Fantasmagoria

Join us for this late addition to BCMG’s 2014/15 programme – an evening celebrating the brilliance of David Sawer and connections to his music.

BCMG has commissioned and recorded a number of works by Sawer and it is three pieces new to the Group that feature in this concert. The most substantial of these, Cat’s-eye, takes its inspiration from a simple device (a ‘l’oeil-de-chat’ – hence the title) in a Fantascope, a Victorian magic lantern, to play on ideas of illusion and changing perspective. Between is a short, beautiful solo piece for Harp; and Good Night is a continuous train of musical thoughts that transform when inspected more closely.

Sawer’s music is charged with theatrical drama, influenced by his studies in Cologne with Mauricio Kagel. Kagel’s short and playful Con Voce graces this programme, as does the euphoric and exuberant quartert for piano and strings by Gerald Barry, another Kagel pupil.

One of Sawer’s favourite Stravinsky pieces is the three-movement Octet for wind instruments. Like Pesson’s Nebenstück, which reimagines a Brahms ballade, the work draws on forms of the past to present music through the prism of the new.