QNotes 72 (23-9) 24/9/07 5:20 pm Page 2 Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited October 2007 2007/3 Carter Included in this issue: Rattle opens Berlin towards 2008 Chin Elliott Carter celebrates his 100th birthday on Munich premieres Alice 11 December 2008 and plans are in place in Wonderland opera season with Lindberg for international celebrations, featuring the most recently completed scores by this elder statesman among Magnus Lindberg’s new master. Adopting its title from the final “Again and again the huge orchestra releases American sunrise chorus of Schoenberg’s epic cantata bolts of energy… Lindberg’s sun does not smile orchestral work, Seht die mildly upon its worshippers. Instead, it fires up the composers. Major Gurrelieder, the work explores the tipping birthday events are Sonne, provided a dramatic point from late-Romanticism to modernism. music and lends it a lasting resplendence.” Berliner Morgenpost so far confirmed in Boston, New York, opening to the Berliner “…an extravagant and glittering piece on a grand London, Paris, Philharmoniker’s season. “Sharp as a knife – scale, full of bold gestures and big effects… The second movement ends with a solo cello cadenza Berlin, Cologne, a tour de force”Der Tagesspiegel Following the August premiere of Seht die so lengthy that it is almost a miniature concerto, a Amsterdam, Turin, Sonne, commissioned by the Stiftung mournful lament full of ethereal harmonics. The Basel, Vienna, “…a work that liberally mixes the exquisite colours third movement is the work’s darkest, opening in Lisbon, Porto and Berliner Philharmoniker in association with of the orchestra… and that in its luminescent the San Francisco Symphony, Simon Rattle the lower depths of the bass registers and rising Photo: Meredith Heuer Gothenburg. excess is indeed reminiscent of Schoenberg’s to a howl of anguish before settling into a pensive Kats-Chernin tours the work with the orchestra to Gurrelieder: as a revolving sphere of sound in James Levine conducts the premiere of Interview reveals her chorale and slipping unobtrusively into silence.” Carnegie Hall in New York on 13 November. which opulence follows upon opulence. Financial Times Carter’s Horn Concerto on 15-17 November influences and interests Jukka-Pekka Saraste will conduct the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the Clarinet and violin concerti travel principal horn James Sommerville. The same Canadian premiere in February 2008. The forces tour the concerto to Carnegie Hall in Other summer highlights for Lindberg San Francisco Symphony under Sakari 2008 and Somerville gives the European included a rapturously received BBC Proms Oramo gives the first West Coast premiere at a ZaterdagMatinée concert at performance of the Clarinet Concerto with performance on 19 June 2008. the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on Kari Kriikku as soloist. The Times described 19 January 2008 with the Radio Kamer Programmed at its premiere with Mahler’s the work as “a perfect concerto, perfectly Filharmonie conducted by Peter Eötvös. Symphony No.9, Lindberg’s work is scored performed….” and the Daily Telegraph for the same forces as that of the Viennese praised its “fabulous glittering orchestral Daniel Barenboim will premiere Carter’s new palette, and glowing harmonies… It was 15-minute work for piano and orchestra, heartening to see a packed Albert Hall Interventions, in December 2008 with James audience rising to its feet and cheering a Levine conducting the Boston Symphony contemporary piece.” Orchestra. The work is co-commissioned by MacMillan the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Turnage Hall and the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin. Orchestral tribute to the “If there’s any justice With his fecundity continuing unabated, city of Chicago Sacrifice it will soon be as Carter has also recently completed 3 Mad-regales for six solo voices, Sound oft-performed as Fields for strings, and new instrumental on tour Mozart’s concerto” miniatures for piano, oboe, viola and double James MacMillan’s new opera, The The Times on Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto bass. Sacrifice, premiered by Welsh National In recent months the Violin Concerto, Opera in Cardiff on 22 September, tours to Photo: Hanya Chlala/Arena PAL premiered last year, has been heard for the seven UK cities over the coming months: first time in Copenhagen, London and Liverpool (16 October), Southampton Helsinki with soloist Lisa Batiashvili, whose (24 October), Llandudno (31 October), new recording has just been released on Bristol (7 November), Oxford (14 November), Sony Classical (88697 129362). The Birmingham (21 November) and Sadler’s concerto’s Swiss, German, Spanish and Wells in London (26 November). A full Panufnik Norwegian premieres are scheduled during round-up of reviews of the opera will appear the 2007/08 season. For news of Carter events in the centenary Andriessen in the February 2008 issue. CD sampler year please visit www.boosey.com/carter "… a wonderfully effective concerto, entirely Sailing to the City of Dis Your performances can be added to our in Los Angeles typical of Lindberg's recent music yet thrillingly “…a new opera with direct in its impact. Batiashvili's playing was web calendar by emailing us at explorations CD Sampler exceptional, too; other violinists will surely rush to [email protected] instant appeal.”Daily Telegraph take up the work, but she has set a standard that For programme notes on Carter’s complete will be hard to match." The Guardian The Sacrifice’s libretto by award-winning output visit www.carter100.com poet and novelist Michael Symmons Roberts is the latest in a series of collaborations with MacMillan. Drawing on The Mabinogion, the ancient collection of Welsh folktales, the opera tells of a ruler’s PANUFNIK ultimate sacrifice to safeguard the future of www.boosey.com his war-torn, faction-ridden country. The performances are conducted by MacMillan and directed by Katie Mitchell. Andrzej new-look website launched SELECTED WORKS Boosey & Hawkes has released a new promotional CD sampler of the music of Andrzej Panufnik (1914-91), exploring the works of this important Polish composer. There is plenty to discover beyond Panufnik’s popular Sinfonia Sacra in an Photo: Neil Bennett output that chronicles his experience in war- Michael Symmons Roberts (librettist), James MacMillan, Katie Mitchell (director) torn Poland, survival as a composer under and John Fisher (General Director, WNO) at Socialist Realism, and life as an exile after workshops for The Sacrifice. his dramatic escape to the West in 1954. Beyond the autobiographical influences, his MacMillan has extracted three interludes compositions set out to reconcile emotion from the opera to form a 20-minute and intellect, reaching back to a near- symphonic suite which he will conduct at medieval fascination with metaphysics and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on 22 geometry. The music on the disc ranges February with the BBC Philharmonic. from Apollonian serenity to the propulsive Further MacMillan premieres in 2008 include rhythmic writing that has proved so attractive to the dance community. the full-evening St John Passion performed Our new-look website is now live, featuring both English and German, an updated design and by the London Symphony Orchestra and improved navigation, including quicker links to deeper level material. Chorus under Colin Davis (27 April), and The new sampler is available to performers, a new work for the Takács Quartet to be promoters and choreographers: please Our shop area, offering sheet music from all publishers, CDs, DVDs, ringtones and premiered at the South Bank Centre (21 May). contact [email protected]. downloads will be relaunched later this autumn. QNotes 72 (23-9) 24/9/07 5:20 pm Page 3 Elena Kats-Chernin Chin Alice in Munich discusses her musical influences and interests The first night of Unsuk Chin’s new opera, Alice in “Chin’s sound world is seductively cavernous, suggesting Her new basset clarinet concerto, Ornamental Air, is performed Wonderland, provided the opening of the Munich not only the magical rabbit hole down which Alice tumbles Opera Festival on 30 June with a fair measure of but also the psychological crevasses beneath the surface of in the USA, Europe and Australia by Michael Collins in 2008. controversy. Some of the gala audience, stockful of Carroll’s writing... Within a few minutes, the entire orchestra is glittering weirdly: familiar shapes hover at odd angles; age- dignitaries and official guests, seemed increasingly old harmonies materialize from clouds of timbre and texture; perturbed - perhaps objecting to some of the You grew up in Uzbekistan, can be complex or simple and childlike snatches of song appear and disappear, like the alienation techniques in Achim Freyer’s colourful and body of the Cheshire Cat... The wondrous thing is how studied in Moscow and it will influence the way the characteristic production - and reacted vociferously at effortlessly Chin changes pace, from delicacy to Germany, and settled in piece will turn out. This, of the curtain call. But as the Los Angeles Times noted grotesquerie, from cutesiness to dementia. Everything flows Australia. How do these course, meshes with the initial in a review headed ”Alice in Wonderland triumphs in organically.” The New Yorker cosmopolitan ingredients come commissioning parameters like Munich”, the second night of the run ”proved a hit... together in your music? instrumentation, proposed When the performance was over, thunderous