London Sinfonietta

Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh
Snape Maltings Concert Hall,Snape,Suffolk,IP17 1SP
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1728 687110
http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk

Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
George Benjamin conductor

Two heavyweight but luminous modern works are at the heart of the London Sinfonietta’s collaboration with George Benjamin and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, now strongly associated with Aimard’s recordings, is filled in its fast movements with pounding cross-rhythms and dizzying virtuosity, while its slow movement yields to a desolate, lamenting abyss that lurks below the composer’s dazzling surface.

‘Dazzling’ is also the key to Benjamin’s At First Light, an evocation inspired by Turner’s painting Norham Castle, Sunrise of a landscape in which all detail is washed out by overpowering light. Birtwistle and Knussen’s works are both titled as ‘songs’, but where Birtwistle’s is a rhythmic moto perpetuo in the vein of Ligeti’s concerto, Knussen’s miniatures are highly lyrical. The UK premiere of Jordan-born Haddad’s mini-concerto for two cellos and ensemble completes the programme.


Harrison Birtwistle : Carmen arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum
Oliver Knussen : Songs Without Voices
Saed Haddad : In Contradiction for two cellos and ensemble
Gyorgy Ligeti : Piano Concerto