PRESS RELEASE 24 March 2015

BBC National & Chorus of Wales perform the world premiere of resident composer Mark Bowden’s A Violence of Gifts

18 April 2015, 7.30pm, St David’s Hall, Cardiff

Mark Bowden A Violence of Gifts Holst The Planets

Martyn Brabbins conductor Elizabeth Atherton soprano Roderick Williams baritone BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales

On 18 April BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales perform the world premiere of A Violence of Gifts, a new work for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra by Resident Composer Mark Bowden, with libretto by Welsh poet Owen Sheers. conducts and is joined by soprano Elizabeth Atherton and baritone Roderick Williams as soloists.

A Violence of Gifts, composed by Bowden as an alternative to Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, is a first time collaboration between Bowden and Sheers. Bowden explains that since Plato suggested music and astronomy ought to be studied together as part of a classical education, many composers have been influenced by harmony’s relation to cosmology and the origins of the universe. Bowden’s work originates from the simple yet devastating scientific concept put forward by physicist Lawrence M. Krauss; that everything came from nothing. For this piece, Bowden and Sheers take inspiration from the latest scientific findings about the origins of the universe. Visiting the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on the Franco-Swiss border, Bowden and Sheers met particle physicists to discuss their latest research into the early universe, which provided the springboard for the piece.

Mark Bowden said, ‘The idea to create a work exploring the origins of light, matter and life, inspired by Haydn’s The Creation but from the viewpoint of the twenty-first century, had been in the back of my mind for some years prior to taking up my residency with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. It is so exciting that the piece, A Violence of Gifts, is finally becoming a reality! The challenges for me in this project have been writing for such large forces on such a big scale whilst staying true to my own musical language.

The piece is my biggest project to date and my first steps into writing for chorus and orchestra. During the writing process I have sought to balance my own musical ideas whilst ensuring that Owen’s text is presented in the best possible light. It was also important for me to make a piece that would be enjoyable for the chorus to spend four months working on! Finding the right text was incredibly important. I first came across Owen Sheers’ work at the Hay Festival, after hearing him give a talk, and was immediately struck by the vivid imagery and powerful themes in his writing. After telling him about my idea I was delighted that he was interested in collaborating. Thanks to the Jerwood Charitable Foundation’s commissioning of a new text we were able to work together. Researching ideas for A Violence of Gifts has been a journey between incredible extremes of scale; fusing the unimaginable vastness of the observable universe with the strange quantum world of quarks and gluons. Owen's beautiful words invite us to imagine what might have happened in the very first moments of the creation of the universe, whilst simultaneously contemplating the Hadean conditions of the early Earth that would eventually lead to the emergence of life.'

The programme is completed with a performance of Holst’s vivacious and powerful Planets suite. Written between 1914 and 1916 The Planets is a seven movement orchestral suite with each movement named after a planet of the Solar System and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst.

Tickets: £10 - 32 BBC National Orchestra of Wales Audience Line: 0800 052 1812 No fees apply to tickets bought through the BBC National Orchestra of Wales Audience Line. St David’s Hall Box Office: 02920 878 444 St David’s Hall applies a Ticket Service Charge of £2.95 per transaction.

Family Tickets: 12.50 for one adult and 1-2 children £18 for two adults and 1 – 4 children

For further press information please contact Rebecca Driver Media Relations web: www.rdmr.co.uk email: [email protected] │ [email protected] │[email protected] Tel: 020 7247 1894

Notes to Editors Mark Bowden is a British composer of chamber, orchestral and vocal music and came to public attention when he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize for his first BBC orchestral commission Sudden Light in 2006. His work has been performed at festivals and events throughout the UK, Europe and the US and can be heard regularly on radio stations around the world. He was the first composer-in-residence at Handel House Museum and is founder member of the critically acclaimed Camberwell Composers’ Collective. His recent projects have included the Vale of Glamorgan Festival premiere of his percussion concerto Heartland, which also toured the UK as the score for a new National Dance Company of Wales work choreographed by Eleesha Drennan.

Owen Sheers is a Welsh poet, author and scriptwriter and has published two poetry collections, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill which won a Somerset Maugham Award. His debut prose work The Dust Diaries, a non-fiction narrative set in Zimbabwe won the Welsh Book of the Year 2005 and his first novel, Resistance has been translated into ten languages. His theatrical writing includes his libretto for Rachel Portman’s oratorio, The Water Diviner’s Tale, which premiered at the for the BBC Proms in 2007. Sheers also regularly presents arts and literature programmes for TV and Radio.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales is one of the UK’s most versatile , with a varied range of work as both a broadcast orchestra and the national orchestra of Wales. The orchestra’s adventurous programming is driven by the artistic team of Principal Conductor Thomas Søndergård, now in his third year with the orchestra, Conductor Laureate Tadaaki Otaka and Resident Composer Mark Bowden. As part of its commitment to contemporary music, the Orchestra appointed B Tommy Andersson as its Composer-in-Association for 2014/15.

Generously supported by the Arts Council of Wales, BBC NOW is Orchestra-in-Residence at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, and presents a season in Swansea. They perform a busy schedule of live concerts, touring throughout Wales and the UK. Almost all of their performances can be heard on BBC radio. Regularly invited to perform at festivals throughout the UK, BBC NOW appears biennially at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and in several concerts annually at the BBC Proms. Learning is at the heart of the Orchestra’s work; recently this has included the development of an innovative concert format designed for Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences; and a unique resource pack distributed to every primary and special school in Wales. The Orchestra was seen on cinema screens across the UK in October 2014, as part of the BBC’s landmark Ten Pieces project, inspiring children to get creative with classical music. The Orchestra’s home is BBC Hoddinott Hall, a world-class concert hall and recording studio based in the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay. From this base, the Orchestra continues its work as the UK’s foremost soundtrack orchestra, working with programmes including Doctor Who, Hidden Kingdoms, and The Crimson Field.

BBC National Chorus of Wales is one of the leading large mixed choruses in the UK. While preserving its amateur status, the Chorus works to the highest professional standards under Adrian Partington, Musical Director since 1999. Formed in 1983, it works regularly alongside BBC National Orchestra of Wales, as well as performing concerts in its own right, and appearing with other orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The Chorus is made up of over 120 singers, with a mix of amateur choristers, alongside students from both the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and Cardiff University, so preserving a youthful sound. It concluded its 30th-anniversary celebrations with Elgar’s The Kingdom at the First Night of the 2014 BBC Proms and Duruflé’s Requiem in a Prom with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in July.

Other highlights of the Chorus’s 2013/14 season included a number of sell-out concerts at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, including the world premiere of Paul Mealor’s Celtic Prayers. The Chorus was also nominated for a Grammy award in 2014, for a recording of works by Parry, conducted by Neeme Järvi. No strangers to television or radio appearances, the Chorus can be heard on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru. Based at BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff Bay, the Chorus performs annually at the BBC Proms, where recent highlights have included performances of Havergal Brian’s ‘Gothic’ Symphony in 2011 and Bernstein’s Mass in 2012.