September sees 80th birthday celebrations for Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle at the BBC Proms. On 6th Septemberthe Birmingham Contemporary Music Group under Oliver Knussen will perform Birtwistle’s Verses for Ensemble, Dinahand Nick’s Love Song and Meridian; on 8th the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Ben Gernon will give the London première of Maxwell Davies’ Concert Overture Ebb of Winter, Strathclyde Concerto No. 4 (for clarinet) and his popular An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise. Other premières to look forward to include Chris Brubeck’s Blue Rondo à la Turk and Travels in Time for Three on 9thwhilst Gavin Higgins is the composer of this year’s Last Night commission with his excitingly titled Velocity on 13th.
At the Barbican on September 28th is the chance to attend the première of John Tavener’s last major concert work, Flood of Beauty, performed by an instrumental group that includes orchestra, voices and Indian classical instruments spaced around the hall. As Tavener remarked: ‘The audience, so that they are, as it were, “surrounded” by bliss and beauty’.
The Lammermuir Festival (12th – 21st) contains three interesting events: a concert of brass music that includes works by Harvey and Birtwistle on 15th; Raymond Dodd’s Fantasy String Quartet also on 15th; and a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s epic Vingt regards sur l’enfance Jésus on 20th. Meanwhile the North Wales International Music Festival runs from 20th – 27th September. There will be a William Mathias 80th Anniversary Concert on 23rd and the world première of Gareth Glyn’s Gododdin for orchestra on 27th.
Musikfest Berlin takes place over 21 days (2nd – 22nd) at the Philharmonie and Kammermusikaal in Germany. There is a strong emphasis on works by Wolfgang Rihm, with Zwei Linien on 7th, Wind Quintet and Concerto for Horn and Orchestra (German première) on 14th and Transitus for orchestra and Concert Piece for piano trio and orchestra (world première) on 17th. There are also works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Helmut Lachenmann, Peter Eötvös and George Friedrich Haas on 5th, 8th, 12th &13th and 15threspectively.
Also in Germany, the Beethovenfest Bonn runs from 6th September to 3rd October. The motto of the 2014 festival is ‘Divine Spark’, a reference to the ‘daughter of Elysium’ from Symphony No. 9. To this end there are a large number of living composers represented, including: Sofia Gubaidulina, Gediminas Gelgotas, Imants Kalniņš, Frederic Rzewski, Slavomír Hořínka, Oliver Schneller, Alexandre Ouzounoff, Lera Auerbach, Igor Raykhelson and Dieter Schnebel.
Ultima, the Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, takes place from 10th to 20th September. It will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution and ‘under the theme “Nation”, the festival will focus on how a local musical identity is expressed in the context of an international, digital world.’ Highlights include Luciano Berio’s Coro; Mauricio Kagel’s Exotica; Scelsi Revisited, a concert investigating his music with a new work based on the composer’s secret tapes; the new music group Avanti! Ensemble; a new work by performance company Verdensteatret; Jenny Hval & Susanna’s Mashes of Voice; David Brynjar Franzson’s Longitude; and Simon Steen-Andersen’s Buenos Aires.