New music, new collaborations and a Stockhausen return - London Sinfonietta's 2018/19 season

Karlheinz Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden in 1985
(© www.karlheinzstockhausen.org)

The London Sinfonietta's 2018/19 season will feature collaborations with Music Theatre Wales, the National Dance Company Wales and EXAUDI, with Southbank Centre and the Royal Academy of Music’s Manson Ensemble, there will also be 13 new commissions from leading and emerging composers, 11 world premiere performances and three UK premieres, including works from composers on the ensemble's Writing the Future programme.

With Music Theatre Wales, the National Dance Company Wales and EXAUDI, the London Sinfonietta will be collaborating on a tour of a new dance opera by French composer Pascal Dusapin. With Southbank Centre and the Royal Academy of Music’s Manson Ensemble they will be collaborating on performances of Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht, giving the work its first UK performances since 1985 when it was staged by Covent Garden.

Premieres include a new saxophone concerto from Mark Bowden [see my review of his disc Sudden Light], Sapiens, which is inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s history of humankind and Colin Matthews’ As time returns, a new setting of poems by Ivan Blatný, a Czech poet whose works were nearly lost to obscurity after he was exiled to England in 1948.

The London premiere of James Dillon’s absurdist Tanz/haus: triptych 2017 will be given alongside world premieres by two of the ensemble’s Writing the Future composers, Oliver Leith and Josephine Stephenson [an excerpt from one of her new works featured at the recent SWAP'ra gala]. Works by the other composers on the scheme, Patrick Brennan and Edward Nesbit, feature in private performances this season but they get their time on the main stage in 2018/19.

Full details from the London Sinfonietta's website.