Ideal & Flying Height: Celebrating Brian Ferneyhough

Brian Ferneyhough (Photo Charlotte Oswald)

Brian Ferneyhough is 75, and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) and the Arditti Quartet are joining forces to celebrate at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. On Sunday 9 December 2018, there is a day of events at the Conservatoire launched with a conversation between Ferneyhough and fellow composer Howard Skempton. 

Also performing during the day are musicians from NEXT, a one-year programme launched earlier this year by BCMG and the Conservatoire which gives post-graduates and early career musicians training, coaching and performance opportunities to become specialist contemporary classical musicians.

Music during the day includes Ferneyhough’s La Chute d’Icare (the clarinet representing Icarus), Funérailles I & II (for seven strings and harp, dating to 1969 and 1980 respectively) which allude to Liszt’s work of the same name, and  Dum Transisset I-V (for string quartet from 2007, a tribute to 16th-century composer and organist Christopher Tye).

The events also feature works by other composers with Midlands links (Ferneyhough was, himself, born on Coventry) including Sutton Coldfield-born Jonathan Harvey’s Scena, Trauerkonzert by Michael Wolters, the Conservatoire’s Deputy Head of Composition, and Conservatoire alumna Charlotte Bray’s Beneath the Dawn Horizon in its first complete public performance.

Full details from the BCMG website.