BCMG@30 Concert

Founded in 1987, BCMG has grown into one of the foremost contemporary music ensembles today. Tonight we celebrate three decades of success in a concert featuring three groundbreaking works.

It costs nothing to come – instead, we invite you to ‘gift’ a birthday donation as you join us for our anniversary celebration.

Tickets are free at the point of purchase – on sale soon.

Conductor Emilio Pomàrico

Programme
Ondřej Adámek (b.1979) – Sinuous Voices (2004/09)
Rebecca Saunders (b.1967) – Into the Blue (1996)
Helmut Lachenmann (b.1935) – Zwei Gefühle – Musik mit Leonardo (1992) Text: Leonardo da Vinci

Helmut Lachenmann’s music calls on the musicians to produce an amazing array of sounds – forming an entirely new musical language, musique concrète instrumentale. In this concert, we perform his work Zwei Gefühle – Musik mit Leonardo (Two Senses – Music with Leonardo) – a work that takes the words of Leonardo da Vinci and paints them across the Group. Dense scratching strings crackle under as the winds sigh and whoop. The speakers are often called on to enunciate a particular sound or syllable in isolation.

Rebecca Saunders dedicated Into the Blue to painter and filmmaker Derek Jarman, and prefaces the work with a quote from his final film, Blue: “Blue transcends the solemn geography of human limits”. Blue here is the blue of the beyond – of the sky, the ocean. Saunder’s composition has a driving, purposeful character coloured with haunting jolting stops – from relentless progress to total stillness.

Ondřej Adámek’s Sinuous Voices imagines the instrumental ensemble as the human voice – using techniques to evoke the ideas and patterns of speech. Group prayer through intimate lullaby – extroversion compared with inner sanctuary.