Ensemble Adapter gave the world premiere of Numbers 91-95 by me (text by Simon Howard) at the Wien Modern Festival on 10th November 2011, in the Casino Baumgarten in Vienna.
I’m really happy with the piece and the performance, and so were the Ensemble. They performed it again the following week at the wonderful Borusan Müsik Evi venue as part of the new music series.
Tagged Berlin, borusan, Ensemble Adapter, Flute, harp, istanbul, numbers 91-95, Simon Howard, speaker, tape recorder, vienna, Wien Modern
I just received a copy of the Signals volume of new music for oboe. It looks great! It features my Metamorphoses after Britten in it, and I also designed the snazzy front cover! (not bright pink, this time..)
The volume was edited by the amazing Melinda Maxwell, for whom I wrote my Metamorphoses, and John Stringer an oboist-composer. It’s now available on musicroom.com - though I don’t know why they haven’t put up my lovely cover yet! :-)
If you play the oboe, go out and buy it now – it’s got a great selection of stuff in it. And not all of it that difficult either. Very suitable for Grade 7-8 upwards to university/conservatoire/professional, I think.
I’m glad to say that I’ve just finished my latest piece, numbers 91-95 for the Berlin-based Ensemble Adapter. The piece is a setting (of sorts) of the poem by the same name by the British poet Simon Howard, whose work I really love. His poetry blog is here.
Ensemble Adapter are a fearless new music ensemble that aren’t afraid to make unusual concert presentations, including video, speaking, improvisation and conceptual performance. This piece by no means pushes the boundaries of what they have done in the past, in this sense, but it certainly does push the boundaries of my work, in that it is for speaker, two tape recorders, flute, harp and woodblock.
My numbers 91-95 is not really a setting in the traditional sense… more just a reading of the poem with musical accompaniment, and some verses of the poem replayed on old cassette tapes, which echoes the themes of dreaming and forgetting in the poem.
The premiere is on 8th November at the Wien Modern festival in Austria… I’ll keep you posted!
Tagged 2011, Ensemble Adapter, numbers 91-95, Simon Howard, Wien Modern
Flipp, for two saxophones (2011) by philipvenables
Year: 2011
Duration: 3 minutes
Orchestration: two of the same saxophones
Flipp was first performed on 24th May 2011 at BKA Theater, Berlin, Adrian Tully and Christoph Enzel, as part of the Unerhörte Musik series.
Posted in Chamber, Solo, Works
Tagged Adrian Tully, BKA Theater, Christoph, Duo, Flipp, Saxophone, Unerhörte Musik
Year: 2011
Duration: 12 minutes
Orchestration: piano, violin, cello
I –[Tacet]
II – Adagio
III – Scherzo
IV – Rondo
Klaviertrio im Geiste was commissioned by the Phoenix Piano Trio, with funds from the RVW Trust, to be performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio in several concerts alongside Beethoven’s Klaviertrio in D-Dur, op.70/1 “Geistertrio” (“Ghost” Trio).
In the last few years I have written pieces based on music by Dowland, Bach, Mozart and Britten, and I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with these older musical forms, bringing them far away from their original modes of expressions – sometimes even subverting them – but maintaining some kind of essence of what was there. In a similar vein, I took most of the raw materials for Klaviertrio im Geiste (notes, tempo ideas, gestures and figurations, etc.) from the slow movement of Beethoven’s Geistertrio – the music that gave his trio this nickname. Out of this I have fashioned what I would consider to be a ‘reflection’ of the classical form: miniature movements with simple and transparent textures, few ideas and a certain neatness. The sonata form first movement is, at the moment at least, tacet.
Im Geiste means, in German, ‘in one’s mind’s eye’ or, more literally, ‘in spirit’, as well as ‘der Geist’ having the literal meaning of ‘ghost’. So Klaviertrio im Geiste means ‘Piano trio in spirit’. I thought it a fitting pun for the provenance of this piece.
Klaviertrio im Geiste (2011) – II – Adagio by philipvenables
Klaviertrio im Geiste (2011) – III – Scherzo by philipvenables
Klaviertrio im Geiste (2011) – IV – Rondo by philipvenables
Tagged Beethoven, Classical, Phoenix Piano Trio, Piano Trio, Sholto Kynoch
Year: 2009
Duration: 5 minutes
Orchestration: solo cello + va.cl.hn
Len’s music was first performed on 4th September 2009 at Kings Place concert hall, London, by Endymion. It was commissioned by Endymion for the Kings Place Festival 2009. The cellist was Jane Salmon, accompanied by Mark van de Wiel, Stephen Stirling and Robin Ireland.
I am currently writing an opera based on Boris Vian’s play, The Empire Builders, a Cold War farce about the consequences of giving free reign to paranoia. The plot concerns a family fleeing from an unknown loud noise in the house they share with a faceless wretched figure, whom they mindlessly torture. Eventually the father, having killed his wife and daughter through fear, is left facing the mysterious figure, and throws himself out the window.
Len’s music is an instrumental condensation of ideas for this final scene, with the cello taking the role of the father, Len. The continuous simple, slow melody portrays him in sorrow, reminiscing and slowly going mad.
Duration: 7’30″
Orchestration: string quartet and clarinet (in the last five bars)
K was written for the Sounds New MozartNOW Festival in Canterbury in 2006, the 250th Anniversary of Mozart’s birth. It was first performed on 4th December 2006 in St Peter’s Church, Canterbury by David Campbell, Kathy Shave, Lizzie Umpleby, Rachel Dyker and Julia Vohralik. It has since been revised in 2010 and performed in the revised version by the Windrush Chamber Players and Endymion.
Ideally it is performed immediately before Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K581.
K takes the first two bars of the Clarinet Quintet in A major, Kv. 581, by W. A. Mozart (1756 – 1791) and pulls them apart, exposing, reworking, fragmenting, reflecting and elaborating their harmony and gesture. The resulting short piece is almost catatonically restful, instructed ‘tranquilizing’ at the top of the score. The original two bars of Mozart’s are only heard at the very end, almost in echo.
Tagged Clarinet Quintet, K581, Mozart, Sounds New Festival, String Quartet
Duration: c. 16 minutes (two movements are currently being revised)
The first movement (2003) of this String Quartet was first performed by the Artea Quartet (Thomas Gould,Rhys Watkins, Benjamin Roskams, Ashok Klouda) at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester on 10th January 2004, as part of the International String Quartet Festival, QuartetFest 2004. It was given its London Premiere in the Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, on April 23rd 2004 as part of the OmaggioFestival celebrating the life and music of Luciano Berio. The complete quartet (2006) was given its world premiere by The Duke Quartet at The Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London, on 5th December 2006, and performed again in the following days at The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh and The Gate, Cardiff.
The first movement of this quartet can be performed on its own, but the other movements should only be played as part of the complete quartet.
The first movement (2004) is dedicated to Rizwan Ifrahim.
I – Wildly, folk-like (c. 8’30”)
II – Steady, relaxed (c. 4’15”)
III – Fast, nervous (c. 2’20”)
This piece, my first String Quartet, divulges all of its music within the striking, folkish viola solo at the very beginning. All three movements begin with the same gesture, and each has similar elements of violence and lyricism, but the first movement is far more organic and freely flowing than the later movements. The music moves through several different harmonic and rhythmic zones, always carried by a continuation of the passionate opening viola melody. A faster, more violent central section, characterised by stabbing chords and aggressive rising figures, breaks down to a broad and pained melody, blurred between the upper strings. Finally, a more reflective and sinuous coda returns the viola melody back to its home.
In contrast, the nature of both the second and third movements is far more mechanical and single-minded than the first. The second movement is almost hypnotic in its repetitive use of a rising scale. As the scale is passed around and varied, elements of the first movement are brought to bear: long, winding melodies high up in the cello and an intense violin solo towards the end. The third movement is a relentless but brief moto perpetuo, drawing out motivic elements from the first movement and transforming them into mechanical patterns. The violence, stabbing chords and the rapid unison crescendi make up the fabric of this concluding movement, and over the top of the constant buzzing energy, the upper strings re-frame melodies from the first movement in a new context, returning the music to the unison A-flat that started the work.
For more information about this piece, contact UYMP.
