UK première of 'Montes'

Following the Momenta Quartet's concert in Philadelphia, there will be a performance, here in the UK, of my String Quartet No. 1, 'Montes'. Fittingly, it will be part of an evening celebrating the life and the work of the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes to be held at Bolívar Hall, London. This means that the music, born of a reflection of three of Montes's works, after a circuitous journey will come home, to London, where Montes spent most of his professional life and created most of his work.

The players are not a constituted quartet but will get together specially for this concert. They are Jane Gordon and Adrian Charlesworth, violins, Sara Jones, viola, and the dynamo driving this UK première, the impressive cellist Jennifer Morsches.

On this occasion there will also be another important première, that of the documentary The Spirit of The Andes by Verónica Souto.

This is purely for information, since at the time of writing all tickets have sold out, but, for what it's worth, the performance will take place on Thursday 17 January at 1930 in Bolívar Hall, London.

Première of String Quartet No. 1, 'Montes', in Philadelphia

Miranda Cuckson (violin), Stephanie Griffin (viola), me (composer), Joanne Lin (cello), Annaliesa Place (violin). In the first image, said with Mrs Marcela Montes, widow of the painter Fernando Montes.

It happened last 28 November in Rock Hall Auditorium at Temple University. The performers were the Momenta Quartet, a group for whom I have to check myself if I am not to run out of superlatives. I apologise in advance if I fail.

When I first met them, two days before the concert, they had the new piece learned. Our work together had to do with character, articulation, balance, in a word: interpretation. No complaints about how difficult the music was, no excuses about an unlearned passage, no petty quibbling! Only intelligent requests of clarification, sometimes exposing an inconsistence on my part or leading me to rethink a notational choice.

It was immediately apparent that the Momenta were more than used to working with composers, as the dynamic in rehearsal was one of ease and flowing communication when required. As impressive as this was the respect they showed each other, with no player imposing her view on any other, but instead careful consideration being given to their diverse, strong individualities.

Anyone inferring the result of the above to be a harmonious but bland compromise would be mistaken, for there is plenty of edge in what the Momenta do. Their explosions of energy and passion are as fearful as the ice of their tightest, most controlled pianissimos. Yes, I am no longer referring only to their rendition of my own piece, but also remembering what they did, for example, with Janácek’s Quartet No. 1, 'Kreutzer Sonata'. The passion overflowed without sentimentality, the tragedy raged without melodrama. It was all just so well gauged. And the technique was accomplished throughout; with them we are in a sphere where technique ceased to be a concern at some forgotten point in the past of their young lives.

As for me, I had one of the most enjoyable experiences ever. I was able to sit back, secure in the knowledge that my music was in safe hands, that I did not have to worry about whether this or that passage would come out as written. It came out as written, but better, because it was enriched by the total commitment of these incomparable four musicians. The words 'thank you' sound too hollow to convey my gratitude and admiration for what they do.

The only disappointment of the evening was the small size of the audience, well below what these superb performers deserved. As the talented composition student Ryan Olivier explained to me, this was a hectic time of the year when the students have to split their time among a vast array of concerts and their own assessed recitals at Temple University. Fair enough, but what a loss for the rest of Philadelphia not to have been there! Setting aside the two new works, you do not often hear Janácek and Schumann played with that excellence. The silver lining for me was the presence of Marcela Montes, widow of Fernando, the great Bolivian painter who inspired my quartet and to whom it is dedicated. With Marcela was a small but important group of Bolivians, two of whom I had known in the 1970s in La Paz: Mrs Ximena Iturralde de Sánchez de Lozada and her son Ignacio.

The composition staff was represented by two lecturers who were generous in their enthusiasm, Prof Maurice Wright and one other whose pardon I beg, in the unlikely event he reads these pages, for forgetting his name. Nor can I link him to any of the composition lecturers listed among the composition staff on the Temple website. Their kindly-expressed empathy to the spirit to the quartet was to me an indication of an attunement of mind that makes me want to hear their music.

Young Ryan Olivier himself had a piece premièred, String Quartet. It was impressive in the assurance with which it adhered to an energetic gesturality that is so often lacking in new music. You can hear it on his myspace page. He is a most personable individual too. I think he will go far.

I thank the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University for putting on this event and for their hospitality to me.

Première of ¡Oh guitarra! in Winterthur

The guitarrist Christoph Jäggin. In the other image, me, the composer Harri Suilamo and Christopher Jäggin.

¡Oh guitarra!, the piece that took an eternity to complete and nearly put me off the guitar for life, received its first performance at the heroic hands of Christoph Jäggin, last weekend, Sunday 11 November, at Theater am Gleis in the town of Winterthur, near Zurich.

Christoph is one of those phenomena of the musical world who is not deterred by difficulty but, quite on the contrary, relishes a challenge, and, it seems, the hairier the better. When, having played extensively my first guitar work, Nana del insomne – a rather vertiginous affair – he suggested that I should write him a new one, caution suggested it would be best not to meddle with this fiendish instrument again. But caution’s voice went unheeded and a new piece was promised. It took years to materialise, but Christoph waited. When I finally completed it, in January 2006, he was busy writing a magnum opus of research, a history of Swiss music for the guitar, and he was taking a break from performing. It was my turn to wait, and wait I did. The première supervened last Sunday, nearly two years after completion, so justice was done.

On arrival in Christoph’s house in Turbenthal, I found that he had produced his own copy with fingerings and corrections of guitar technique. I had spent endless hours working out how best to realise my ideas on this complex instrument, but all the same Christoph had come up with more effective solutions in a number of places. I agreed gratefully in almost every case. In a couple of cases I begged to differ, but was no less grateful for his dedication and attention to detail. I wished I had had him nearby when I was writing the piece, so he could have helped to shape it with his technical advice. As it is, ¡Oh guitarra! has, I am sure, some of the awkwardness typical of the non-guitarist writing for the guitar, but less of it thanks to Christoph Jäggin, and less of it than it would have if I hadn't spent uncountable hours trying to work out with my own fingers how one might play each chord, line and combination of lines if one were a guitarist.

Christoph’s programme was remarkable in depth of expression on the guitar. I was particularly struck by Harri Suilamo’s Eidola, Fritz Voegelin’s Nombres and another with a forgotten title by the composer Zelenka. The former two composers were at the performance, and I learned much from talking to them. Luckily for me Suilamo speaks fluent English and Voegelin fluent Spanish, having been a conservatoire professor in Colombia for several years.

A well as being wonderfully taken care of by Christoph and his wife Sayuri, I was accommodated by their daughter Misa and her husband Tenzin, both English speakers, intelligent, knowledgeable and inexhaustibly kind with me.

Back in Bolivia

Two driving forces of this event: Luz Bolivia Sánchez and María Angélica Kirigin

As a guest of Bolivia’s National Conservatoire I was in La Paz from 5 to 12 October. My visit was part of an Encounter of Bolivian Musicians called by the Conservatoire to mark its first centenary. Other guests included the guitarists Piraí Vaca and Javier Calderón and the violinists Luis Ibáñez and Javier Pinell. My hosts were the Conservatoire’s director Esperanza Téllez, the independent arts promoter and animateur extraordinaire Luz Bolivia Sánchez, and the talented journalist and media figure María Angélica Kirigin.

At the heart of my visit was the performance of Una música escondida offered by Orquesta del Centenario del Conservatorio conducted by Ramiro Soriano, with Grace Rodríguez on the piano. The concert was on 6 October and it took place in the auditorium of the Bolivian Central Bank, to a numerous, warm and appreciative audience.

The piece was a challenge to an orchestra that had got together specially for the occasion, that is, who were not used to playing together, let alone to playing contemporary music. This orchestra included several musicians with whom I had worked in my years as an orchestral player in La Paz, back in the 1970s: Fredy Céspedes, the leader, who is now also the successful conductor of Orquesta Sinfónica de El Alto; his wife the cellist María Eugenia; beside her Willy Velarde; the violinist Luis Ibáñez, who returned from his base in Boston for the occasion; another violinist, Berthin Ibáñez; the cellist Miguel Salazar and the double bassist René Saavedra. Their presence at the rehearsals and the concert made this project all the more special. Ramiro Soriano and I had last worked together in 1984 for an orchestral-choral concert featuring his creation the excellent chamber choir Coral Nova, whereas Grace Rodríguez and I had last worked together when she was a student in my harmony class at the Consevatoire. They all did a splendid job and deserve nothing but praise.

The visit also gave me the opportunity to interact with current staff and students at the Conservatoire. I offered two sessions, one on my own Mystical Dances and the other on general topics of contemporary music requested by the composition teacher, Oldrich Halas. It was also my pleasure to meet Oldrich and our colleague Juan Siles, for an informal meeting where they presented their work. I had heard their music before, but this was a valuable chance to refresh my knowledge of the development and achievements of these highly talented figures of Bolivian music.

The Conservatoire is a transformed place. When I worked there in the 1970s it had a single site on Avenida 6 de Agosto, characterised by a bohemian dinginess. Nowadays they enjoy a newer locale, a tastefully restored colonial building on Calle Reyes Ortiz, off El Prado. The standard of the work has changed too. I attended some debates on the curricular reforms now being planned, and was impressed by the level of the debate, intelligently led by Esperanza Téllez and one of the lights of the institution, the multi-instrumentalist Álvaro Montenegro.

Encounter in La Paz

October will see the centenary of Conservatorio Nacional de Música, one of the most venerable musical institutions of Bolivia. For this great occasion a small team of visionaries has put together an Encounter of Bolivian Musicians, bringing together an array of musical personalities connected with the Conservatorio, which means, give or take, all the country's main musicians and composers. The original proposal had been to bring back to Bolivia all those who are working abroad too, and the instigator, a dynamo of energy and inspiration by the name of Luz Bolivia Sánchez, had secured the funding to make this possible. The fact that this extended reunion of expatriates is going to take place only partially and that the scope of the events is going to be scaled down is due to circumstances that I would like to understand better before I decry them on these pages, but the fact that the Encounter is going ahead at all is a tribute to Luz Bolivia's enormous dedication, inspiration and powers of persuasion.

The Encounter will take place between 4 and 12 October. The schedule is still being worked on, but I so far know that there will be two performances of my Una música escondida (A Hidden Music) by the Conservatoire Orchestra conducted by Bolivia's foremost conductor, Ramiro Soriano, and with Grace Rodríguez at the piano. Performances of other pieces are in preparation, I am told, and I will mention them when I know more.

Performance of Mystical Dances at The Sage Gateshead on 1 August 2007

August is the month when Bolivia celebrates its anniversary on the 6th and when my patron saint is remembered on the 28th. This year, Newcastle University is making me a professor, and the appointment is effective from 1 August. In a separate development, Northern Sinfonia scheduled for this date its second performance of Mystical Dances at Hall One in The Sage Gateshead. Usually, for reasons I’ll never know, when there is a convergence of good things this happens in May (often the 23rd) or in November. And yet this year the pattern is breaking and August is emerging as an intriguingly eventful time of the year. But I’m not here to discuss astrology.

The performance was conducted by the very young and very talented Alexander Shelley, who gave a spirited rendition with plenty of character and verve. He controlled the orchestra with an authority that belies his youth, and he showed that he had taken the time to think and understand the expressive intentions of the piece. The orchestra responded very well, and the commitment of their performance was as visible as it was audible. I know that there was a receptive audience listening and, in a large proportion, understanding. Even though I can’t explain how this happens, I know this, in the same way as I know when the opposite happens and the music falls flat, which luckily wasn’t the case last night.

The auditorium was, of course, one of the factors of success. Hall One has a remarkable clarity of sound which enables you to follow the orchestral flow like a film on a panoramic screen. Everything was there, clearly exposed, provided you had enough time to listen to it. The fact that the orchestra had done the piece before was another factor, as familiarity lent an added confidence. For some of the players, however, this familiarity may have been a hindrance rather than a help when tackling the revised version; surprises may have sprung up with irksome frequency, especially in the last movement where the old material is now treated very differently. And yet there was no sign of irritation at the rehearsals, and certainly not at the concert when the orchestra shone with flair and wholeheartedness.

I had fretted a little about how Mystical Dances would sit in a programme surrounded by such popular classics as El amor brujo and Concierto de Aranjuez. In the event the decision was vindicated and I had to admit to the programming director, Simon Clugston, that I had been wrong to fret. Falla is, of course, an important influence from my earliest composing years, and although Rodrigo has never excited me much, his simplicity of means seems now a worthy reference point.

New work: String Quartet No 1 'Montes'

Llojeta by Fernando Montes (photograph by Vince Harris, reproduced by permission)

This project is a collaboration with the Momenta String Quartet of New York, who will be performing the new piece at the Rock Hall Auditorium, Temple University, Philadelphia, on 28 November.

The title is a homage to the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes, who died in London last January. Even though he spent much of his life in London, Montes's work is a pure and concentrated distillation of the landscape and soul of Bolivia. Looking at his work, aside from deriving great aesthetic pleasure, I feel impelled to reassess my own position vis-à-vis my native country. It is a temptation to aspire to be to Bolivia in music what Montes is to Bolivia in art.

The new string quartet looks the concept of bolivianity in the face, in its many-sided contradictions and with that painful detachment from the physical reality of the country that turns it into an inner world, possibly the biggest component of oneself, but, unlike the real homeland, impossible to share - other than, perhaps, through music, or the paintings of Fernando Montes.

The piece will also be my personal tribute to a very dear friend, and an embrace of support to his widow Marcela, his daughter Sarita and his son Juan Enrique (also an excellent artist), old allies in friendship and cultural adventures.

Revision of Mystical Dances

Pleased to report that I've completed the revision of Mystical Dances, leaving just enough time for new material to be prepared for the performance at the Sage on 1 August.

I thought I had written the last note last Friday, but I was still feeling dissatisfied with the ending till, in my insomnia, a solution came to me two nights ago. Before daring to implement it, I spoke to Tato, the long-suffering and hyper-productive music processing expert at Tritó, to ask if it would be too late for a last-minute change. Tato, a violinist and conductor in his own right, had already got on with some of the parts, but his reply was unhesitant: go ahead. After a frantic few hours the new ending was done and sent off to Barcelona.

For those of you not familiar with the minutiae of orchestral concert preparation, most orchestra librarians require the material at least a month before the date of the concert. This leaves Tato with only a few days to go to copy all the orchestral parts, sort out the pagination, reproduction and binding and heaven knows what else that I don't know about, before the big parcel can be dispatched to Gateshead. Thank you, Tato!

The new version has had some clumsy writing fixed throughout, and the third movement has been extensively rewritten so that the thematic material holds together more tightly. The first performance last November, aside from the disengaged conducting I could do nothing about, exposed weaknesses in the last movement which I could do something about. I think the job is done now.

Project with Mr McFall's Chamber

Apologies for not placing any posting for several months. It is April now, and the dizzy race of time has meant that I have left several developments unreported.

The main one to highlight is the project with Mr McFall's Chamber last February in Scotland. This virtuoso ensemble performed two concerts of music by my colleagues Kathryn Tickell and Tim Garland and by myself. The first was at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh, and the second at The Old Tolbooth in Stirling.

Kathryn Tickell revived her Lordenshaws, a work for a chamber ensemble she had composed in 2000 to a commission from the ensemble Vaganza. This time the piece received a spirited rendition from a committed group which showed its trademark mercuriality by welcoming on its ranks Tickell herself on the Northumbrian pipes and Peter Tickell on fiddle. Allowed to flow with ease, Tickell's music shone with melodic invention, instrumental subtlety and, in the final movement, rhythmic energy.

Tim Garland was the bass clarinet soloist for the première of his In Translation. A gracefully melodious first movement was followed by a lively dance in six-four time full of Spanish echoes, more likely than not filtered through the lens of Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole. The closing movement seemed to me the most individual contribution, with passages of explosive energy showing the bass clarinet deployed to great effect in unison with low strings and the piano's left hand.

Of mine, the Chamber offered Botanic Spider, a work they returned to after their first incursion at the ¡Vamos! Festival last July. The combined effect of this increased familiarity with the player's sophisticated musicality brought this piece to its highest level of accomplishment ever. I was overcome by admiration and gratitude.

Mr McFall's Chamber also gave the première of Fantasia on a Theme by Kathryn Tickell, featuring Kathryn on Northumbrian pipes and all the wind players, underpinned by Rick Standley's double bass. The piece is a personal re-elaboration by me of Tickell's tune Kate's House.

Comment: Hot 3 at Nybrokajen 11

This is a report from my room in Hotel Adlon, Stockholm. What a glorious city this is; I have spent many hours walking its streets, admiring its majestic design and its relaxed, grown-up urban ecology, where people seem to know how to function with efficiency in a laid-back, relatively stress-free environment.

The concert at Nybrokajen 11 was, in fact, not just by the two talented musicians I listed in a previous posting, but by Hot 3, a trio made up of said two talents plus violist Torbjörn Helander. The line-up, then, is flute, guitar and viola. The full programme was as follows:

Anders Hultqvist: Rain and After, Composition No. 6
Klaus Huber: Ein Hauch von Unzeit
Agustín Fernández: A to Z
Madeleine Isaksson: Fibres
Rebecca Saunders: Molly’s Song #3
José Manuel López López: Trio n:r II

Before the concert, also in the grand setting of Nybrokajen 11, there was an introductory talk hosted by Goran Bergendal, a doyen of new music in Stockholm and former senior producer at Rikskonserter. He interviewed Stefan Östersjö (the guitarrist in Hot 3 and the man responsible for commissioning A to Z), Madeleine Isaksson and myself on topics relevant to the night’s programme. The talk was in Swedish but mercifully Goran switched to English when my slot began.

The venue is blessed with very good acoustics, even though this was not in the main hall but in the café. I didn’t count the seats but there must have been about sixty, of which probably fifty of fifty-five were occupied. This didn't do much to allay my misgivings about the size of new music audiences, but I won’t launch into that discussion here. Those who were there seemed a committed bunch, except, perhaps, for the young man sitting next to me, who before long began to nod off, gradually progressing from nodding to dozing until my piece began, which is when dozing became deep slumber. When, at the end of A to Z, I walked up to the front to take a bow, on returning to my seat I found the young had gone. Nor did he come back for the second half. Embarrassment? Or annoyance at finding that he was at the wrong event? We’ll never know.

The musicians played a very challenging programme with much panache and commitment. All the pieces were demanding each in its own way, and I was taken aback by the scale A to Z has taken on now that it has nine movements plus several transitional passages added to smooth over some of the instrument changes. The duration is at least twenty-two minutes and the energy expenditure is high and unrelenting throughout. Even the slower pieces, ‘Última nana’ and ‘Danza oscura’, have a tension that seemed to take a lot out of the players. What first came to life as a collection of little études is now a tour de force, and the études, if they can still be called that, are, in technical challenge if not in size, transcendental along the lines of Liszt’s or Ligeti’s piano études. But Östersjö and Thiwång delivered them with aplomb and virtuosity.

Of the rest of the programme I was particularly impressed by Isaksson’s Fibres, a delicate exploration of instrumental colour thoughtfully organised in a coherent structure of clear harmonic steps, and Saunders’s Molly’s Song #3, which displayed a searching approach to sonic possibilities well before the radio receivers and the music box were switched on.

Comment: Orkest De Volharding at The Sage Gateshead

Today, 30 November, Orkest De Volharding came to Tyneside, and their concert at Hall Two in The Sage Gateshead was inspirational. Christopher Fox, excellent composer and Professor at Brunel University, was there too, introducing the programme in his capacity as its curator. Before him, Ros Rigby came on stage to greet us, tactfully calling us an ‘elite audience’. There were, indeed, a disheartening small number of us. Where was everybody? Music students who profess an interest in composition? Their teachers, who want to keep abreast of things new? Professional musicians who play the instruments represented in the band, and would therefore greatly benefit from exposure to De Volharding’s muscular approach? Anyway, enough of that. Ros made us aware that BBC Radio 3 would be recording the concert, which added a certain electricity to the atmosphere, and not just that flowing to the microphones – surprisingly many of them for a live recording. Not much faith in the acoustics of Hall Two at the BBC, it seems.

The programme was neatly arranged in two halves, each made up of one funny piece, one impenetrable piece and one exciting piece, exactly in that order in both cases. Did Fox designed it deliberately with that structure in mind? Probably not, since the programme order was re-arranged at the last minute.

Andrew Hamilton’s Music for People Who Like Nature was amusing in its persistence on unmodulating triadic harmony and its pockets of manic repetition in designated sections of the ensemble. Although I would have welcomed more harmonic movement, and although I experienced a degree of tonic-dominant fatigue, I was amused by the mock-pastoral character of the whole thing.

Joanna Bailie’s Intermittence was enigmatically unengaged, as if written from an enormous psychological distance. The idea of re-examining the same musical argument from different viewpoints could have been used to create interesting contrasts, but instead we got a picture painted in monochrome with an economy of tools that failed to capture the imagination.

De Groote Muziek by Fox himself displayed clear thinking from the onset, with six strongly cadencial groups of four chords providing an arresting energy that did not let go of our attention until the end. Bright quasi-triadic sonorities juxtaposed to uproarious textural overlays gave the music a festive feel, which the musicians visibly enjoyed doing justice to. At the break I rushed to the bar needing a glass of rich red wine to celebrate the exhilaration of a most effective and characterful piece.

The second half opened with Concerto Grosso by Michael Wolters. This was amusing in its parody of baroque rhetoric, with Bach quotations smoothly integrated into a postminimalist flow. The joke was in the post-Kagelian stage displacements, where the musicians are invested with tireless itchy feet, moving constantly across the stage, often to play nothing more than a few notes at their new location before they move on somewhere else. Especially funny was the synchronised muting and un-muting of the three trombones, involving choreographed knee bends to pick up and put down the mutes on the floor.

During Laurence Crane’s Ullrich 1 and 2 I think I suffered a lapse of concentration, for which I apologise. It was Vogelvrij/Outlawed by Richard Ayres that made the strongest impression in the second half. This is music of the most uncompromising gesturality, blood relation to Varèse and Xenakis, but with a more immediate appeal. Textures, rhythm and pitch material are brought to subjection by a more generic necessity, the need to create broad gestures, spatial blocks of sound one can almost touch in their solidity. At times chords are recognisable from a former tonal life, but not always, and in any case it doesn’t matter, since in this discourse chords are only one of the things pitch superimpositions generate. You are made to listen more sonically here. Rhythm is perceptible as rate of movement or speed of gestural unfolding, but nothing you are likely to tap your finger to. This is musical sculpture of a very high order, except that it has colour too, and very vivid strokes of it. Richard Ayres, I don’t know anything about you, but wherever you are I wish you well, and I hope that you are writing more music.

Comment: November concerts came and went

It was an intensive month with the two concerts of Northern Sinfonia and everything that surrounded them.

15 November at The Sage Gateshead
This was a most rewarding occasion. The concert was part of a series I run, in my capacity as senior lecturer in composition at Newcastle University, in partnership with Martyn Harry of Durham University and, of course, our friends at The Sage Gateshead.

Baldur Brönnimann, the young Swiss conductor, was impressively well prepared for the rehearsals, and was evidently committed to understanding the works and offering a good rendition of them. He not only ensured that the notes were accurately placed, but he also engaged with character and expression, which is more than we often get in performances of new music. How reassuring to feel that for the person in charge the new works were not a bothersome distraction from his real job of conducting classical masterpieces, but a central part of what he does. Brönnimann and his band were outstanding in approaching sensitively the two student pieces, Reverberations by Matthew Rowan and Ramses by Kelcey Swain, and in tackling the two hardest challenges of the evening, my Peregrine and Barry's From the Intelligence Park, a hair-raisingly difficult piece to play. It was exhilarating to witness the conductor's pacing of Peregrine, gradually gathering momentum towards and effective dénouement, and their fearless plunging into the angular ensemble unisons of From the Intelligence Park.

Before the concert, there was a public conversation with Gerald Barry, a wonderful composer and a most engaging speaker. He was our guest composer for this venture. Simon Clugston, the programme director for classical music at The Sage, and I, co-interviewed Gerald, and the interviewee expressed himself with unpretentious wisdom and arresting candour on topics of new music and creative work. He was scathing about electroacoustic music ("most of it is crap") and about Sibelius users, particularly those composers who let the programme generate material for them by the simple expedient of repetition. He was dismissive of those who expect all the words in opera to be heard and understood; if you want to hear all the words, Barry said, you don't waste your time going to the opera; you go to see a play. Most disarmingly, in response to a quote from a Toronto newspaper likening his music to the "hysteria associated with systems under stress" Barry claimed that he was softening now, and was trying to come up with "music I could play over breakfast". The audience, made up mostly of students from the two universities, was clearly transfixed to be hearing so refreshingly frank views expressed with such verve.

19 November at Huddersfield Town Hall
Attendance was sparse at the Town Hall, which made me wonder how many of Northern Sinfonia's loyal audience were aware of the event - or, for that matter, how many of the new music scholars at the universities of Newcastle, Huddersfield or Manchester. I immediately regretted not having drummed up more support from my Tyneside constituency, although the heart sinks at the thought of always having to act as your own publicity agent. But goodness knows that Sinfonia's committed performances of Ligeti and of the two new pieces would have merited wider exposure. Once more I had occasion to admire the excellence of this ensemble and in particular some of its individual players. Richard Martin, the first trumpet, dazzled again with his superb tone control, clear tonguing and sensitive phrasing. John Casken's new work benefited from the participation of two outstanding soloists, the viola player Ruth Killius and the magnificent soprano Patricia Rozario, who delved into the convolutions of Casken's musical thinking with panache and suberb musicianship.

The audience, although small, responded with warmth and, at times, audible enthusiasm. I had come to the concert with some trepidation about my own Mystical Dances, a work that marks a fresh departure in a number of respects, largely to do with writing fewer notes and clearer harmonies than hitherto. I also allowed melody to reign supreme, which was perhaps not calculated to endear myself at the holy temple of the avant garde at Huddersfield. I stand by what I wrote, although, as always in the past, I reserve the right to make corrections after the première. In particular I intend to re-write the third movement, which at it stands fails to hang together. The ceaseless flow of melody comes across as an overflow, and the internal logic that binds the various melodies to each other and to the preceding movements is not sufficiently evident to the naked ear. I'll address these issues before the next performance, which should be sometime in 2007 at The Sage Gateshead.

As to the press's responses, I was aware of two. The Guardian's reviewer must have been with his mind elsewhere to brush off the two premières as airily as he did, mine with the double-edged compliment "rather cinematic". The Independent's critic did better, engaging seriously with Casken's work. She did not deign to mention mine, but I thought I read an oblique allusion between the lines. If this were true, I can't say I totally disagree, in the light of the comments I make above. But I wish the press were braver when faced with the new, instead of circumventing it to devote yet more space to the grand established figures who are now beyond criticism.

May 2007

10 and 11 May
Venue TBC
Valladolid, Spain

12 May
Venue TBC
Salamanca, Spain
Orquesta de Castilla y León
Alejandro Posada, conductor

Programme to include Agustín Fernández, Fuego

February 2007

Performance: Monday 19 February
The Old Tollbooth
Stirling
Mr McFall's Chamber

Tuesday 20 February
The Queen's Hall
Edinburgh
Mr McFall's Chamber

These two concerts will feature my Botanic Spider and a new work for Northumbrian pipes and ensemble which I'll be writing as a companion piece for Kathryn Tickell's Lordenshaws.

In the programme will also be Kathryn Tickell's pioneering Lordenshaws, a work for Northumbrian pipes and ensemble first commissioned by Northern Sinfonia and performed on a Contemporary Music Network tour in 2002.

The programme will include:

Agustín Fernández: Fantasia (world première)
Tim Garland: In Translation (UK première)
Agustín Fernández: Botanic Spider
Kathryn Tickell: Lordenshaws (première of the 2006 version)
Astor Piazzolla: Adiós nonino
...and other McFall hits

December 2006

Performance: 10 December 2006
Venue TBC
Malmö, Sweden
Stefan Österjö and Terje Thiwång
Agustín Fernández: A to Z

Performance: 5 December 2006
Stefan Österjö and Terje Thiwång
Nybrokajen 11
Rikskonserter
Stockholm
Agustín Fernández: A to Z

The work is a series of studies for two musicians, one playing charango or ten-string guitar, the other playing flute or piccolo or alto flute. It has been performed before in growing degrees of completion, as these two fantastic musicians kept accepting the new studies I've been sending their way. The one on 5 December will be the first full performance. The complete piece lasts eighteen to twenty minutes.

November 2006

Performance: Sunday 19 November
Huddersfield Town Hall

Huddersfield Festival
Northern Sinfonia
conducted by Thomas Zehetmair

Works by Ligeti, John Casken and the world première of Mystical Dances.

Performance: Wednesday 15 November
The Sage Gateshead, Hall Two
Northern Sinfonia
conducted by Baldur Brönnimann

Works by Gerald Barry, Martyn Harry, Matthew Rowan, Kelcey Swain, and the UK première of the 2005 version of my Peregrine, a work composed for Joel Sachs and the New Juilliard Ensemble, who gave the first performance on 22 November 2005 at the Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York.

News October 2006

After a strenuous period of work, my latest piece Mystical Dances is ready. It was commissioned by North Music Trust for Northern Sinfonia, and it will be performed at the Huddersfield Festival next month by this excellent orchestra under their principal conductor Thomas Zehetmair.

In a related development, contracts have been signed with Tritó S.L., the Barcelona-based music publishers, for the publication of four of my works: Mystical Dances, Peregrine, Danza de la loma and Fuego. I am pleased that the deal has been finalised and I look forward to years of fruitful collaboration with Tritó.

July 2006

To the best of my knowledge there were two performances of my music in July, and both were on the same day: 9 July.

In the afternoon, the Edinburgh-based ensemble Mr McFall's Chamber played Botanic Spider at All Saints Quayside, as part of the ¡Vamos! Festival. In the same programme the McFalls played a piece by one of my students, Sergio Camacho's Four Dances for the One Moon.

¡Vamos! being a festival of Hispanic and Lusophone culture, the rest of the McFalls' programme was a judicious selection of classical works such as the Cuban Fabio Landa's Pequeña suite cubana, Ignacio Cervantes's Adiós a Cuba and several pieces by Astor Piazzolla.

An outstanding aspect of the concert was the singing of Taylor Wilson, an extraordinary performer who offered arresting renditions of songs by Weill and Brel.

Almost at the same time, across de water a group of talented young musicians was performing my Trío at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The players were Miranda Cuckson, violin, Christopher Gross, cello, and Philip Fisher, piano. I couldn't be in both places at the same time, so I had to leave the New York event in the capable hands of its animateur, Joel Sachs. According to his report, and to a very positive review on the New York Times (11 July), the performance went very well and the reception was goood. This was the Trío's first performance outside Bolivia, where it had been played several times before by Trío Apolo, who commissioned it with funds from Fundación Arnoldo Schwimmer.

My thanks to these wonderful musicians and to their promoters, ¡Vamos! Festival and Joel Sachs, for bringing my music alive.

Welcome

Who I Am, What I Do

If you have got this far you probably know already, but for manners’ sake I should introduce myself: I am a composer, born and raised in Bolivia, a resident of the United Kingdom since 1984.

What kind of music do I write?

Uncomfortable question. The only valid answer should be to play you an example of my music, but the question presupposes that the example is not at hand.

So here it is: I write concert and stage music seeking to engage in a dialogue with the classical tradition, while continuing to absorb the experiences of the recent past to formulate viable directions for the future informed by the popular musics I have come into contact.

There. You can’t say that I avoided the question.


I am beginning to learn about blogging, and this post is my first attempt. All going well, there will be more.

Welcome to the blog of
Agustín Fernández,
composer.

While my website is being renovated, this blog will be the most up-to-date source of information on my work.