Harrison Birtwistle Composer

Sir Harrison Birtwistle CH was born in Ensemble Modern and the London Accrington, England in 1934 and studied Sinfonietta, was premiered in 2003. The clarinet and composition at the Royal following year brought first performances Manchester College of Music, making of The Io Passion for Aldeburgh Almeida contact with a highly talented group of Opera and Night's Black Bird contemporaries including Peter Maxwell commissioned by Roche for the Lucerne Davies, Alexander Goehr, John Ogdon and Festival. A disc featuring Night's Black Elgar Howarth. In 1965 he sold his Bird has since won the 2011 Gramophone clarinets to devote his efforts to Contemporary Award and the 2012 BBC composition, and the following year Music Magazine Premiere Recording travelled to Princeton as a Harkness award. Fellow where he completed the opera Punch and Judy . This work, together with His opera The Minotaur received its Verses for Ensembles and The Triumph of premiere at the Royal Opera House Covent Time , firmly established Birtwistle as a Garden in 2008 and has been released on leading voice in British music. DVD by Opus Arte. It has since returned to the Royal Opera House for a revival in The decade from 1973 to 1984 was early 2013. In 2009, his music theatre work dominated by the monumental lyric The Corridor opened the Aldeburgh tragedy The Mask of Orpheus and by the Festival and toured to the Southbank series of remarkable ensemble scores now Centre and the Bregenz Festival, with performed by the world's leading new further performances in New York and “ A great original ... one of the music groups: Secret Theatre , Silbury Air Amsterdam. Angel-Fighter for voices and most gifted composers of his and Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae ensemble was premiered at the Leipzig Perpetuum . Large-scale works in the BachFest in June 2010, his new Concerto generation ” following decade included the operas for Violin and Orchestra was premiered by The Times Gawain and The Second Mrs Kong , the the Boston Symphony and Christian concertos Endless Parade for trumpet, the Tetzlaff in 2011, as was In Broken Images piano concerto Antiphonies , and Earth jointly commissioned by MITO and the Dances . London Sinfonietta in celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the unification of Birtwistle's works of recent decades Italy. include Exody , premiered by the Chicago Symphony and Daniel Barenboim, Panic Recent compositions include Fantasia which received a high profile premiere at upon all the Notes (2012) for the Nash the Last Night of the 1995 BBC Proms with Ensemble, Gigue Machine (2012) for an estimated worldwide audience of 100 Nicolas Hodges, The Moth Requiem (2012) million, and The Shadow of Night commissioned by Netherlands Chamber

commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra Choir, BBC and Danish Radio, Songs from

and Christoph von Dohnányi. The Last the same Earth (2013) commissioned by

Supper received its first performances at the Royal Philharmonic Society,

the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin and at Construction with Guitar Player (2013) for Glyndebourne in 2000. Pulse Shadows , a Julian Bream Trust, Responses: Sweet meditation for soprano, string quartet and disorder and the carefully careless (2014), chamber ensemble on poetry by Paul the concerto for piano and orchestra Celan, was released on disc by Teldec and premiered in his 80th birthday year won the 2002 Gramophone Award for best (commissioned by Bavarian Radio, London contemporary recording. Theseus Game , Philharmonic, Casa da Musica Porto and co-commissioned by RUHRtriennale, Boston Symphony Orchestra), The

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Harrison Birtwistle Composer

Cure (2015) which acts as a companion at King's College, University of London chamber opera to The Corridor, co- (1994-2002) and is currently Visiting commissioned by Aldeburgh Music and Professor of Composition at the Royal the Royal Opera House, The Silk House Academy of Music in London. Recordings Sequences for the Arditti Quartet (2015) have been released on the Decca, and Five Lessons in a Frame for the Deutsche Grammophon, Teldec, Signum, London Sinfonietta and Ensemble NMC, CPO, Metronome and ECM labels. . Musikfabrik (2016).

Current composing plans include Deep Valid for use until 1 September 2017 For updated versions please contact Time commissioned by the Staatskapelle [email protected] Berlin and the BBC, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and chamber works including the song dear dusty moth for Das Neue Ensemble Hannover commissioned by Philharmonie Cologne.

The music of Birtwistle has attracted international conductors including Stefan Asbury, David Atherton, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Peter Eötvös, Daniel Harding, Elgar Howarth, Vladimir Jurowski, Oliver Knussen, Ingo Metzmacher, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Simon Rattle, David Robertson, Franz Welser-Möst and Ryan Wigglesworth. He has received commissions from leading performing organisations and his music has been featured in major festivals and concert series including the BBC Proms, Salzburg, Glyndebourne, Holland and Lucerne Festivals, Stockholm New Music, Wien Modern, Wittener Tage, and the South Bank and Barbican Centres.

Birtwistle has received many honours and prizes, including the Grawemeyer Award in 1986 and the Siemens Prize in 1995; he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1986, awarded a British knighthood in 1988 and made a Companion of Honour in 2001. In 2013, he was asked to judge the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award and later in 2015, he received the Wihuri Sibelius prize for music and a BASCA Award for Responses: Sweet disorder and the carefully careless . He was Henry Purcell Professor of Music