Here's a bit of advance warning:

7.30pm, Friday 28 November 2008
Recital Room, South Hill Park, Bracknell

Perseus Trio

Haydn                                   Piano Trio in A (Hoboken XV:18)
Ireland                                  Phantasie (Trio No.1)
Schoenberg arr. Steuermann     Verklarte Nacht

Tommo

Have a good one at the Phil Tommo.

I ampart of an ostensibly restrained stag dothe previous evening but hope to get to the 6th sans hangover.

Have just come back froma gig by the London Contemporary Chamber Orch at St Cyprian's at end of Glentworth St twixt
Baker St and Gloucester Place. I am very newly on their roster of contributing composers but tonight was a feastof good stuff incl Frederich Eaccha(? tbc)and Guildhall Fellow ,the symphonically resourceful Edward Nesbitt with whom I had a heartening chat while manning the half-time urn. This was all a bit of an unknown quantity to me but excellent gig all in all.

A piano recital and wind tentet recital double-bill is on at 5.30,7.30 at same venue on Sat 11th Oct.Composers incl.Derek Foster, Mark Pampel,Alan Taylor (who conducts LCCO) Mike Regan and Bernard Hurley.  Should be a good gig,lovely building visually andacoustically with minimal noises off.

Yup. Looks like a contemporary music concert audience a-rarin' to go. 

Wonderful looking church, though!

Was back pretty late from the second of hh's premieres yesterday, at the final concert of the Sonic Fusions festival in Edinburgh, a concert celebrating the 60th and 100th birthdays of Nigel Osborne and Elliott Carter respectively, and including three works by the former and two by the latter, with tribute pieces in between, hh's BE GOOD for solo horn being his birthday present for the latter. BE GOOD is cast in three sections with the outer two supporting a central span rather as struts support a cantilevered bridge or even a tightrope, which might indeed be a useful analogy for the daring progression made by the horn player (the fearless and excellent Fergus Kerr) on his journey exploiting horn harmonics which even the performer was hitherto unaware existed, taking the line into those areas where the horn's inherent tonality moves into surprising and sometimes unsettling microtones: a perilous progress that seemed to freeze time, and held the entire audience rapt and attentive throughout.

Four of the five composers represented were present, and Nigel Osborne was presented with a cake, which was shared around at a small gathering after the event: somehow it's highly appropriate that my picture of hh, captured without flash in difficult lighting conditions, should find him not only evidently amusing Mr Osborne, but also with an expression that suggests that a serious analytical processing of the nomificatory qualities of the Victoria sponge (home made by one of the students) is simultaneously in progress....

Don't know what you were saying, hh, but the Duke of Edinburgh in the background appears to be asking N.O.: "What's that on your head then? A toupée?"

That made me laugh a lot, martle!

Oddly enough, apart from the hairstyle he looks like Brian Ferneyhough in that picture.

Here's a second Osborne shot, which shows that the hair's for real. The bespectacled man rear right is the conductor Jean-Philippe Wurtz: a dead ringer for DSCH, no?


Really sorry you couldn't make it, Stuart: it was a concert full of good things excellently performed.