BCMG - The Series 2007-08

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

Conductor Oliver Knussen
Sopranos Susan Bickley/Angela Tunstall *
Tenor Alan Belk *



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.



Cool and offbeat, Jo Kondo’s music goes its own way. The two pieces here are both miniatures, scored for small combinations. Maderna’s Serenata No.2 comes from the fifties, and finds the composer characteristically combining the abstract techniques of the time with an Italian mellifluousness. Luke Bedford, one of the most brilliantly gifted young British composers, has his own ways of being sensuous. Any new piece from him is eagerly awaited. In the second half comes a big and typically quizzical essay by Mauricio Kagel for singers and instrumentalists, exploring various notions of country music and countryside, all of them amusingly wrong.
Paul Griffiths


Jo Kondo : Isthmus
Bruno Maderna : Serenata No.2
Jo Kondo : An Elder's Hocket
Mauricio Kagel : Kantrimusik *
Luke Bedford : Good Dream She Has