BCMG 2010/11 Season Launch Concert

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Berkley Street, Birmingham
United Kingdom

BCMG plus

Piano: Rolf Hind
Soprano: Sarah Leonard
Conductor: Richard Baker

The opening concert of our 2010/11 season has a double focus – a new work by Simon Holt, and the special talents of pianist Rolf Hind and soprano Sarah Leonard. It also features a work by the hugely influential German composer Helmut Lachenmann.

Rolf Hind opens proceedings with Simon Holt’s solo piano piece Nigredo, a work written specifically for him. Described by Olivier Messiaen as ‘a great pianist’, Hind is also a burgeoning composer. City of Love is one of a number of compositions by Hind inspired by his many trips to India and subsequent fascination with Hindi culture and language. Written for piano, soprano and cello, it sets poetry in Braj Bhasa, a predecessor of modern Hindi. A jasmine petal, a single hair, seven mattresses, a pea for solo piano is a more recent piece and this will be just its second UK performance.

Simon Holt’s dramatic and often enigmatic music was first performed by BCMG in 1990, the highly successful Lilith being one of our first ever commissions. Twenty years on, we present another Holt premiere. A Knot of Time, conducted by Richard Baker, sets five poems by Federico García Lorca – a hugely influential poet for the now Spain-based composer – and features Sarah Leonard, one of Britain’s most acclaimed sopranos.

Hind and Leonard complete the concert with Helmut Lachenmann’s Got Lost, written for them in 2008 – Lachenmann’s first work for voice and piano. Got Lost sets texts drawn from Nietzsche’s poem Der Wanderer and a Portuguese poem by Fernando Pessoa. This extraordinary composer’s use of extended techniques – tapping and rustling on the wood of an instrument, clicks, hisses and yelps – creates sounds of extreme originality and rarefi ed beauty.

There will be a pre-concert talk with Simon Holt and Rolf Hind at 6.30pm, open to all ticket holders, lasting approx. 30 minutes.

Please visit www.bcmg.org.uk for more details

Simon Holt : Nigredo
Rolf Hind : City of Love
Simon Holt : A Knot of Time
Rolf Hind : A jasmine petal, a single hair, seven mattresses, a pea
Helmut Lachenmann : Got Lost