4 Lunchtime Broadcast Premieres

Four Britten Sinfonia commissions receive their broadcast premieres on BBC Radio 3 this coming week. They were recorded during our recent At Lunch series in Cambridge. Each programme goes out at 13.00 (GMT+1): on Monday you can hear Richard Causton, Tuesday Helen Grime, Wednesday Robin Holloway, and on Thursday Pawel Lukaszewski. Full details of the music are on the Afternoon at 3 website.

Holloway premiere reviews

There's an excellent review by Richard Morrison in today's Times of our Wigmore Hall performance of Robin Holloway's Five Temperaments, and an equally good one by Michael Church in The Independent.

Five Temperaments premiere in Leeds

Our latest commission is from Robin Holloway: Five Temperaments receives its world premiere performance at the Leeds College of Music on Thursday evening: full information and online booking is available here.

Robin Holloway writes: 'Traditionally it's four temperaments, of course. But these five movements do not depict the traditional ‘humours’ (choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, melancholic) of medieval humanism (though perhaps a couple overlap). Rather, they are five states of mind, evoking human moods shared in varying mixes and proportions by everybody.

I hope I won't be accused of coyness in not revealing them explicitly! I'm relying on the music itself to suggest the individual
temperaments contained within. Which is perhaps a hangover from another piece written at the same time as this wind quintet (Summer 2007): a setting for six-part vocal consort of riddles, conundrums, teases, that deliberately doesn't provide answers.'

There are further performances during our next At Lunch cycle, which begins in Birmingham on Friday. You can find full details on our website.