Recent and Upcoming Performances

Explorations

Purcell Sessions

18:30, Saturday 2 April 2022
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall (external link)
Southbank Centre
SE1 8XX London
United Kingdom

The joy of playing with sounds and their associations link the night’s three works. Matthew Shlomowitz (external link) creates a suite of miniatures which develop from musicological concepts into studies, blooming further into highly characterised portraits. Multiple tonalities interact with stumbling cross-rhythms and slipped loops, coming together in a finale of variations. Maverick composer Conlon Nancarrow’s Three Canons, written for the pianist Ursula Oppens, is a virtuoso demonstration of compositional control and fluency. Akiko Ushijima (external link)’s music shares this sense of enjoyment in manipulating material. Rhythmic figures interact and develop. Melodies cascade and distort into each other. Her new work combines the live piano with electronic sounds, each layer playing off the other.

Akiko Ushijima	new work	2022*15
Conlon Nancarrow	Canon C from Three Canons for Ursula	19886
Matthew Shlomowitz	Explorations in polytonality and other musical wonders, Volume 1	2020¶23

48 Variations

Sampler Series

20:00, Wednesday 6 April 2022
L’Auditori: Oriol Martorell (external link)
Lepant 150
08013 Barcelona
Spain

John McGuire is one of the outstanding figures of post-70s music, influenced by his years working in the Westdeutscher Rundfunk electronic music studio in Cologne and by the pioneering experimentalism of the US music scene. His music draws together American experimentalism, total serialism and the world of Karlheinz Stockhausen (external link) to create the fascinating and unmistakable blend that many refer to as “post-minimalism”.

48 Variations for two pianos is a work commissioned by Herbert Henck, constructed on a series of patterns, building up the rhythm over time in a multi-layered structure. A complex, but intimate, universe of sound drawn from a harmonious sound source, immersing the listener in an ecstasy of perceptual uncertainty.

Roderick Chadwick and Mark Knoop, pianos.

John McGuire

48 Variations for Two Pianos

1976-8060