Festival Latinoamericano de Música, further thoughts

On reflection, I will say who the figures were that left a lasting impression. Participating colleagues are unlikely to read these lines, and if they do they will understand, I’m sure, that any omission is the result of specific affinities on this occasion, and not a sign of failure to appreciate their contributions, all of which were valuable.

Graciela Paraskevaídis was impressive for her piece nada, a very potent statement built on next to nothing in the way of material. She kept a low profile in the conference and I missed her own paper, but in conversation between events she showed a lucid mind and a wide-ranging knowledge and understanding of new music. 

Paraskevaídis’s performer for nada, Beatriz Elena Martínez, shone for her committed rendition, full of nuance, physicality and depth of expression. 

The whole Ensamble CG were a lesson in dedication to innovation and high standards of performance; in the words of Paraskevaídis, they are “a luxury for Latin America”.  

The Costa Rican composer Alejandro Cardona was striking in his Historias mínimas, as described in the previous post, and he was a warm and companionable colleague to have around. 

The percussionist Gustavo De Jesús Olivar Sánchez impressed me for his indefatigable energy, his love of new music and his generosity in acting as an unappointed co-ordinator with the visiting composers and performers, walking us on the safer routes and providing a wealth of advice. He showed panache as a soloist in Ricardo Teruel's Concertino on 28 May, and cast-iron reliability in the final concert. 


This concert, by the soloists of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble from Indiana University directed by Carmen Téllez provided a splendid close, especially the work by David Dzubay and the voice of Sharon Harms. 

Alfredo Rugeles and Diana Arismendi worked selflessly and effectively to put on an event that has the potential to be, and in some respects already is, the main forum for new music in Latin America. 


Rugeles and Arismendi's aspiration to instigate developments not only for the benefit of Venezuela but with a pan-Latin American reach - the project of a Latin American Academy of Composition, for example - should be celebrated and encouraged. They are in line with a vision and a spirit of leadership Venezuelans have excelled at for centuries, from Simón Bolívar onwards. Now that the scope of the activities at Cuba's Casa de las Américas has dwindled - or so it seems to me - these initiatives are precious and unique. They deserve the support of all of us with a stake in Latin American music. 

XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música, Day 5

Sunday 30 was the day of my departure, but not before the final event of the festival, a morning concert by the soloists from the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble of Indiana University. I had known their conductor, the excellent Carmen Téllez, from a distance, in her capacity as director of the Latin American Music Center at Indiana University. She came to Caracas with four  young singers and her Indiana colleague David Dzubay, a composer. Dzubay provided what was by far the best piece in the programme, a richly textured setting of ee cummings for mezzosoprano and ensemble titled Life Songs, Book 1: dancesing in a green bay. Jacquelyn Matava gave a committed rendition with a well-directed group of young Venezuelan players, whose clarinettist struck me for her artistry and subtle pianissimos. A disturbing piece by Osvaldo Golijov, Tres canciones para soprano y orquesta de cámara, was superbly sung by Sharon Harms with an ensemble increased to the size of a chamber orchestra: technically accomplished, subtly expressive, rich in contrasts and the carrier of a powerful musical personality, this young singer proved a revelation. I am sure we will hear much about her before long.

The group of Latin American composers assembled in Caracas had by now dwindled to a handful, leaving rather fewer to say goodbye to: besides Paraskevaídis and Villanueva were left Darwin Aquino from Dominican Republic, Jorge Nunes from Brazil and Julio Racine from Haiti. 

My final balance: Alfredo Rugeles and Diana Arismendi do a magnificent job keeping the festival alive in difficult financial circumstances. If this year is anything to go by, they work with vision and dedication, and they have the necessary connections abroad and in Venezuela, but the latter do not always deliver their side of the bargain. All the problems I witnessed were due to somebody higher up or lower down the structure of the country’s culture machinery not honouring their undertaking. Arismendi and Rugeles deserve nothing but praise and gratitude. I wish them well in future festivals, for they deserve to succeed. 

Having read so much press about today’s Venezuela, the opportunity to see it for myself was valuable. 


It was exhilarating to meet so many interesting, talented, articulate and creative individuals among both the locals and the visitors. I have a mental list of those who left the strongest impression, but I will not share it here for fear of hurting anyone who might read these lines - I suppose it is technically possible? - and find themselves unlisted. Ever the optimist, me.

My own participation was not my finest moment. The funereal silence that greeted my paper continues to flummox me; did I misjudge the tone? If so, were there clues for knowing so beforehand, and if so how could I miss them? I will never know. The shrinkage from three pieces of mine in the programme to one, and thence to one movement thereof, was unfortunate, especially because it presented an extremely partial image of my work, and one of an atypical part at that. My own introduction prior to the performance of the slow movement of Una música escondida was meant to help putting the piece in context, but a question later on by a shrewd member of the audience showed me I had muddled the last sentence to the point of unintelligibility. So there were mistakes here and there, but there is little point in apportioning blame; the facts are what they are, and they will be better some other time. 


The main thing is I was there, meeting some of the most talented composers and musicians on the continent, hearing their music, breathing that atmosphere, seeing again that country for which I have respect and affection. I am grateful for the invitation and the splendid opportunity. I learned much. 

XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música, Day 4

On Saturday 29 May the concert was shared by a very young vocal ensemble, Aequalis Aurea, and the young violinist Iván Pérez and his pianist Goulnara Galimchina. The little choir showed plenty of evidence of having been drilled to distraction by their obviously talented conductor, Ana María Raga, although they still preserve an endearing freshness in their performance.

Gerardo Gerulewicz’s Tarén for violin and piano was charmingly introduced by the composer, listing the titles of the four miniatures. Tarén being a kind of incantation, each movement indicated a specific purpose for the ritual; the second was ‘Tarén for going away when you are a newborn’s father’ and the last was ‘Tarén for scaring mosquitoes away’.  

The violin and piano duo displayed their talents to the full with their encore: Ginastera’s Pampeana No. 1.

XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música, Day 3

On 28 May I missed most of the first concert due to transport difficulties. On my minibus was travelling the Argentine Cecilia Villanueva, whose En línea was in the programme. We arrived over an hour late, to the pleasant surprise that the organisers had engineered a rolling postponement of En línea, so that, on our arrival, the composer was able to slip into the hall right in time to hear her piece. It was a disciplined study in pitch range-demarcated textures for predominantly low instruments.

The evening concert, by Orquesta Filarmónica de Caracas conducted by German Cáceres, began with Alba Potes’s Cantares para orquesta, a rich fabric of colour and texture. Then came the second movement of Una música escondida. The idea of performing this movement only had been a practical solution emerging from discussions in the wake of the aforementioned personnel and timing difficulties. I was uneasy about being represented by such an atypical, personal utterance, with none of the traits that I consider my trademark, but showing instead a directness of expression which in the context of the whole work was a risk, but on its own had the potential to be perceived as naïve. I therefore asked to introduce the piece so as to put it in context. Whether the introduction helped I am unsure; it certainly did not help my unease.  But this was a festival and there was plenty of interesting music to hear and interesting people to meet, so I thought it pointless to dwell on this discomfort.

Next came Carlos Castro’s Concierto del Sol for guitar and orchestra, performed with authority by the superb guitarist Rubén Riera. Ricardo Teruel’s Concertino No. 2 for concertina, percussion, electric bass and orchestra explored its unusual combination of soloists with exuberance. German Cáceres’s Violin Concerto came across as the evening’s most serious music, showing the telltale signs of pre-compositional pitch organisation and a rhetoric that situates it in the context of such American symphonists as William Schumann.  

XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música, Day 2

Marcha por la autonomía universitaria vista desde el piso 16 del Hotel Alba, Caracas 27 de mayo de 2010  

The main event of the following day - 27 May - was the concert by Ensamble CG from Colombia. They had given a workshop the previous day, during which their commitment to new music and to working together had been made apparent. This concert put these qualities very much in evidence, displaying a technical handling and a tightness rarely heard in new music ensembles. It would be invidious to single out individual pieces in their very well-chosen programme, but I will do so on special grounds: because she was the festival’s main dynamo, Diana Arismendi, whose Epigramas showed a sensitive use of voice, guitar and percussion and a gift for harmonic clarity. And, because this was a celebrations of her seventieth birthday, Graciela Paraskevaídis’s nada, a piece I found arresting in every respect. The simplicity of the material, written for the stark forces of one solo voice with nearly no text, gathered momentum through the simple device of progressive ascent in pitch, until the intensity was almost unbearable. This exposed structure was superbly paced by the singer Beatriz Elena Martínez, whose control and absolute immersion in the piece were breath-taking. 

This was to be the day of the first rehearsal of my Una música escondida by Orquesta Filarmónica de Caracas. There were timing difficulties and personnel difficulties, as a result of which the rehearsal ended before my piece could be practised. 

XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música, Day 1

The first day I attended, 26 May, was the third of a composers’ conference adjacent to the festival. I was invited to read a paper - written it in the nick of time, during the journey across - and I read it in the third place, following papers by Diana Arismendi and Miguel Astor. 


Arismendi’s paper provided an outline of the rich developments in composition teaching and practice taking place in Venezuela in the wake of the gigantic growth in orchestral performance brought about by José Antonio Abreu’s youth orchestra movement, known internationally as El Sistema. Miguel Astor discussed knowledgeably possible reforms to the teaching of harmony and counterpoint, and whether they should be taught at all in modern times - his answer being yes, they should. Mine took up the topic “The artist in transit” which had been proposed as a theme by the conference organisers. I surveyed topics of national identity and survival in different cultures, based on my own experiences. This paper was the only one in the whole morning to provoke no comment from the audience, which left me puzzled. Following mine came a paper by Emilio Mendoza, a Venezuelan composer, which stirred controversy by highlighting what Mendoza saw as the relative neglect of composition by the very forces that had unleashed such impressive developments in orchestral playing. Mendoza made the point that the creation of new music was being overlooked at Venezuela’s peril, since in time all the youth players would be forgotten whereas the composers and their works would be remembered. Given that the whole festival was, somehow, a beneficiary of El Sistema’s largesse, and that numerous pieces by Venezuelan composers were, in fact, being performed at the festival, this paper was greeted with some strength of feeling by Venezuelan colleagues. It was instructive to witness the debate, and I admired Mendoza’s courage and compelling manner. The last paper was by Rodolfo Acosta, a Colombian composer, who talked about his experiences teaching composition in an environment characterised by conservatism but blessed with pockets of innovation. 

Alfredo Rugeles, pensativo. Foto AF.

The evening concert was by Cuarteto Venezolano. In the programme was Manena Contreras’s Instantes, which has shared a programme with my own String Quartet No. 1 ‘Montes’ in several concerts of the incomparable Momenta Quartet. This performance in Caracas was not as full of verve as the Momenta’s renditions. In an interesting and varied programme, I was particularly pleased by Arcángel Castillo’s Cuarteto de Cuerdas #1 and by Alejandro Cardona’s Historias Mínimas: Cuarteto No. 5. Castillo’s had a movement handled with challenging simplicity of material and dexterity of touch, based, I believe, on an indigenous dance rhythm. Cardona’s piece was rich in Bartókian echoes, especially in a slow movement reminiscent of the ‘night music’ atmosphere, but on the whole displaying an individual approach to quartet writing, with highly professional control of texture, colour and, most impressively, pacing. 

XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música

On an invitation from the Festival’s co-directors, Venezuelan composers Alfredo Rugeles and Diana Arismendi, I was able to extricate myself from the frenzy of end-of-year admin at ICMuS  to fly to Caracas for five days. This was not the festival’s entirety but a section of it, for my hosts had been kind enough to invite me to attend the festival in whole or in part. Three pieces of mine were to be performed: Trío, Una música escondida and the song cycle Alquimia. Shortly before my departure for Caracas I discovered that two of these had been dropped, leaving Una música escondida to be played by Orquesta Filarmónica de Caracas under the Salvadorean composer and conductor German Cáceres.  

This was to be my first visit to Venezuela since 1977, when as principal viola with the Bolivian Youth Orchestra I had attended a festival of youth orchestras instigated by the then young El Sistema, the brainchild of José Antonio Abreu. I had then had occasion to admire the wealth of talent and the plethora of rich personalities that country seems to brim over with.

Accommodation was at Hotel Alba. This had formerly been the Caracas Hilton but it had some time ago been taken over by the government, who was, reportedly, determined to keep it as a five-star hotel while making it accessible to ordinary Venezuelans and visitors coming on official business. Were this a different kind of blog I should like to expand on Hotel Alba, but, since it is a music blog, suffice it to say that Hotel Alba looks and feels like its days of glory are over and its days of life are numbered. Thanks, however, to receptionist Angel Domínguez for sorting out my internet connection. 

Publication of ¡Oh Guitarra!

This autumn saw the publication of my second piece for solo guitar, ¡Oh Guitarra! The publishers are Tre Media of Karlsruhe, the same company that released my first guitar work, Nana del insomne, a few years ago.

¡Oh Guitarra! was composed at the request of the Swiss guitarist Christoph Jäggin. Its broad theme is carnival, and the various meanings and associations it carries for somebody with my background. 

To mention first the associations my piece does not concern itself with, carnival is, of course, a time of lavishness, abandon and extravagant fun. In its religious connotations it is the season of wanton recklessness preceding the austerity of Lent. 

Although these generic meanings are, no doubt, somewhere in the background, this guitar piece is more specific in that it explores two instances of music associated with carnival. One is the taquipayanacus, a tradition of my native Cochabamba, where groups from the surrounding valleys come down on the city to compete in dexterity and wit on one genre. A pithy musical phrase in lively tempo and triple rhythm is repeated for as long as the singer has inspiration to improvise couplets to go with it. The irreverent piquancy of the lyrics makes up for the repetitiveness of the melody. The words are in Quechua, but somehow one line in Spanish passed down to me from my father: estos carnavales quién inventaría. In my experience, although the sound of taquipayanacus pervaded the atmosphere during carnival time, my ignorance of Quechua gave these four words the value of an emblem. In my piece I subject the classic four-bar phrase to intervallic manipulation that probably renders it unrecognisable, and there is no repetition. 

The other specific nod is in the direction of eastern Bolivia, where a popular genre bears the name of carnaval, or sometimes carnavalito. The tempo and metre are the same as in the western taquipayanacus, but the character and style are a world away. In ¡Oh Guitarra! I extract and distil some of the elements - especially rhythmic ones - that make up this style. I do not expect the average reader of this blog to be interested in the technicalities, so I leave it at that. 

Although I had not intended it that way, the resulting piece of music is something of an east-meets-west specimen. So am I, born in the Andes but brought up, at least for part of my childhood, in the lowlands. By rights the piece should have been titled Estos carnavales, but at days before I sent it off I changed my mind. Completing the work had been an exhausting experience, because I find it hard to write for a solo instrument and because the guitar, in particular, has so many technical variables that progress had been excruciatingly slow. I remembered García Lorca's poem La guitarra and its final words:

¡Oh guitarra!

corazón malherido por cinco espadas.

The line that for the poet conveys mesmeric reverence seemed just as good to express my feeling of exhaustion. 

¡Oh Guitarra! can be obtained from Tre Media, who are contactable by email or by telephone +49(0)721/26023 or by post at the address below.

TRE MEDIA Musikverlage 

0700 TREMEDIA 

Amalienstr. 40

D-76133 Karlsruhe 

  

Distant Episodes

This is a newly available composition for two pianos. I wrote it over the last year or so, in response to an expression of interest from duoDort in a little piece named Portrait, listed in my catalogue as dating back to 1989, for two pianos, duration three minutes.

Not only did such a miniature seem an embarrassingly small offering to hand anybody, but when I searched for the old manuscript I could not find the final page. After spending hours looking for it I decided it would be easier to rewrite the final page than to search on. How wrong I was. Did I not know, after so many root-and-branch revisions of past efforts, that it is impossible - for me at least - to go back to an old piece without changing it? And change it I did, but to an unsuspected degree.

The experience of trying to transport myself to the old 'me' of 1989 called to mind one of my teenage readings, Herman Hesse's Knulp: Three Tales from the Life of Knulp, known to me in the 1970s by its Spanish title, Tres momentos de una vida. In it Hesse returns to the same character, Knulp, to show us snapshots of three very different periods of his life.

Here I was, in 2008, working hard to replicate the musical logic that must have ruled my thinking twenty years earlier. The experience felt so much like a dialogue between the then and the now that the idea grew in my mind that I could make a virtue of this time dislocation, and frame the little Portrait with something even earlier to come before it and something of the present to follow it.

The idea would have not gone anywhere if I had not remembered that my Cantata de Navidad y Epifanía of 1978, for baritone, children's choir and two pianos, contained an interlude for two pianos. I went back to it and found that it could work, with the necessary adjustments, as a movement in a longer instrumental work. This provided the very early past, Portrait being the distant, but not quite so early past.

For the finale I resorted to my then most recently completed work, the String Quartet No. 1, 'Montes'. For this, remember, is not me looking at myself as I was long ago, then not so long ago and then now, but me looking at the music I composed in these three moments of my life. A form of meta-composition, you might call it.

The finale, then, is a second look at the movement out of the string quartet I find most intriguing, least completed, leaving the most to be said: the third, 'Music and Land'. From a purely compositional angle, I was curious to see how the rhythmic instabilities would work between two players rather than four, and to what extent the sharper definition of the piano's mechanism would enhance the clarity of the rhythmic contradictions and juxtapositions. I am thrilled with the result.

Although I took so long to complete the work, and I came up with fifteen minutes of music when they were only asking for three, it seems that a première by duoDorT is still a possibility. Meanwhile, I have posted up a computer demo version on MySpace and on last.fm.

Grabación de Trío

Los miembros del Trío Apolo, destinatarios de mi Trío, han emprendido la grabación de esta obra. Ellos la estrenaron en 2003 en el Teatro Achá de Cochabamba, y hace algunos años produjeron una grabación que por razones técnicas acordamos no publicar. El que estos músicos excelentes - Emilio Aliss, Eduardo Rodríguez y Ariana Stambuk - estén ahora realizando una segunda grabación es testimonio de su compromiso profesional infatigable. Les agradezco, les deseo éxito y espero con impaciencia los resultados de este fin de semana de trabajo.

El Trío Apolo encargó mi obra con el apoyo de la Fundación Arnoldo Schwimmer, y desde su estreno en 2003 la ha mantenido en su repertorio a lo largo de sucesivos cambios de personal. Existe en una versión para orquesta de cuerdas y piano, re-titulada Una música escondida, que fue presentada en Newcastle por Northern Sinfonia en 2004 y en La Paz por la Orquesta del Conservatorio Nacional de Música en 2007.

Danza de la loma en Zaragoza

Jaime Martín y su equipo de virtuosos

El Ensemble de Vientos de la Orquesta de Cadaqués presentó Danza de la loma en el Auditorio de Zaragoza el domingo 8 de marzo de 2009, bajo la dirección de Jaime Martín. Estuve allí para presenciar el momento. 

Lo primero que me impresionó fue el auditorio mismo, de proporciones generosas, una arquitectura sorprendente y una acústica de gran claridad. El interior está diseñado en distinto niveles y orientaciones, con grandes paneles de madera que suavizan la modernidad de los ángulos y le dan un ambiente acogedor al interior. 

Lo segundo - por orden de aparición y no de jerarquía - fue la personalidad del director, una especie de dínamo con batuta, lleno de entusiasmo por la música y por la tarea que tenía delante. Su buena relación con los músicos era evidente y el ambiente de trabajo de los mejores. 

Seguidamente, todavía en orden estrictamente cronológico, me llamaron la atención los músicos, su alto nivel técnico, y el mucho carácter y musicalidad que desplegaban aun con una pieza para ellos del todo nueva como era mi Danza de la loma. El ensayo iba a ser una prueba de sonido breve, probando sólo secciones de las distintas obras y de la mía sólo la sección inicial, pero una vez que atacaron con Danza de la loma Jaime Martín siguió dirigiendo y los músicos siguieron tocando hasta el final, dándome así el lujo de oír la obra dos veces en la misma mañana. 

Por último, fue de admirar el público, que casi llenó la espaciosa sala y se comportó como se comporta un público habituado a los conciertos. El programa no hacía concesiones al espacio familiar de domingo por la mañana, y es posible que a muchos mi Danza les haya resultado desconcertante, o inclusive el Concierto para Violín de Kurt Weill; pero allí estaban los abonados en pleno, escuchando con atención y dándole al evento el carácter que necesita la música para ser un acto de comunicación. Felicidades a Zaragoza, a la Orquesta de Cadaqués y a Jaime Martín por el espíritu emprendedor de esta serie. 

Fue una experiencia muy grata y lamenté no poder pasarme más tiempo con ese grupo estupendo. Muchos se iban y yo mismo tenía que tomar el Ave de retorno a Barcelona, de donde vuelo a Newcastle el lunes. Menudo viajecito para once minutos de música, pero los participantes mencionados hicieron que valiera la pena. 

A belated but but very welcome première

 Darragh rehearsing
Munirando II for violin and piano was written in 1998 for a virtuoso player based in New York; it may be kinder not to name them, even though I have great respect and fondness for them. In the late 1990s I had a happy association with New York's Juilliard School. Their orchestra performed my Fuego in 1995 and the New Juilliard Ensemble commissioned my Peregrine and gave its première in 1996. They even revived it later, once at the Museum of Modern Art and again in 2005, for which occasion I revised it extensively. 

Coming into contact with the vibrant community of advanced student performers at Juilliard was a galvanising experience. They were players for whom technique appeared to have ceased to be an obstacle. They relished challenge and were not only not daunted by difficulty or elaboration or novelty, but they relished it. It was invigorating. After attending several concerts of Joel Sachs’s excellent Focus Festival I felt something akin to intoxication. There was so much talent there, such a gold mine on which to work, if only there were the opportunity.

The opportunity offered itself to me when one of the postgraduate violinists asked me to write a piece for their masters recital. This felt exactly right: it was a logical next step after Fuego and Peregrine, and it would enable me to work more closely with one of these outstanding young virtuosi. I set out to write a piece that would deploy the virtuosity that clearly was on offer, and I also wanted to challenge and extend the young player’s musicality, stretching their capabilities and generating a tension that, on its release towards the end, would provide a rewarding experience for player and audience alike. And, of course, I wanted to explore a particular idea I had had in mind for some time. I took time to produce the result I aspired to, taking, I think, around a year to complete the work.

When the piece was ready and shipped to New York, the player informed me politely that they would not be able to do justice to it in the time given. Aside from the disappointment this caused me, it meant the consignment of Munirando II to a long period of languishment on my shelves. Over the years I offered it to various players, but always had the same reply: sorry, too difficult. In frustration, I revised it in 2002 to make it more accessible, while still preserving its character of challenging virtuosity. In this revised form, breaking a long-held principle, I submitted the piece to a composer’s competition, the UK and Eire Violin and Piano Competition. Although sceptical of competitions in such a personal field as the creation of music, I harboured the hope that a lucky outcome might finally secure a performance for Munirando II. The piece was shortlisted but not chosen for the prize. Intriguingly, I received a communication to the effect that the chairman of the jury, the late Yfrah Nieman, would be interested in performing the piece if I would find a pianist and a venue. Although vaguely flattering, this seemed a strange idea in the circumstances and I was unsure how to take it. After thinking about it for some time I wrote declining the offer.

It would be another six years before the brave person came up expressing a serious intention to perform Munirando II: the young virtuoso Darragh Morgan, whom I had known in the early 1990s when he was a schoolboy in Belfast and I was composer in residence at Queen’s University. Even in those early days Darragh was showing impressive flair and accomplished technique. He left Belfast for music college and since then I heard about him through third parties, with news of how well he was doing. I sent him the piece and a couple of years later he said he would do it, with his official pianist Mary Dullea. I am delighted, and full of anticipation to hear what Darragh and Mary will do with Munirando II on 5 February at 7.30 PM in the Schott Recital Room, London.

As the title suggests, the piece is part of a series, the first of which was Munirando for clarinet and piano, commissioned by the Park Lane Group in 1995. In both cases the intention is to explore ideas of virtuosity and continuous flow, that maddeningly enviable quality of Bach’s music, taking it into the area of relentlessness.

The Spirit of the Andes

Verónica Souto. Photograph by Richard Strike

While on the subject of the Momenta Quartet’s performance of my String Quartet No. 1 ‘Montes’, I recommend a beautiful film: The Spirit of the Andes by Verónica Souto. It is a documentary on the life and work of Fernando Montes, the painter.

The film charts a life’s progress from bohemian La Paz in the 1930s to life as a student in Buenos Aires, world-watching in London cafés in the 1960s and ending with the high-profile international exhibitions in Montes’s mature years. Throughout, the film explores the constant concern with the Andean landscape, which Montes developed into a very personal approach characterised by subtle introspection and simplicity.

It will be shown on Saturday 12 July at 6PM in Culture Lab, Newcastle University.

Momenta in Newcastle!

Photograph by John Gurrin

I am thrilled to announce that the Momenta Quartet, unforgettable heroes of the première of of my String Quartet last year in Philadelphia, will be in Newcastle in the flesh. They will be taking part in the ¡Vamos! Festival with two performances.

On Friday 11 July the Momenta will take part in the festival launch at Northern Stage, playing my Montes and an array of other new Latin American music. The violist Stephanie Griffin and the cellist Joanne Lin will stun their audience with two solo pieces by the Brazilian maverick Arthur Kampela. You can actually see and hear one of them, Bridges for solo viola, on Kampela's myspace page. This programme will also include Oleajes by the Colombian composer Alba Potes, and the world première of a new work by my fellow Bolivian Cergio Prudencio. Cergio is currently the most active composer in Bolivia, and he has secured a place in history by co-founding - with his brother José Luis - and work for three decades as the musical director of the Experimental Orchestra of Native Instruments (OEIN). This evening there will be plenty of other musical goodies on offer, which you can look up on the ¡Vamos! Festival programme.

On Saturday 12 July the Momenta will play at King's Hall, Newcastle University. My String Quartet No 1 'Montes' will get a second airing, preceded by another impressive selection out of the Momenta's contemporary repertoire, including two very new pieces written for them by composers based here in the Northeast of England. These will be chosen out of a workshop I have organised with students from Newcastle and Durham universities: Matthew Rowan, Helen Papaioannou, Tom Albans and Eric Egan. Which of these will be chosen? That will be the surprise of the evening. The programme will also include Instantes by the young Venezuelan composer Manena Contreras and Four Pieces for String Quartet one of the fathers of contemporary Cuban music, Alejandro García Caturla.

Connected with the Momenta visit and with my work, there will be a screening of the beautiful documentary by Verónica Souto The Spirit of the Andes exploring the life and work of the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes. This will be at Newcastle University's Culture Lab. The eminent director will be with us to introduce her film.

Details and tickets are available on the ¡Vamos! website. Or you can book directly with Northern Stage, by clicking here or phoning 0191 230 5151.

'Montes' at Bolivar Hall

Jane Gordon, Adrian Charlesworth, Sara Jones and Jennifer Morsches. In the first image, I am acknowledging the Montes family who are in the audience. Photos by Richard Strike.

UK Première of String Quartet No 1 ‘Montes’

This was an intense experience. The music’s dedicatee, Fernando Montes, presided over the proceedings as if he were still here. His family did most of the organisational work making the event possible, whereas my music and, to a larger extent, Verónica Souto’s film The Spirit of the Andes, brought Montes’s work alive in front of an audience that was made up of Montes’s friends and admirers.

The string quartet experience was very different from the Philadelphia story. First of all, the London-based players were not a pre-existing string quartet, but came together especially for the occasion. This in itself was a considerable organisational challenge which started from the recruitment of the players. At the early stages of planning, if the project was deemed possible at all it had been because a string quartet of young, enthusiastic, new-music loving players, mainly Venezuelans, was deemed to be available to Bolivar Hall. When I made the necessary contact to ascertain the existence, youth and enthusiasm of the players I found that their existence and youth were a distinct possibility, but their enthusiasm was conspicuous by its absence. By this time the project preparations had taken off: the plan was to mark the first anniversary of Montes’s death at Bolivar Hall on 17 January, with a projection of Souto’s film and a performance of my quartet. Many people were working on that assumption. There was no turning back.

At this point enter Jennifer Morsches. She was remembered by the Montes family as a recent, but devoted friend of Fernando’s, and she was remembered by me as the excellent cellist who worked with Florilegium and whom I had seen, much to my surprise, playing romantic and twentieth-century music with Elizabeth Schwimmer in Cochabamba, Bolivia. On being approached about this project she showed unequivocal enthusiasm, and soon she was to prove true to her word. She took on the recruitment of the other players and the planning of the rehearsals, including the offer of her own house for them. When recruitment proved harder than expected her commitment was unwavering. She did not falter even when, two days before the first rehearsal and five days before the concert, her colleague Rodolfo Richter, appointed first violin, announced that he was pulling out because of a severe eye infection that required immediate surgery. Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 were spent in a flurry of phone calls between Jennifer, me and possible Richter replacements. The quartet seemed doomed to cancellation, but the thought of doing that to the Montes family was hard to stomach. Somehow Jennifer's perseverance worked its magic, and by Sunday evening a replacement was in place in the form of Jane Gordon, violinist of the Rautio Trio.

I stayed out of the players’ way the day of the first rehearsal, Monday 14 January, and took the train down to London on the Tuesday. I found the players immersed in their discovery of the piece and of each other, riding on the crest of a very steep learning curve. The piece was new to them, so was the style, and so were they to each other. They were not exactly gliding over, but they were not sinking either. Good spirits saved them, and Jane Gordon saved them by taking the reins and leading with a firm hand. By the end of Tuesday the piece was far from ready, but the spirits far from broken.

On Wednesday, the day before the concert, there was to be no rehearsal because of another concert involving our superb cellist, by the early music group Florilegium. I knew this splendid ensemble since our Bolivian venture in 2005, so I took the opportunity to go and hear them. It was a lunchtime concert, in the bowels of Imperial College. The difficulties of finding this secret location even well after reaching the Imperial campus meant that I got there only for the second piece. I was taken aback by the sight of their virtuoso director, Ashley Solomon, playing Mozart with his foot in an elaborate contraption that appeared designed to keep his toes together. But more than that, I was taken aback by the sight of the violinist, Rodolfo Richter, playing with great aplomb and reading with seemingly unbloodied eyes from a music stand like everybody else, displaying an ocular resilience I had not thought him capable of in his current state. If anybody ever doubted that Mozart’s music can be miraculous, here was the proof. It heals the soul, it heals the eyes. The concert was truly enlightening. And Jennifer was the magnificent player I had always known her to be.

On Thursday 17 January, a year to the day since the death of Fernando Montes, a documentary about him and a string quartet about him received their British premières at London’s Bolivar Hall. Tickets had sold out weeks in advance. The Chairman of the Anglo-Bolivian Society, David Minter, gave a fitting tribute to the artist in his introductory address. Then I introduced the piece outlining each movement’s connection with a Montes painting. Vince Harris helped with the projection of the relevant paintings. Then my four friends played the string quartet, with an assurance that belied the short preparation time and a commitment that did not fail to stir and move. Then Verónica Souto introduced her film, and then the programme closed with the film itself.

It was a memorable occasion in many respects. Clearly Fernando Montes was foremost in the minds and hearts of all present. Several people had travelled a long way, some from abroad, for the occasion. It was an act of group catharsis, where the music and the film provided the ritual’s structure. I found it all deeply moving.

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.