If you are in Scotland today and are suffering from post referendum exhaustion you can cheer yourself up with the thought of the imminent arrival of Sound, Scotland’s festival of new music, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary. The festival theme – new approaches to traditional music – will look at new ways of writing for traditional instruments and new collaborative works. As well as music from Turkey, Argentina, Norway and France, there will be a commission from Scottish folk musician/composer Alasdair Roberts and electroacoustic composer Ross Whyte. There will also be a joint project between Sound and partner festival, Musiques Démesurées, from Aberdeen’s twinned city Clermont-Ferrand. Sound have jointly commissioned two new works from one Scottish and one French composer for the joint forces of Clermont-Ferrand’s Orchestre d’Auvergne and Scotland’s Red Note Ensemble. There will also be late night concerts, workshops, events aimed at families as well as a promenade discovery concert, the aim being to encourage the exporation of new works.
In London there will be a celebration of the life and work of John Tavener with a BBC SO Total Immersion Day at the Barbican on 5th. There are two films: at 11am the 1992 documentary Glimpses of Paradise includes footage of the young Tavener as pianist and organist, performances of his music, and contributions from those who knew him; at 15:00 there will be a showing of the 1997 Melvyn Bragg South Bank Show profile. The latter will be followed by a roundtable expert discussion on the impact and legacy of the composer’s music. There are three concerts that provide a good cross section of his output: chamber music at 13:00, consisting of works for solo piano, solo cello and The Last Sleep of the Virgin for string quartet and handbells; vocal music at 17:30, including The Lamb, Song for Athene and Missa Brevis; and larger-scale works, including The Protecting Veil and Akhmatova Requiem.
The Swansea Festival marks the Dylan Thomas 100th birthday celebrations with the Welsh première of New York composer John Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy on 11th. On the same night there will also be the rare chance to hear Richard Elfyn Jones’s Brangwyn Hall Festival Overture for organ and orchestra, which was originally commissioned by the festival in 1984. The final concert, on 18th, will also feature the world première of another another Dylan Thomas homage, Karl Jenkins’ Llareggub. There will be the chance to hear the composer in conversation an hour before the concert begins.
If your in or near Venice tomorrow the 58th Biennale runs for two days this month – 20th and 21st – and then from 3rd to 12th October. Highlights include a tribute to Steve Reich with the Orchestra del Teatro Petruzzelli of Bari directed by Jonathan Stockhammer on the two September dates. The October portion continues with the theme of music that is far removed in time and space: the Eco Ensemble of Berkeley with the music of the Bay Area; the Orquesta Sinfonica de Euskadi with Basque tradition and modernity; the Meitar Ensemble of Tel Aviv; the Violinat e Lapardhase polyphonic choir in the Albanian tradition; and Anatolian music reinterpreted in the ethno-cultural improvisations of the Galata Electroacoustic Orchestra. There will be 13 world premières, by composers Eduard Hamel, Amir Shpilman, Daniele Ghisi, Ondrej Adámek, Ofer Pelz, Silvia Borzelli, Aaron Einbond, Giovanni Dario Manzini, Yotam Haber, Dai Fujikura, John MacCallum, Oscar Bianchi, and Stefano Bulfon.
Wien Modern only just qualifies for this roundup, beginning on 29th October. George Friedrich Hass is this year’s guest composer. The opening concert will feature his Concerto Grosso No. 2 for chamber orchestra, forming the prelude to a series other events featuring his music. Also featuring during a number of concerts in the festival is the work of Reinhard Fuchs, this winner of the Erste Bank Composing Prize. The world premiere of his work «MANIA» by Klangforum Wien as part of the Erste Bank-Composing Prize also provides a link to the «on screen» series, a part of the festival that examines the interface between film and television and contemporary music.