I must say, though (well, 'must' might be overdoing it) that I found the scale of the Orpheus Elegies very well-judged indeed on my only hearing of them. Admittedly that was at a dress rehearsal of a concert we were playing in Hamburg. And admittedly the ones with voice were missing, the countertenor having cancelled, obliging my colleagues to present just the instrumental bits. On the other hand I can imagine that the ones with voice might well have added enough in contrast to make up for the extra length...

Sometimes it does strike me as verging on pettiness to complain about a composer being erratic - consistency on its own isn't really much of a virtue. I can imagine that perhaps the middling works are the price of the great ones and that a bit of ebb and flow is simply part of the package. If so then so be it - as Ian puts it, when Birtwistle is good, he's really good.

Indeed, and it was a shame it didn't get much attention, despite the fact that Hoban was a substantial inspiration to Birtwistle for that piece. But I suppose any librettist is destined to play second fiddle to the composer.

Now that piece is never going to be the same again

Well, I've never seen it staged but I was at the QEH performance of The Second Mrs Kong (sort of quarter-staged, with King Kong video projections on the back wall) a year or three back, and I just found the whole thing ridiculous and embarrassing at almost every level. I have no memory of Russell Hoban's libretto, though I certainly don't think it was the biggest problem (although more generally I can see what you're saying, hh).

TSMK seems to me to come from that phase (not sure how well this works chronologically, but I'd include Orpheus Elegies, Theseus Game and much else from the later 90s/early 00s) in which Birtwistle was so far up his own **** I almost couldn't bear to hear another new piece. The Io Passion was better, with at least a slight hint he'd not forgotten what interesting and beautiful noises he used to be able to make with a clarinet and a small ensemble. And like a couple of other contributors I've been quite taken with The Axe Manual, at least when I heard Stephen Gutman play it live (Nic Hodges' recording didn't do much for me yet, but that may be as much to do with my concentration while listening to CD as with Nic's playing).

As most people seem to have missed the concert performance of The Second Mrs Kong at the RFH a couple of years ago, and t_i_n really didn't like it, I'd like to say that I was throughly impressed and moved by it. I seem to remember a few worrying moments involving a telephone and an outdated email projection but musically I thought it was wonderful.

The vocal writing, as I remember it, was extremely well-characterised (and well sung) and there was a sequence where part of King Kong was projected first with the original soundtrack recording, then later the same section with live orchestral music by Birtwistle - which was just staggering. I would love to see this in an updated production (having never seen the original but judging from the semi-staging I saw with its early-nineties effects...)

As far as Birtwistle's other music is concerned, I think he went through a less interesting patch in the late nineties and early 2000's but I heard the two orchestral pieces Night's Black Bird and The Shadow of Night in a single concert and felt they were a real return to form.

And I love Gawain and don't really understand what some people think is wrong with it...

Well that is odd - surely there can have been only one concert performance (in the Royal Festival Hall) - but I don't remember noticing any kind of breakdown, glitch, or synch problem (although, true to form, I've never set eyes on the score of tSMK and am judging purely on impression). Unfortunately we don't really have an opportunity to resolve this as nobody seems to be planning on reviving it. Shame...

Aahhh, the turning of the seasons. I've never heard the original either, much to my regret. But I did see Gawain at its revival (probably in 1998 or 99) which was a great experience (thank goodness for the surtitles!)

Says it all really.

No Bach, Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven. Not even one work from one of the four greatest composers who ever lived.

Some "musician" he is. Not.

If I were on "Private Passions", which admittedly is unlikely, I wouldn't choose anything by Bach, Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven either, imagining that the R3 audience wouldn't need to hear them yet again in another context. This would have nothing to do with my feelings about the music. I think I might rather choose an intriguing selection of things which the audience might not have heard, and certainly not in combination with one another, just like Birtwistle seems to have done. The idea that a musician has to spout the names of "the four greatest etc." every time they open their mouth in public is as fatuous as it is typical of the poster in question.

Lest I also be accused of necroing, I notice there's been a discussion of HB's Panic on TOP, most of which has been contributed by the usual "muddle instead of music" suspects, but it did give me a chance to air the following, which I repeat here for your enjoyment:

When Panic was first broadcast on TV, my mother phoned me to ask who this Birtwistle was. I told her he was a prolific and respected composer many of whose works I admired, and asked her what he thought of the piece, to which she replied "it was quite bad, but not as bad as what YOU do."