Philip Venables

Tag: 2014 and earlier

  • BBC Radio 3, In Tune, with Phoenix Piano Trio

    BBC Radio 3, In Tune, with Phoenix Piano Trio

    Wonderful news: one of the movements (the Scherzo) from my new piano trio, Klaviertrio im Geiste, will be performed live on BBC Radio 3 on Friday afternoon, 10th June, from about 4.45pm.  It’ll be performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio as part of a performance and interview about their Beyond Beethoven series.

    They very nicely commissioned me last year to write this new trio, as a companion to Beethoven’s Ghost trio, which they’ll perform together with my piece at The Forge in Camden, London, on Wednesday evening, 8th June, and in Oxford at theHolywell Music Room on Saturday 11th June.

    It feels like this piece is a big compositional step forwards for me: lots more process-based musical structure and much more clarity and simplicity than earlier pieces.  It feels like a very positive change. So I’m particularly excited to hear it realised.

    UPDATE:

    You can listen again on iPlayer for the next 5 days – click here.

    The Phoenix are on from the beginning, and the bit with me in starts from about 12:45 minutes in.

  • ‘FLIPP’ premiere.  Unerhörte Musik, Berlin.

    ‘FLIPP’ premiere. Unerhörte Musik, Berlin.

    Well – a few weeks ago I went along to the premiere at Unerhörte Musik in Berlin, of my new short saxophone duo, Flipp, which I wrote for Christoph Enzel and Adrian Tully.  I have to say that the piece was written very quickly, after coming back from a slew of concerts in London just the week before the concert. It pretty much only uses two notes for most of the piece.  They played it BRILLIANTLY – and i was pretty happy with the piece.  I haven’t put up the info page here for it yet, but there is a recording of this piece here.  It works really good with headphones, to get the stereo effects between the two players. (In live performance they stand at opposite sides of the stage.) Check it out.

    Flipp, for two saxophones (2011) by philipvenables

    Christoph also played my Metamorphoses after Britten on soprano sax – rather wonderfully too.  The acoustic in the BKA Theater in Berlin is as dry as a bone, which affects how resonant and harmonic the slow movements sound, but the fast movements in there sounded punchy and clear and really energetic.  I really hope Christoph and i can record them properly sometime, to go alongside the wonderful recording of Melinda Maxwell playing the oboe version of the pieces.

    Anyway – I look forward to working with these two amazing players again soon!