Aldeburgh Music

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group*
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
Dawn Upshaw soprano*
EXAUDI
Oliver Knussen conductor

Harrison Birtwistle Cantus Iambeus
Bartók Three Village Scenes
Elliott Carter Interventions for piano and orchestra (UK premiere)
Oliver Knussen Requiem – Songs for Sue*
Ives The Fourth of July; Three Places in New England

Ives’ delight in forming a ‘set’ from an assemblage of apparently independent parts is matched by the serious originality of Knussen’s programme-building.

Three Places in New England and The Fourth of July are a blend of an understated yet all-American grandeur with music of raucous celebration, a carefully crafted chaos of borrowed popular tunes and sophisticated collision of multiple musics.

Birtwistle’s ebullient perpetual motion seems in harmony with the earthy joys of Bartók’s rustic miniatures. Carter’s anti-concerto, lyrical and feisty, prefaces a modern-day classic of a Requiem.

An Elliott Carter premiere by two of the leading exponents of his music that continues the recent sequence of Carter premieres at Aldeburgh.

Supported by Peter and Veronica Lofthouse