BCMG Chamber Players

CBSO Centre
Berkley Street. B1 2LF
United Kingdom
http://www.bcmg.org.uk

Flute: Marie-Christine Zupancic
Clarinet: Timothy Lines
Piano: Malcolm Wilson
Violin: Alexandra Wood
Cello: Ulrich Heinen

Despite its chamber scale – this programme contains an embarrassment of riches, a lucky dip of superbly crafted chamber pieces from the last 30 years, full of contrast, some tiny, some substantial, performed by a crack quintet of BCMG soloists.

Some of these works are memorials or tributes; many of them use forms or techniques from music of the past – fugues, chaconnes, canons, inventions; some come from a fascination with past composers. Knussen’s Upon One Note distorts the rhythms and pitches of Purcell’s five part fantasia; Barry’s two minute Aeneas and Dido revisits Purcell’s opera as the composer “felt that Aeneas needed to be given his due”; Machaut can be found lurking behind Birtwistle’s Double Hocket; whilst Philip Cashian’s blistering Caprichos explores the dark, nightmarish world depicted in Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos etchings.

The performance of Aldo Clementi’s Berceuse is a tribute in itself – to the last of the great Italian 20th century modernists, who died almost a year ago to the day – 3 March 2011.

The Adčs studies condense and refashion music from his acclaimed opera The Tempest into a single movement for four instruments. The result is a kaleidoscopic succession of musical portraits –each depicting a shipwrecked character on Prospero’s island – Antonio, Ferdinand, Alonso and Gonzalo.

Oliver Knussen : Upon one note
Gerald Barry : Aeneas and Dido
Colin Matthews : Elegiac Chaconne
Aldo Clementi : Berceuse
Tansy Davies : Undertow
Philip Cashian : Caprichos
Harrison Birtwistle : Double Hocket
Peter Maxwell Davies : Unbroken Circle
John Woolrich : In the Mirrors of Asleep
John Woolrich : In the Mirrors of Asleep
Franco Donatoni : Het
Thomas Ades : Court Studies from the Tempest