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Welcome to the Composition:Today New Music Concert Listings.
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7 Oct 
 
8 Oct 
 
9 Oct 
 
10 Oct 
 
11 Oct 
 
12 Oct 
 
13 Oct 
 
14 Oct



United Kingdom
 Saturday, July 14, 2012 at 8pm 
Harmonielehre @ Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park
Peckham Rye Multi-Storey Car Park

United Kingdom
http://www.trosp.me/harm

Tickets: Free
TROSP Orchestra

This July the 100 piece TROSP Orchestra returns to Peckham Rye Multi-Storey car park to play John Adams' HARMONIELEHRE: a huge orchestral piece which Adams says was inspired by a dream in which he "watched a gigantic supertanker take off and thrust itself into the sky like a Saturn rocket".

John Adams : HARMONIELEHRE

15 Oct



United Kingdom
 Sunday, July 15, 2012 at 19:30 
London Symphony Orchestra / Valery Gergiev
Barbican Hall, London
Barbican, Silk Street, London EC2
United Kingdom
020 7638 8891
http://www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing

Tickets: £10 / 15 / 19.50 / 27 / 35
Valery Gergiev conductor
Renée Fleming soprano*
London Symphony Orchestra


La mer is an ambient, rich depiction of the ever-changing face of the sea. Originally composed for soprano Renée Fleming, Dutilleux said while writing Le temps l’horloge (Time and the clock), that for inspiration he ‘constantly thought of her voice’s character, of her power of lyrical expression’. Shéhérazade tells the tale of how one lucky maiden saves her head night after night by keeping the sultan enthralled with her stories of Arabian legends. Petrushka is the magical story of a straw and sawdust puppet that comes to life complete with human thoughts and emotions.


Change of programme
Please note the change of programme from some early listings

Pre-concert performance
6 – 6.45pm, Barbican Hall
Guildhall Artists at the Barbican
Ravel Piano Trio performed by the Rhodes Piano Trio
Free entry



Claude Debussy : La Mer
Henri Dutilleux : Le temps l’horloge
Maurice Ravel : Shéhérazade
Igor Stravinsky : Petrushka

16 Oct



United Kingdom
 Monday, July 16, 2012 at 7:15 pm - 9:00 pm 
The Turn of the Screw
Buxton Festival
3 The Square, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AZ
United Kingdom
01298 70395
http://www.buxtonfestival.co.uk/
lee@buxtonfestival.co.uk

Tickets: £10 - £48
NI Opera

Opera in a prologue and two acts.

Libretto by Myfanwy Piper, after the story by Henry James, sung in English
Based on Henry James’s classic ghost story, Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece is a compact and chilling tale of the supernatural.

When an eager young governess is sent from London to look after two orphaned children in a remote English country house, she quickly discovers that the apparent idyll is not as it seems. Mystery envelops the house as sinister spirits from the past return to reveal a terrible secret of innocence lost, and we begin to wonder who is really possessed, the naïve young governess or the two strange children in her care?

This tense and compelling tale, combined with a scintillating score of radiant and haunting music, creates one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most gripping operas.

NI Opera, an ambitious and imaginative new company, has assembled a wonderful cast for this new production including Fiona Murphy, Andrew Tortise, Giselle Allen and Yvonne Howard.



Benjamin Britten : The Turn of the Screw

17 Oct



United Kingdom
 Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at 6:00PM 
BBC Proms Plus Portrait 2012: Saariaho
Royal College of Music, London
Prince Consort Rd, London SW7
United Kingdom

Tom Service presenter
Kaija Saariaho in conversation
London Sinfonietta Academy Ensemble


The London Sinfonietta Academy Ensemble are joined by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and broadcaster Tom Service to present a BBC Proms Plus Portrait.

In Tocar, the title of which translates, from Spanish, as 'to touch, to play', Saariaho explores 'how two instruments can touch each other'. Meanwhile, Serenatas, a collection of five small pieces, the order of which is chosen by the performers, reflects on material from two of Saariaho's orchestral works Mirage and Notes on Light.




Kaija Saariaho : Tocar
Kaija Saariaho : Serenatas

18 Oct



Austria
 Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 7.30 p.m 
Solaris
Bregenz Festival

Austria
http://www.bregenzerfestspiele.com

Tickets: 40-95 EURO


Responsibility, guilt, memory

What would it be like if some unimaginable force were able to give material form to all our repressed emotions and thoughts? To resurrect, from our memories, people who once were close to us – as beings that confront us with our past and yet remain permanently out of reach and beyond our comprehension? What would happen to us as a result? That is exactly what Solaris is about, the famous novel by Polish science fiction author Stanis³aw Lem published in 1961, and which the German composer Detlev Glanert has now turned into an opera.


Solaris is the story of the psychologist Kelvin, who is dispatched to a space station which is orbiting the distant planet Solaris and on which strange things have been happening. Arriving on board, Kelvin is straight away warned about weird apparitions of the kind that relentlessly plague the crew members. None of the crew seem able to rid themselves of the "guests". It isn't long before Kelvin's personal phantasm appears in the form of his former wife, Harey, who killed herself at the age of nineteen, and who now starts revisiting him.


It is the planet's gigantic ocean which makes all these strange beings materialise, projecting the crew members' feelings of guilt into their lives once again, with persistence and indifference. Haunted by guilty memories, the rational scientist Kelvin is increasingly beset by irrational thoughts and feelings. In the end he is the one most deeply affected by the nightly visitations of beings which the plant bodies forth from the crew members' own memories.





Further performances
22 July - 11.00 a.m.
25 July - 7.30 p.m.

Introductory talk in the Festspielhaus will be start one hour before performance




Detlev Glanert : Solaris

19 Oct 
 
20 Oct



Ireland
 Friday, July 20, 2012 at  
Hilltown 5th New Music Festival
Hilltown New Music Festival
Castlepollard
Ireland
http://www.hilltown.ie/buytickets.html
http://www.hilltown.ie

Tickets: http://www.hilltown.ie/buytickets.html
Quiet Music Esnemble, David Toop, Barbara Luneburg, Hilltown Ensemble, Strange Attractor, Kirkos Ensemble, Karen Power.

John Cage:
Child of Tree, Chorales, Four, Four4, Four6
Ryoanji , Inlets, Music for Clarinet
ASLSP, Radio Music, One10
Sculptures Musicales
Music also by: Oliver Knussen, Norah Constance Walsh, Sinéad Finegan, Conal Ryan, Trevor Furlong, Derek Ball, Gráinne Mulvey

Hilltown New Music Festival 2012
Friday 20th - Sunday 22nd July

The Hilltown New Music Festival is an international weekend festival of contemporary music, sonic and visual installations around the medieval castle keep in the grounds of Hilltown House, Castlepollard, Co.Westmeath.


Karen Power : some things just are

21 Oct



United Kingdom
 Saturday, July 21, 2012 at 7:30pm - 10:00pm 
Cool Fusion
All Saints Church, West Dulwich
Lovelace Road, SE21 7JY
United Kingdom
020 8676 4550
http://www.all-saints.org.uk
vicar@all-saints.org.uk

Tickets: £12/£10 concessions, from ticketline.co.uk/cool-fusion or 0844 888 9991, booking fee applies
Lambeth Wind Orchestra
Putney Arts Theatre
Coronel Percussion
Cool Fusion Jazz
Cool Fusion Electronica
Mark Pampel (piano)

Cool Fusion is one of the largest voluntary-arts initiatives in the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It presents a series of four performances of new music and drama in historic London venues, celebrating the Olympics and Paralympics within London's vibrant culture. It is a partnership of London Composers Forum, Colchester New Music and Putney Writers' Circle.

Developed collaboratively by twelve composers and four writers, Cool Fusion uses wind orchestra, percussion ensemble, electronics and actors to weave a narrative of exceptional human endeavour. The performance is framed by historical episodes, from sandals to scandals, chariots to wheelchairs, outside track to winners’ podium. These are interwoven with works exploring the parallels between music and physical culture, in rhythms of pace, endurance, determination and achievement.

Texts and libretti for musical works are contributed by Rita Adam (Four Minute Mile), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Dorando : An Olympic Tale) and Linda Redshaw (Outside Track). Additional non-musical drama pieces are contributed by Marcia Kelson and Dan Clarke.

In the run-up to the world premiere at All Saints West Dulwich, Cool Fusion is working on a local outreach project with Kids' Company in Lambeth, exploring the Cool Fusion's themes through percussion, movement, visual art and English. Some of the results will be unveiled at the All Saints performance.

This performance and outreach project are supported by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.


Mark Garnham : Fanfare for the Olympic Flame (London 2012)
David Arditti : Time and Tide
Cedric Peachey : Gold, Silver & Bronze
Alan Parsons : Fanfare for 2012
Mark Pampel : THE FINAL
Martin Jones : Four Minute Mile
Phil Baker : Triumphal Laurels – Canzona ii from Canzonae Olympiae for Brass Quartet & Timpani
Luca Tieppo : Dorando: An Olympic Tale
Mark Pampel : Against the Odds
Stuart Russell : Distance/Time
Alan Taylor : Episode I from Five Incomplete Episodes
Andy Bungay : Outside Track
Alan Hilton : Olympic Fanfare

21 Oct



United Kingdom
 Saturday, July 21, 2012 at 3.00pm 
Songs from the Exotic
King's Head Theatre, London
115 Upper Street, Islington, N1 1QN
United Kingdom
02074780160
http://kingsheadtheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873482965/events

Tickets: £12
Cerys Jones (mezzo-soprano)
Tim Watts (piano)


Quests for spiritual enlightenment and sensual discovery...memories of lovers, long ago and faraway...the incomparable strangeness of the everyday...
Ideas of the exotic are explored in all their mystery and potency in a programme of songs based on translations of Hindu, Spanish, Polish, Serbian, German and Gaelic poetry.


Gustav Holst : Vedic Hymns, Op. 24 (selection)
Samuel Barber : Three Songs, Op. 45
Foulds John : 'Exotic' (from 'Essays in the modes')
Judith Weir : Songs from the exotic
Tim Watts : White Shadow

22 Oct 
 
23 Oct 
 
24 Oct 
 
25 Oct 
 
26 Oct 
 
27 Oct 
 
28 Oct



United Kingdom
 Saturday, July 28, 2012 at 7:30pm - 10:00pm 
Cool Fusion
Cecil Sharp House
2 Regent's Park Road, Camden, London NW1 7AY
United Kingdom
http://www.efdss.org

Tickets: £12/£10 concessions, from ticketline.co.uk/cool-fusion or 0844 888 9991, booking fee applies
Lambeth Wind Orchestra
Putney Arts Theatre
Coronel Percussion
Cool Fusion Jazz
Cool Fusion Electronica
Mark Pampel (piano)

Cool Fusion is one of the largest voluntary-arts initiatives in the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It presents a series of four performances of new music and drama in historic London venues, celebrating the Olympics and Paralympics within London's vibrant culture. It is a partnership of London Composers Forum, Colchester New Music and Putney Writers' Circle.

Developed collaboratively by twelve composers and four writers, Cool Fusion uses wind orchestra, percussion ensemble, electronics and actors to weave a narrative of exceptional human endeavour. The performance is framed by historical episodes, from sandals to scandals, chariots to wheelchairs, outside track to winners’ podium. These are interwoven with works exploring the parallels between music and physical culture, in rhythms of pace, endurance, determination and achievement.

Texts and libretti for musical works are contributed by Rita Adam (Four Minute Mile), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Dorando : An Olympic Tale) and Linda Redshaw (Outside Track). Additional non-musical drama pieces are contributed by Marcia Kelson and Dan Clarke.

For the Cecil Sharp House performance, Cool Fusion is running a local outreach project with Kids' Company in Camden, exploring the Cool Fusion's themes through percussion and other art forms. Some of the results will be unveiled at this performance.

This performance and outreach project are supported by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.


Mark Garnham : Fanfare for the Olympic Flame (London 2012)
David Arditti : Time and Tide
Cedric Peachey : Gold, Silver & Bronze
Alan Parsons : Fanfare for 2012
Mark Pampel : THE FINAL
Martin Jones : Four Minute Mile
Phil Baker : Triumphal Laurels – Canzona ii from Canzonae Olympiae for Brass Quartet & Timpani
Luca Tieppo : Dorando: An Olympic Tale
Mark Pampel : Against the Odds
Stuart Russell : Distance/Time
Alan Taylor : Episode I from Five Incomplete Episodes
Andy Bungay : Outside Track
Alan Hilton : Olympic Fanfare

28 Oct



Scotland
 Saturday, July 28, 2012 at 7.30pm 
John Cage at 100
City Halls
Glasgow
Scotland

Tickets: Free (unreserved seating) limited to 4 tickets per application (not suitable for young children).
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Tilbury piano+
Ilan Volkov conductor



Endlessly innovative, John Cage's music defied category and blurred the lines between composition, improvisation and performance art. A theorist, philosopher and artist, he remained at the forefront of the American avant-garde until his death in 1992. The BBC SSO celebrates the centenary of Cage's birth with an evening of genre-defying performances. His tireless experimentations in sound questioned what music can be. As well as his Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, the concert features music for the human voice, cassette players, percussion, and an amplified cactus played by the evening's curator and BBC SSO Principal Guest Conductor, Ilan Volkov.

The concert, which is also part of this year's Merchant City Festival, will be recorded for future broadcast in BBC Radio 3's Saturday late-night new music programme Hear and Now.



John Cage : Concerto for Prepared Piano
John Cage : Atlas Eclipticalis, Winter Music
John Cage : But what about the noise...
John Cage : ear for EAR (Antiphonies)
John Cage : Improvisation III
John Cage : Child of Tree

29 Oct 
 
30 Oct 
 
31 Oct 
 
1 Nov



United Kingdom
 Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 1.00-2.00pm 
Lunchtime concert series
St John-at-Hampstead, London
Church Row, London NW3
United Kingdom

Tickets: Free concert
John Campbell Trumpet
Graeme Thewlis- Piano and Baritone

Chamber music-performances of works for Trumpet and Piano. Selection of English and British Sea Songs for Baritone and Piano.

Esther Hopkins : Kings Quoit (i) Dwelling Places

2 Nov 
 
3 Nov 
 
4 Nov



United Kingdom
 Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 7:30pm - 10:00pm 
Cool Fusion
St Mary's Church, Putney
High Street, Putney, London SW15 1SN
United Kingdom
http://www.parishofputney.co.uk/stmarys/

Tickets: £12/£10 concessions, from ticketline.co.uk/cool-fusion or 0844 888 9991, booking fee applies
Lambeth Wind Orchestra
Putney Arts Theatre
Coronel Percussion
Cool Fusion Jazz
Cool Fusion Electronica
Mark Pampel (piano)

Cool Fusion is one of the largest voluntary-arts initiatives in the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It presents a series of four performances of new music and drama in historic London venues, celebrating the Olympics and Paralympics within London's vibrant culture. It is a partnership of London Composers Forum, Colchester New Music and Putney Writers' Circle.

Developed collaboratively by twelve composers and four writers, Cool Fusion uses wind orchestra, percussion ensemble, electronics and actors to weave a narrative of exceptional human endeavour. The performance is framed by historical episodes, from sandals to scandals, chariots to wheelchairs, outside track to winners’ podium. These are interwoven with works exploring the parallels between music and physical culture, in rhythms of pace, endurance, determination and achievement.

Texts and libretti for musical works are contributed by Rita Adam (Four Minute Mile), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Dorando : An Olympic Tale) and Linda Redshaw (Outside Track). Additional non-musical drama pieces are contributed by Marcia Kelson and Dan Clarke.

For this Wandsworth performance, Cool Fusion has been running outreach projects with Paddock School and local charity Regenerate-RISE.

This performance and outreach are supported by Wandsworth Borough Council and by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.


Mark Garnham : Fanfare for the Olympic Flame (London 2012)
David Arditti : Time and Tide
Cedric Peachey : Gold, Silver & Bronze
Alan Parsons : Fanfare for 2012
Mark Pampel : THE FINAL
Martin Jones : Four Minute Mile
Phil Baker : Triumphal Laurels – Canzona ii from Canzonae Olympiae for Brass Quartet & Timpani
Luca Tieppo : Dorando: An Olympic Tale
Mark Pampel : Against the Odds
Stuart Russell : Distance/Time
Alan Taylor : Episode I from Five Incomplete Episodes
Andy Bungay : Outside Track
Alan Hilton : Olympic Fanfare

5 Nov



United Kingdom
 Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 7.30pm 
NYOS & BBC SSO
Royal Albert Hall, London
Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP
United Kingdom
020 7589 8212
http://www.royalalberthall.com/
boxofficeenquiries@royalalberthall.com

Tickets: £7.50-£36.00
National Youth Orchestra of Scotland
Donald Runnicles conductor
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra



We kick off with the London premiere of a new Fanfare by Ayrshire-born James MacMillan. Nicola Benedetti is in the spotlight for Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave gives the tuba its moment with her postcard from Loch Ness, while both tonight’s ensembles come together for one of Respighi’s glamorous Roman spectaculars



James MacMillan : Fanfare Upon One Note
Richard Wagner : The Mastersingers of Nuremberg - Overture
Max Bruch : Scottish Fantasy
Richard Strauss : Don Juan
Thea Musgrave : Loch Ness - a Postcard from Scotland
Ottorino Respighi : Pines of Rome

5 Nov



Austria
 Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 8.30 pm 
Salzburg contemporary 4
Salzburger Festspiele
various, Salzburg, Austria
Austria
ttel.: +43-662-8045-500
http://www.salzburgfestival.at/
info@salzburgfestival.at

Heinz Holliger, Conductor
Felix Renggli, Flute
Latvian Radio Choir
Kaspars Putnins, Chorus Master
Ensemble Contrechamps


Holliger’s works are shot through with such ghost-like webs of reference, which contain his life’s experiences, dreams, but also music he has conducted and performed. That is why as an interpreter, he loves those composers who write porous music, music that remains fragile and fleeting. The two composers whose works are performed atSalzburg contemporary next to Holliger fit this description: the Pole Witold Lutos³awski and the German Bernd Alois Zimmermann. They suffered under fascism and communism, and only escaped death narrowly during their youth. They wrote music that questioned itself, confessed its own insecurity, but also bore the inscription of rebellion, even crying out at times. The most extreme work is presumably Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, and it is a significant event that one of the most important operas since Mozart will now finally be produced in Salzburg.

Die Soldaten contains the full breadth of musical history, from the Middle Ages until today, from the most complex art music to folk music and jazz, a polyphonic web of references, stories, dreams and catastrophes, fed by a life experience that, in Zimmermann’s case, became so unbearable that he committed suicide. What is still relatively contained within the workings of the opera in Die Soldatenfinally breaks out openly in the Ekklesiastische Aktion: the tension of his times, the armament race, the bankrupting of all values, and Zimmermann’s own hopelessness are combined into one monumental gesture of desperation.

Alongside these works, Holliger’s Scardanelli-Zyklus seems like an ecclesiastical exercise. In 1806, Hölderlin, 36 years old at the time, sought refuge in the Tower in Tübingen, where he was to live for 37 years as a so-called madman, a recluse from the world, and only wrote occasionally in exchange for pipe tobacco, poems that are bright and cheerful and betray nothing of his former pains. He often signed them “Scardanelli”. Heinz Holliger was 36 when he began to study these late Hölderlin poems in 1975, and over the course of 15 years, he turned them into an ever-growing Scardanelli Cycle. This Scardanelli Cycle is another web into which Hölderlin’s life, his work, the flute music he played are woven.

Heinz Holliger’s second commission from the Salzburg Festival is a work for the winds and brass of the Vienna Philharmonic. During a serious illness, as he experienced breathlessness and a shortness of air – especially frightening to an oboist – Holliger conceived this music. We will hear sounds that might revive the Bunsen burner dream of Heinz Holliger’s boyhood.



Heinz Holliger : Scardanelli-Zyklus for solo flute, small orchestra, tape and mixed choir

6 Nov



United Kingdom
 Monday, August 6, 2012 at 7 pm 
Bernstein Mass
Royal Albert Hall, London
Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP
United Kingdom
020 7589 8212
http://www.royalalberthall.com/
boxofficeenquiries@royalalberthall.com

Tickets: £7.50-£36
Morten Frank Larsen Bass-baritone

Julius Foo Treble

National Youth Choir of Wales
Aelwyd y Waun Ddyfal
Musicians from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
BBC National Chorus of Wales



Conductor Kristjan Järvi



Less a religious work than a theatrical happening, Bernstein's Mass receives its first complete Proms performance, conducted by one of its most ardent champions, and supported by a spectrum of talented Welsh children and adult musicians. Using a mix of highbrow and vernacular styles, Bernstein created a rich, quintessentially American score that has recently begun to emerge as a modern classic.



Leonard Bernstein : Mass

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