BCMG The Series 07/08

CBSO Centre
Berkley Street, Birmingham, B1 2LF
United Kingdom
http://www.cbso.co.uk

BCMG is one of the world’s leading classical new music ensembles and was formed by players from the CBSO. The group is devoted to the performance of new music and has commissioned and performed over 100 world premieres of new works by today’s leading composers.

The blackness of Nicholas Sackman’s new piece is not funereal. This is, perhaps, black fire: urgent, consuming, compelling. Though there are moments of uncanny calm and melodic breadth (also a dash of tango), the work is mostly on the rampage, tightly driven. Energetic, too, is the music of the Norwegian composer Eivind Buene, represented by his Intermezzo, with piano, percussion and cor anglais soloists, and a fascinating new encounter with a 17th-century English colleague. The Swiss composer Michael Jarrell looks in the same direction, but to Purcell, in his sombre and beautiful Music for a While. Birtwistle’s classic of ancient violence and lament completes the programme.
Paul Griffiths


Nicholas Sackman : Concerto in Black
Eivind Buene : Intermezzo
Michael Jarrell : Music for a While
Eivind Buene : Garland for Matthew Locke
Birtwistle Harrison : Silbury Air