Aldeburgh Music

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group*
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
Colin Currie percussion
Alexandra Wood violin
Oliver Knussen conductor

Stravinsky Scherzo a la Russe
Helen Grime Everyone Sang
Stravinsky Variations: Aldous Huxley in memoriam
Elliott Carter Conversations* (world premiere)
Charlotte Bray Caught in Treetops*
Stravinsky Petrushka (1947 version)

There are few more arresting openings in music than being pitched headlong into the intoxicating colours and frenetic bustle of the Russian Shrovetide fair.

Petrushka is one hundred years old and has lost none of its power to thrill, shock and delight. Elliott Carter’s new work is the third in a trilogy of Aldeburgh commissions from the American centenarian, and typically Oliver Knussen frames it with two short works also from 2010 by young British composers.

Bray and Grime both take their initial inspiration from poetry, and the works are united by a clarity of structure, fluid lyricism and a vivid brilliance of instrumental colour.

‘True lunar beauty … [Caught in Treetops is] beautifully imagined shimmerings, trillings and pulsings with woodwind, harp and percussion’
The Times

‘Bright, pungent ideas – singing woodwinds, syncopated string motifs – above an undertow of darker material, and it’s the contrasts and tensions between these layers that give the piece [Everyone Sang] its dynamism’
Financial Times

With the generous support of the Chapman Charitable Trust