Ahead of Trio Atem’s performance at Kings Place next week, I thought I would share this essay on the work which brought them together: Helmut Lachenmann’s temA. It is a work that I imagine will have been a reference point or at least in the backs of composers’ minds as they wrote for the wonderful […]
As it’s International Women’s Day, I wondered how well that most reactionary of musical beasts, the orchestra, would stand up to tests of gender equality. I wondered how many female composers were being performed by Manchester’s three orchestras this season, and then expanded my research into conductors, soloists and rank and file player numbers. Perhaps […]
Brian Ferneyhough at the RNCM In the last week and a half it has been interesting to observe from a distance the build-up and fall-out from the Ferneyhough day in London. Thankfully, the Radio 3 broadcast meant I could hear the music as well as the surrounding reaction. Radio 4 ran an item on the Total […]
The biannual MANTIS Festival at the University of Manchester presents fixed media works and works with live electronics, performing these over a large sound diffusion system that comprises around 40 loudspeakers. The concerts over the Halloween weekend showcased the work of students at the university, that of invited guest composers and included the first collaboration […]
As a brief introduction: Ken Nielsen of the Australian group Pinchgut Opera wrote a ‘manifesto for the future of classical music’ as Greg Sandow — who posted it to his blog — describes it, Tim Rutherford-Johnson has added his two cents here and below are mine. Perhaps my European perspective on Nielsen’s Antipodean angle has caused some misunderstandings, in […]