Southbank Centre’s Meltdown festival 2011, curated by Ray Davies and part of Festival of Britain celebrations with MasterCard, highlights the link between convention-breaking popular music and the iconoclastic side of classical music, as Southbank Centre Resident Orchestra London Sinfonietta performs the works of two of UK’s most innovative composers, Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies. Birtwistle and Maxwell-Davies started their careers together as students in Manchester in the mid-1950s. They later teamed-up to form The Pierrot Players (then re-named the Fires of London), writing cutting-edge works for the 1960s. To this phase belongs Maxwell-Davis’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, which was premiered in 1969. The monodrama is based on the disconnected words of King George III, who in the later part of his life suffered from a recurrent, and eventually permanent, mental illness. The soliloquy, an extremely demanding part spanning five octaves, will be performed by British baritone Leigh Melrose. Birtwistle’s Virelai and Secret Theatre are also featured in the programme. The first work, premiered in 2008, continues the composer’s fascination with ancient music and presents a structure that is inspired by medieval French verse. Conducted by Baldur Brönnimann, Secret Theatre, based on the poem by Robert Graves and premiered in 1984, is a piece written for chamber ensemble and features choreographed movements around the stage for the orchestra. Landmark works from two of the UK's most pioneering living composers are performed by London Sinfonietta as part of Ray Davies' Meltdown. Acknowledged now as musical icons, both Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle met as students in Manchester in the 1950s and went on to shake up the status quo. One of the most notorious musical works of the 1960s, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King, is a extraordinary monodrama based on the words of George III, the British king who succumbed to periods of insanity. Scored for baritone, it requires an extreme, daredevil technique covering more than five octaves. This is preceded by Harrison Birtwistle's Secret Theatre (1984), a tour de force for large ensemble, where the musicians move around the stage enacting a mysterious musical ritual. It is preceded by a recent work, Virelai, demonstrating Birtwistle's continuing fascination with medieval music. London Sinfonietta - Birtwistle & Maxwell Davies website.| 16 Jun 11 | Southbank Centre West End, Greater London Performance Details => Venue archive |
