City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group +
EXAUDI
Ives’ delight in forming a ‘set’ from an assemblage of apparently independent parts is matched by the serious originality of Knussen’s programme-building.
Three Places in New England and The Fourth of July are a blend of an understated yet all-American grandeur with music of raucous celebration, a carefully crafted chaos of borrowed popular tunes and sophisticated collision of multiple musics.
Birtwistle’s ebullient perpetual motion seems in harmony with the earthy joys of Bartók’s rustic miniatures. Carter’s anti-concerto, lyrical and feisty, prefaces a modern-day classic of a Requiem.
An Elliott Carter premiere by two of the leading exponents of his music that continues the recent sequence of Carter premieres at Aldeburgh.
