hcmf 2009 launches with sell-out weekend - tickets still available for selected events
Audiences enjoyed breathtaking performances from Arditti Quartet, ELISION, New London Chamber Choir and many other artists at sold-out concerts over the first weekend of hcmf 2009. The festival opened on Friday 20 November with the UK premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s new piece –ET LUX– in St Paul’s Hall. Arditti Quartet and The Hilliard Ensemble joined forces to perform the requiem, a work of intimate beauty in which the soaring vocals of countertenor David James were a highlight.
Another hcmf first followed, with the debut British airing of Richard Barrett’s Opening of the Mouth. With the composer on hand as sound artist for the piece, ELISION ensemble presented the complex and emotionally intense song cycle, which included outstanding solos from woodwind player Richard Haynes and singers Deborah Kayser and Ute Wassermann.
Earlier in the day, Visual Kitchen’s audiovisual installation Mortuos Plango, based upon a tape piece by hcmf Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey, was unveiled in St Thomas’s Church. The installation runs daily throughout the festival: click here for more details.
Saturday saw the first of many lunchtime concerts at hcmf. In another sold-out performance, pianist Sarah Nicolls showcased her innovative musicianship and use of technology with three pieces that expanded the instrument’s possibilities through film, electronics, motion sensors and dramatic synchronised lighting. Arditti Quartet returned in the evening with a programme including Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartet No. 4 and premieres of works by James Dillon and James Clarke.
Harvey’s work was celebrated again on Sunday 22 November, with a rare performance of The Summer Cloud’s Awakening, a piece written specially for New London Chamber Choir. Under the direction of James Weeks, the choir rose to the challenge of creating a multilayered soundscape, with voices chopped into fragments and flying dramatically between an array of speakers surrounding the audience.
Over in Bates Mill, David Sawer and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s Rumpelstiltskin reimagined the fairytale as a dark and grown-up music theatre piece, with haunting motifs and visuals reminiscent of expressionist silent film. And following on from Geneviève Foccroulle’s solo piano recitals of compositions by Anthony Braxton on 20 and 21 November, the weekend concluded with For Braxton, a large-scale homage to the pioneering and controversial giant of American music, featuring the combined powers of Apartment House, Frank Gratkowski, ELISION and John Butcher.
Tickets are still available for hcmf events over the coming week: click here to view the festival programme and buy tickets.
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