Oh, that's really throwing down the gauntlet, isn't it! Well, if I may make so bold:

Julian Anderson's Symphony (which strictly speaking doesn't fall into your category, being only a London premiere) is a must-hear. In fact, it's more of a must-hear-twice (-or-several-times), being the sort of piece that can seem on a first hearing to be more about dazzling technique and orchestration than anything deeper and slower to surface, but is in fact a taut and extremely subtle marriage of what you might think of as the 'legacy of Sibelius' with Anderson's rather more personal interest in developing a functional harmonic language that includes non-tempered pitches, and a way of making these actually 'work' on a big 19th/20th-century orchestra. The subtlety is of the sort that, in my experience at least, completely passes you by the first time round but becomes very clearly, and satisfyingly, audible by about the third or fourth hearing. If you are going, George, or anyone else - and in fact even if you're not going - I'd enthusiastically recommend having a go at the following in advance:

http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//NMCD121.htm

Symphony (we're supposed to italicise the title because Anderson insists he's not going to write a second) is by some measure the least well-played work on that disc, and the fact it's a live recording doesn't really do the extremely quiet opening any favours, but it'll give you an idea. And the, erm, unusually extensive programme notes provide a lot more analytical information, on Symphony in particular, than one often finds in a CD booklet.

Alasdair Nicolson's work I don't know, but I really think he should have decided between the 3 titles he obviously had in mind for the piece.

Tavener and Penderecki: I'd expect less of a new work by either of them than of an old one, but I still have some time for Penderecki when he's not 'lumbering', and it would be mildly interesting to see whether Tavener's recent ecumenical broadening (is that a tautology??) continues apace.

Saariaho I still find thin and overrated, but her vocal works and in particular her operas seem a little more substantial, and if only by virtue of text and action tend to feel slightly less like 'more of the same (scratchy cellos, breathy flutes etc.)'. I'd certainly give Adriana Mater a go.

Judith Weir I'm about to mention in the thread that's just started on her.

Dominic Muldowney is an excellent composer, though I'm afraid any sense of anticipation I might have wanted to share is tempered by the title of his new piece. I'm prepared, as ever, to be proved wrong.

On the other hand...

I don't think I'd cross the road to hear any of that stuff myself, George, though I'm sure that won't come as much of a surprise. Whatever one might think in the end of some of the odd choices of new works going on up at the BBCSSO, their programming makes a list like this look pedestrian.

Ah, there were fourteen, not twelve. So, two more:

Dieter Schnebel - Sinfonie X
Galina Ustvolskaya - Symphony No. 2: True and Eternal Bliss

Neither really. (Or maybe a smidgin of both.) On the one hand I wouldn't want to set myself up as someone who decides what needs to be written (except in connection with my own activities), and on the other there are people whose opinions I respect who might speak highly of Anderson or whoever, so I wouldn't want to characterise it crassly as "good" or "bad", just "of no interest to me (at this point)". However, the point I wanted to make was that the selection here ranges from one end of the middle of the road to the other, and as such doesn't reflect the diversity of contemporary composition as well as it might.

I wonder if there's a bit of 'middle-of-the-road music represents most people's least-worst option, and so won't raise too many eyebrows' underlying the programming policy, here and elsewhere?

Inevitably, when programming decisions are made, someone is at least indirectly passing judgement on, if not what should be written exactly, what should (and shouldn't) receive public performances. It would be impossible to programme everything; even if one is not saying 'this is good, and this is bad', the fact that some composers/works/types of works are performed and others aren't (or much less often) implies value judgements in this respect, unless the approach is more tokenistic, as I think would be implied by the possibility I mention at the beginning of this message.

Ah, well, now if that's what they were thinking then that would go entirely against my idea that programmers shouldn't be thinking in terms of ticking boxes, wouldn't it!

And I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility of what you say being true. I suppose all I'll say is, I'm glad at least a couple of good works got through nonetheless (and even gladder that some less middle-of-the-road* works have got through in the past couple of years ...).


*Re 'middle-of-the-road': I'm half tempted to say de facto that this term must be misapplied in describing any work I really think is worthwhile. Which would make it a simple cataloguing error rather than having to account for the fact that some 'middle-of-the-road' works are interesting/worthwhile and others aren't. Interested in Richard's and others' thoughts on this (Richard's particularly, in the light of, for instance, his recent Dutilleux listening experiences ...).

Well, I started listening to Dutilleux at a tender age, probably around the time the LP of Rostropovich playing his cello concerto came out, so the recent experiences have been more of a reacquaintance. I suppose it could be describd from some angles as "middle of the road", though as I mentioned I was struck by the way its sounds seem sometimes to anticipate those of "musique spectrale", and let's not forget Dutilleux is of the generation of Britten, more or less. However, there are the far sides of the road as well - I'm not talking about box-ticking, but (for example) the idea of commissioning new works from people like John Oswald and Chris Cutler, who don't even have boxes to tick where orchestral music is concerned. Now I wasn't so keen on the resulty of that particular project, but it showed that the BBCSSO programmers were willing to stick their necks out on the chance that such an idea might yield interesting results, rather than doing what the BBCSO seem to be up to and just looking for things that "work".