way I never had a grand plan of “being a composer” – the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2010- for the string orchestra to complement This Midnight Hour (2015) 12’ it is just something that I’ve always enjoyed doing. 2015. I’ve been very fortunate to receive support and not overpower it. for orchestra As soon as I started playing the piano, I also began from some renowned conductors such as Marin What attracts you especially to nocturnal imagery Italian, Austrian, Swiss and to compose and the two felt very intertwined. Alsop who have nurtured my career as a such as in your recent orchestral work This UK premieres this season When studying at Edinburgh University I took symphonic composer. Midnight Hour? Three Sisters (2017) 15’ an exchange year abroad at Queen’s University This Midnight Hour was inspired by a very short for mandolin and string orchestra You seem to have consciously avoided the in Canada, and it was there that I had my first poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez: Premiere: 7 August 2017 baggage of music history. Does this help you take composition sessions, followed later by lessons Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg a fresh approach? Music– with Julia Wolfe at the School of Music Avi Avital/Kremerata Baltica in New York. I’ve a wide array of musical influences ranging from a naked woman Bach and Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Björk running mad through the pure night! Beltane (2017) 15’ To start with my music was primarily electro- but, when I’m composing, I focus my attention for orchestra And the imagery from Baudelaire’s poem acoustic – combining recorded, processed and upon what I’m trying to express. I try to follow my Premiere: 9 December 2017 Harmonie du Soir with lines such as: layered sounds, with live instruments. My first own voice and tend to avoid listening to too much City Halls, Glasgow substantial orchestral piece, Rewind, applied the music of a similar nature to my own, so that I keep Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/ same processes, such as stretching, compressing, an open canvas in my imagination. Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo! Thomas Dausgaard

Little The Conjured Life in Cabrillo Birtwistle Deep Time premiere David T. Little’s most “…it turned out to be an overwhelming emotional ambitious orchestral work journey. The second movement became a relentlessly to date was premiered pounding depiction of doom… until Harrison’s gentle at the Cabrillo Festival of Asian-flavoured gamelan language suddenly washed Contemporary Music in all of the anger and hostility of the real world away.” August under the baton Classical Voice America of new artistic director “Little’s score gave the impression of a bold conjurer Cristian Macelaru. The

Photo: Merri Cyr indeed, with its pounding sounds and tempos 16-minute score, cast suggesting an emphatic purpose. In the midst of the in three continuous movements, is a centennial conjuring came Asian melodies and flavours that would tribute to composer Lou Harrison, a founding make Harrison smile.” Santa Cruz Sentinel father of the festival and an inspiration to Little. Distinctive colours are provided by an Indonesian JFK, Little’s opera exploring the president’s last bell tree, Korean folk drums and a washtub, hours in Fort Worth before his assassination, moving towards Harrison’s beloved gamelan receives its Canadian premiere at the Opéra sonorities in the final movement. de Montreal in January.

Gruber Mackey

composer festival returns to PAL Photo: Hanya Chlala/Arena

Steven Mackey travelled to Harrison Birtwistle’s new orchestral work, Deep varied and coloured. There are pulsing Stravinskyan Sydney for the Australian Time, received first performances under the baton repetitions, cascades of chattering woodwind, Boulez- premiere of his symphonic- of Daniel Barenboim in Berlin and London in like toccatas of tuned percussion and long-limbed scale orchestral work June and July. The 23-minute score, dedicated solos, led off of by , which float over Mnemosyne’s Pool, first to the memory of Peter Maxwell Davies, was transparent webs of strings.” The Guardian commissioned by the Berlin Staatskapelle and performed under the baton “The work was inspired by the vast slowness BBC Proms and, following performances at the of Gustavo Dudamel in Los of geological time, and the way this slowness is Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, travelled with Angeles in 2015. This was occasionally riven by sudden catastrophes and orchestra and conductor to the . the third major Mackey slippages. The piece itself revealed a more human scale, Barenboim has championed Birtwistle’s music Photo: Konserthuset Stockholm work to be performed by with a melancholy solo arousing memories Photo: Jane Richey across two decades, including the premiere of the Sydney Symphony of Birtwistle’s earlier processionals, and moments of HK Gruber is featured at the 2017 Stockholm Exody with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra and David Robertson in recent years, pulsating energy in marimbas and plucked cellos. Konserthuset’s International Composer Festival. the premiere staging of The Last Supper at the following the piano concerto Stumble to Grace It was grandly impressive…” Daily Telegraph Berlin Staatsoper, and performances of The 16 November, 19.00 / 18 November, 15.00 and the violin concerto Beautiful Passing. Triumph of Time. Piano Concerto (Swedish premiere) / “Mnemosyne’s Pool explores music’s reliance on Charivari / Dancing in the Dark memory…The title refers to the pool in Hades guarded “Birtwistle was inspired to compose this magnificent “…one of Birtwistle’s Emanuel Ax/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic/Sakari Oramo by Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, in which the dead avant-garde orchestral geology by the Scottish geologist James Hutton, by the idea that “we find no vestige of finest orchestral 19 November, 15.00 bathed to recall earthly memories, as opposed to River a beginning, no prospect of an end” in the rocks of Frankenstein!! Lethe where they immersed to forget… it demonstrated achievements…” this earth, only a state of constant alteration… Musical HK Gruber/Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra Mackey’s deft handling of dense orchestral textures, The Guardian complex cross rhythms and imagination for gesture.” layers of rock grate against each other, interrupted by 22 November, 19.00 / 23 November, 18.00 Sydney Morning Herald violent percussion outbursts and shrill wind sounds – into the open… (Swedish premiere) / magma and scree, hurled musically into the air… Deep “Birtwistle’s fingerprints are all over this new work – the Northwind Pictures (Swedish premiere) “…the first movement,Variations , presents a winding Time ends with a great percussion finale. The four fascination with layers of time, the growling echoes of Colin Currie/Royal Stockholm string figure that becomes hazed and distorted through percussionists received a tremendous ovation for this, the distant past, the rhythmic tread of the passing years, Philharmonic/HK Gruber its repetitions, gritty textures, and colourful reworkings of but louder still was when Daniel Barenboim invited the each as distinctive as ever…” Financial Times instrumentation… The finale,Echo , opens with glittering 82-year-old composer onto the stage.” Der Tagesspiegel 24 November, 19.00 percussion, repeated plucked harmonics from the double The German spotlight on Birtwistle continues in Cello Concerto / Manhattan then harp creating a sense of rhythmic stability “…an immensely powerful, sometimes breathtakingly the coming season with the first performance Broadcasts / Timescapes against the surging ensemble… by now the music beautiful work… Birtwistle may use an orchestra in which there of In Broken Images with Ensemble Modern Matthew Barley/Swedish Chamber seemed full of memories, allusions and vague, false low-pitched instruments – , bass and contrabass and Paul Daniel in Cologne and a tour of Panic Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard memories, the mass of sound finally disintegrating into , contrabassoons – are emphasised, but the by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie conducted

www.konserthuset.se/en Photo: Lucerne Festival shimmering transparency.” Limelight Magazine landscapes that the music traverses are wonderfully by Ingo Metzmacher. Glanert Leyla and Medjnun Kats-Chernin Melbourne premieres

Elena Kats-Chernin’s residency with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has produced two new works, the harpsichord concerto Ancient Letters written for Mahan Esfahani and the concert-opener Big Rhap, both premiered in May. The title Ancient Letters refers to the first known documents of the Sogdian people who lived across what is today Uzbekistan, the place where Kats-Chernin was born. The opening movement Tiger Cub refers to a woman featured in the letters and is launched by the harpsichord alone in what according to the composer “is a portrait of this feisty, desperate, beautiful, deserted woman the way I see her.” This is followed by Musk Trade, a diptych depicting the valuable aromatic scent and the busy deal-making along the Silk Road. Photo: © Steven Siewert

“…the ‘ancient letters’ The ten-minute Big Rhap puns on Liszt’s were found along the Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 and the idea of ‘wrapping up’ that composer’s virtuosity in a short Silk Road, dating from orchestral piece. Neither a transcription nor an the 4th century…” Elena Kats-Chernin arrangement, it is more an attempt to capture Kats-Chernin’s memories of her mother playing

Photo: Thomas M Jauk the piano work when they lived in Yaroslavl in The final movement recalls memories of the Russia: “In writing this piece I am transferring my Detlev Glanert’s Leyla and Medjnun in his new version at the Hannover Staatstheater composer when she lived in the fabled desert city early memories of the spectacle, the merriness of Samarkand and the sense of displacement and a hate-filled mob, and the lovers are violently and the hyperbole of what I saw and heard in my The newly revised version of Detlev Glanert’s yearning for home that is communicated strongly separated… Glanert’s music is entirely at the service living room to paper!” one-act chamber opera Leyla and Medjnun in the Sogdian letters. “In Goodbye Samarkand was unveiled to acclaim at the Staatstheater in of the emotional structure of the story: from soaring I have written a little ballad to home – the place, “A well-filtered reminiscence of childhood memories Hannover in May. Returning to his first opera, intimacy to expressive ordeal, it portrays the age-old to paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, you can never go about her mother playing the well-known Liszt Hungarian the composer described how he “reworked themes of Romeo and Juliet or Orpheus. Glanert’s to again. It is the winds that feature first in this Rhapsody No.2, the piece has most of the Kats-Chernin the vocal lines, the proportions of dramaturgy, crossover with the ancient Persian musical tradition is movement. The melody came to me as I imagined trademarks: motor rhythms, simple melodies, lashings of instrumentation and dynamics. I corrected it like particularly exciting… he adds an oud, an oriental lute, looking back at a desert horizon and realising that orchestral excitement, just enough hints at the past a teacher with a student, so that hardly a single which enters with constantly circling motifs, commenting life is different forever; a mix of misgivings, hopes to bring near-recognition during the relentless forward page is untouched, but tried to preserve the on the events… There was long applause and many and longings.” drive…” Sydney Morning Herald sense, idea and atmosphere of the 1985 work.” bravos…” Neue Presse Hannover “The libretto: a story as old as mankind. Leyla and The German premiere of Glanert’s Requiem for Medjnun are inseparable. Only their families have Hieronymus Bosch is at the Elbphilharmonie in anything against their liaison – then the clan becomes Hamburg on 28 November. MacMillan The Sun Danced

Newspaper coverage spread the word, attracting Chen from Beijing to the West over 50,000 to travel to the town, many seeing the sun dancing across the heavens. Three works with celebrities, politicians or scavengers on the streets To celebrate the centenary of this miraculous orchestra by Qigang – all will have to come to an end.” event, the Shrine of Fátima has commissioned Chen have their James MacMillan to create a new work, The premieres in Beijing Maxim Vengerov is soloist in Chen’s new violin Sun Danced, for soprano, choir and orchestra, this season followed concerto La Joie de la souffrance, premiered receiving its premiere in Fátima on 13 October by performances at the closing gala concert of the 20th Beijing followed by a performance in Lisbon two days from an extensive list Music Festival on 29 October with the China later. The 15-minute score will be performed by of international co- Philharmonic and Long Yu. Other commissioners Elisabete Matos and the Gulbenkian Choir and commissioners. include the Melbourne Symphony, Shanghai Isaac Orchestra conducted by Joana Carneiro. At the A new set of orchestral Stern International Violin Competition, New Jersey centre of the work is an orchestral fantasy in the variations, Itinéraire Symphony and Orchestre national du Capitole form of an instrumental dance describing the solar d’une illusion, is de Toulouse. The work is based on an ancient and spiritual spectacle. Photo: Zhang Qi unveiled on 18 October Chinese melody dating from the Tang Dynasty by the National Centre for the Performing Arts and explores the relationship between joy and MacMillan describes how “The Sun Danced Orchestra under Lü Jia in Beijing, travelling suffering. Chen views these seeming opposites will receive its premiere in the Basilica at Fátima on tour to Carnegie Hall in New York and San as “a matter of ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’, inseparable and exactly 100 years after the Miracle of the Sun. The Francisco. Future performances are planned by hence all things should contain both. Like loss and miraculous events made this unremarkable little the Philharmonie Zuidnederland and the Orchestre gain, they are bound to balance out.” Portuguese town famous throughout the world, national du Capitole in Toulouse and at the and provided the focus of an amazing ongoing Philharmonie de Paris next season. Next spring brings a new work for chorus and spiritual phenomenon. The texts are taken from orchestra with a solo part for traditional Chinese the Apparitions of the Angel and of Our Lady, and The itinerary of the title sees Chen sensing opera singer, setting an 11th century text by also from documented verbal expressions from parallels between the compositional process and Su Shi, a polymath and statesman from the members of the crowd present at the Miracle of the journey of life itself: “We start off with good Song Dynasty. Following performances in Beijing the Sun. The work is written in three languages – wishes and faith in pursuit of the perfect ending. on 2 and 3 March by the NCPA Orchestra and of the Fátima Shrine, Photography Section Photo: Archive Latin, English and Portuguese and also includes texts from hymns associated with Fátima – Yet unpredictability is always lurking somewhere Chorus under Alexandre Bloch, the work is The three children who experienced divine visitations along the way, waiting to deviate us from our performed by the BBC National Orchestra of near Fátima in Portugal 100 years ago Sanctissimae Trinitatis and Ave Theotokos.” Wales at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival and path. Life as a play on stage, success and failure, New MacMillan works this season also include by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. glints and glamour, the seeming authenticity of When three shepherd children living near Fátima in a Saxophone Concerto for Amy Dickson with Portugal in 1916 reported angelic visitations, few premiere by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra could have predicted the sequence of events that next April and future performances by the would transform the town into a major pilgrimage Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Aurora site. The following year the children described Orchestra. MacMillan’s Concerto appearances by the Virgin Mary – “the lady receives territorial premieres in the USA and more brilliant than the Sun” – telling them that a Germany, St Luke Passion in Denmark and divine miracle would occur on 13 October 1917. Belgium and Stabat Mater in the Netherlands.

Stravinsky 100 Funeral Songs

Igor Stravinsky’s Stravinsky’s continuing fascination as the 20th rediscovered early work century’s most iconic composer. Funeral Song has reached Funeral Song was composed by the 26-year- the milestone of 100 old Stravinsky as an orchestral memorial to his performances either given teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov but disappeared since its premiere last after its only performance in 1909. It returned to December or planned the light thanks to the musicological sleuthing of for the coming season. Dr Natalia Braginskaya when the St Petersburg Conductors who have taken Conservatory library was moved for renovations. the rostrum for first national The rediscovery offers a missing link between performances are a host Stravinsky’s earliest works and his ballet The Photo: Joel Chester Fildes

of Stravinsky specialists 1910, Wikimedia Commons Photo: Stravinsky, Firebird, which was to launch his international including Valery Gergiev, career with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Available Light, the classic minimalist collaboration to Berkeley, Philadelphia, Berlin, Hamburg, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simon Rattle, Charles Dutoit between composer John Adams, choreographer Athens, Paris and most recently the Manchester and Riccardo Chailly. The 100 performances The first recording ofFuneral Song is planned for Lucinda Childs and architect Frank Gehry was International Festival as part of the 70th birthday span four continents and more than 25 countries, release this autumn and a study score of the work revived in in 2015, travelling onwards celebrations for John Adams. with the rapid take-up of the score indicating is now available on sale. Xenakis Bieito stages Oresteia New publications Béla Bartók James MacMillan Piano Anthology Piano Trio No.2 Piano score Parts and Piano score 979-0-051-24691-5 £22.99 979-0-060-13297-1 £28.99

For Children Vol.1 and 2 Meredith Monk Piano score Piano Album II 979-0-051-24692-2 £13.99 Piano score 979-0-051-24688-5 £14.99 Michael Daugherty Bay of Pigs for guitar and strings Fantasio Score and parts Opéra-comique in three acts 979-0-051-10595-3 £33.99 (Paris version 1872) Vocal score Mount Rushmore 979-0-2025-3472-4 £52.00 for choir and orchestra Vocal score Les Roses du Bengale 979-0-051-09778-4 £9.99 6 valses sentimentales Piano score Ivor Gurney arr. Finzi 979-0-2025-3473-1 £13.50 Photo: Sandra Then Four Songs Michael Wächter as Orest in Calixto Bieito’s new production of Xenakis’s Oresteia at Theater Basel for voice and string orchestra Astor Piazzolla Full score 25 Piazzolla Tangos The controversial Spanish director Calixto Bieito a war, that is, in a civil war… so he stands side by 979-0-060-13302-2 £10.99 Cello and Piano score unveiled his new stage version of Xenakis’s side with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and György 979-0-051-10807-7 £17.99 Oresteia in Basel in March. This classic music Ligeti, both of whom lived through the war. They Magnus Lindberg theatre work morphed through a sequence of were able to describe the trauma which war leaves Acequia Madre Steve Reich versions in the composer’s lifetime, and was here in its wake like nobody else. I believe that this legacy and Piano score Cello Counterpoint presented in his final version for , chorus is so important because of this, and it is good that 979-0-060-12839-4 £12.99 version for cello octet and chamber ensemble combined with actors we can still work with it. Viola and Piano score Study score speaking lines from Aeschylus’s play in modern 979-0-060-13307-7 £14.99 979-0-051-21433-4 £14.99 vernacular, with a running time of 90 minutes. “Xenakis loved music and mathematics greatly, and used both in the cause of peace. And as far as James MacMillan Isang Yun With its use of microtones, glissandi Aeschylus is concerned: I think this text Concerto String Quartet No.1 and extreme registers Xenakis’s writing contains everything that still has meaning Reduction for oboe and piano Score and parts for chamber ensemble has a stark today. The modern family comes to life in 979-0-060-12332-0 £24.99 979-0-2025-3474-8 £41.99 ritualistic power, fronted by solo cello it again, the relationships between people and a pair of percussionists. Both the and the violence. In my opinion, Xenakis chorus, declaiming in Greek, and the created an impressive combination of orchestra amplify the ancient rhythms very important things, with the poetry of with additional percussion. The male Aeschylus, his own music and the themes New recordings soloist, Holger Falk, provided two which they talk about, the hatred, the scenes of extraordinary virtuosity, love, the compassion, the aggression and George Antheil Simon Laks telling of the soothsayer Cassandra what democracy means today. It is a text Symphony No.4 String Quartet No.4/Divertimento/ BBC Philharmonic/ Concertino/Piano Quintet

and of the goddess Athena sitting in Photo: Gilbert Rancy for eternity.” judgement upon Orestes, requiring John Storgårds ARC Ensemble wild leaps from normal register into falsetto. “Xenakis was first and foremost interested in the ancient Chandos CHAN 10941 Chandos CHAN 10983 The action was played out in front of the Greek metres, which do not take into account stressed Basel Sinfonietta under Franck Ollu with and unstressed syllables as today… Even stranger is the Dominick Argento Peter Maxwell Davies video projections linking the drama to archaic, merciless tone of his music. Distant from any The Andrée Expedition/ String Trio contemporary events. more restrained emotion, fear and horror are elementally From the Diary of Virginia Woolf Hebrides Ensemble experienced through dark and threatening sounds.” Brian Mulligan/Timothy Long Delphian DCD 34178 Suddeutsche Zeitung Naxos 8.559828 “…a deeply moving Ned Rorem theatrical poetic “…a single cello is positioned right in the middle of the Brett Dean Our Town action on the stage, while a three-piece percussion Dramatis Personae Monadnock Music/Gil Rose masterpiece.” Opera Now ensemble forms a musical counterpart to this on another Håkan Hardenberger/ New World NW80790 rostrum. The instrumental sounds of the evening are sharp, Gothenburg Symphony/ In an interview in the Badische Zeitung Bieito direct and brittle. Glissandi tear away the firm ground John Storgårds Mark Simpson described Oresteia as “quite simply a magnificent from under the feet, harsh drumbeats strengthen the BIS 2067 After Avedon piece. It comes from a man who was involved in emotions...” Die Deutsche Bühne Gould Piano Trio Detlev Glanert NMC DL201709 (download) Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch Mark-Anthony Turnage Royal Concertgebouw Remembering Andriessen Theatre of the World Orchestra/ London Symphony Orchestra/ Netherlands Radio Choir/ Simon Rattle “Theatre of the World is built around the life and Markus Stenz LSO Live 0306 multifaceted achievements of the 18th-century RCO Live 17005 (download) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who was once called the ‘last man who knew everything’… The opera takes the aged Kircher on a time-travelling journey back through the important events of his life, on which he is guided by a boy who may be an angel or an Carter Late works on new CD apprentice devil, even perhaps a reincarnation of the scholar himself as a young man…” Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard appears as soloist in six of the Carter works on the new CD, including “…a dizzying work that’s vast in its scope yet unnervingly Interventions and Soundings with the BBC claustrophobic… Andriessen is the great argumentative Symphony Orchestra and the diptych of Dialogues opera composer of our day… He is a clear-eyed Dutch with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, sceptic and humanist who surfs the alarmingly narrow with both ensembles under the expert direction arteries that separate life from death, wisdom from belief, of Oliver Knussen. Percussionist Colin Currie joins the known from the unknown… Andriessen’s music Aimard as sparring partner in Two Controversies compels from start to finish.”Los Angeles Times and a Conversation, and the disc ends fittingly with the premiere recording of Carter’s final piano This is the eighth Nonesuch release featuring trio Epigrams. Nonesuch has released the premiere recording Andriessen’s music in a relationship that has of ’s most recent stagework, spanned 25 years. The composer’s earlier “Elliott Carter’s productivity in the final decade of his life Theatre of the World, recorded live at its first stageworks include (1985-88), recently was extraordinary… all this music, whatever its scale, performances in Los Angeles in 2016 (Nonesuch staged by Heiner Goebbels at the Ruhr Triennale, has the sinewy energy and constant ability to reinvent 561784). Reinbert de Leeuw conducts the Los Park Avenue Armory in New York and in Buenos itself that was typical of everything he wrote from the Angeles Philharmonic with a cast including Leigh Aires, ROSA: the Death of a Composer (1993- 1980s onwards… The pieces here provide a perfect Melrose, Lindsay Kesselman and Cristina Zavalloni. 94) and Writing to Vermeer (1998-98) – both Ondine has released an outstanding CD introduction to the spare, regularly surprising world that Following the premiere staging at Walt Disney in collaboration with , and La of late works by Elliott Carter performed by his last works inhabit…” The Guardian Concert Hall, the production by Pierre Audi and the Commedia (2004-08) based on Dante’s classic leading interpreters of his music (ODE 1296-2). Quay Brothers travelled to the Holland Festival for narrative poem. Gramophone introduced the disc with a major “In the case of Elliott Carter “late works” really do mean performances by Dutch National Opera. feature on the composer headed “Elliott Carter’s “late”. The earliest work here, Dialogues for piano and Andriessen future highlights include the German grand finale”, noting that “in his last three decades, chamber orchestra, was composed when he was Theatre of the World, subtitled by the composer premiere of Writing to Vermeer at the Theater der the US composer’s productivity only increased as 95. The last, Epigrams for piano trio, a collection of as ‘a grotesque in nine scenes’ and setting a Stadt Heidelberg and a new orchestral work for the once-painstaking process of composing was characteristically terse miniatures, dates from the year libretto by Helmut Krausser, crosses boundaries the New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden replaced by a new-found fluency and freedom.” of Carter’s death at the age of 104 in 2012. His music between opera, music theatre and multi-media in 2018/19, commissioned as part of the Kravis The magazine’s review of the CD predicted retained its intellectual grip right to the end and an all-star and is similarly wide-ranging in its allusiveness and Prize for New Music awarded to the composer that “there are unlikely to be any better discs line-up of performers does it proud.” use of multiple languages. As Opera described it: last year. of contemporary music this year.” Financial Times

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