4 stars and first Songs of the Sky CD coverage

Reading tomorrow's reviews online today is a bit like picking up the early editions of the papers at King's Cross station at 11pm at night. Anyway, here is Richard Morrison's take on our current At Lunch project in Thursday's Times, with a welcome endorsement of our first 'own label' CD.

Songs of the Sky

The first CD on our new 'own label' is now available: Songs of the Sky. It features works by Steve Martland, Huw Watkins, Tarik O'Regan, Jason Yarde and John Tavener, all of which we have commissioned in recent years and premiered during our Britten Sinfonia At Lunch tours.

The label is being run in association with Signum Records, from whose website you can order it. We will be selling copies at all our own promotions of course (around 20 people in Cambridge bought it yesterday), and you can also order it via your usual retail outlet. The plan is to bring out 4 or 5 CDs a year, reflecting the breadth of our repertoire. Next up will be a CD of Hindemith, followed by a recording we made in South America with Joanna MacGregor: Britten Sinfonia in Buenos Aires. Start collecting!

Adam Walaciński

We had planned to premiere a work by Paweł Mykietyn this week, but unfortunately the composer has been ill and has been unable to complete the commission. With our Krakow connections, we are pleased that we have been able to find a replacement piece by a native of that city, Adam Walaciński. Born towards the end of the 1920s, he is particularly renowned as a film composer. You can see his extensive filmography here. He wrote Little Music of Autumn in 1986.

You can hear this in Cambridge today, in London tomorrow, in Birmingham on Thursday, and in Norwich on Friday in our Britten Sinfonia at Lunch series. Other works are by Purcell (ed. Britten), John Woolrich, and Schoenberg.

We are grateful to the Polish Cultural Institute for their financial support for this tour.

Next up: the Lyrical Oboe in Leeds

Our co-leader Thomas Gould joins Nicholas Daniel in Bach's Concerto in D minor for Oboe, Violin and String Orchestra in Leeds on Saturday, the climax to our Lyrical Oboe programme.

Thomas is busy: in 2008/9 he makes his Barbican and Bridgewater Hall debuts as soloist in Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, returns to the Wigmore Hall for a third lunchtime recital, gives recitals at Perth Concert Hall and Birmingham Town Hall, and guest leads the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal. Thomas also maintains a strong profile in London’s orchestral life as leader of Aurora Orchestra and Manning Camerata, as well as being our co-leader.

Born in London in 1983, Thomas Gould began violin lessons at the age of three with Sheila Nelson. At eighteen Thomas entered the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship where his principal teacher was György Pauk. During this time he was a member of the Artea String Quartet and also founded a duo with the pianist John Reid. Thomas and John continue to perform regularly together in recitals across the UK at venues including the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall, St. George's Bristol and the Wigmore Hall.

Since making his concerto debut with Kammerphilharmonie Graz in 2004, Thomas has appeared frequently as soloist with orchestras including the Gävle Symfoniorkester, Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra da Camera, Bath Philharmonia and the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra. In 2008 Thomas premiered Seeing Is Believing, a concerto for electric violin by Nico Muhly, with Aurora Orchestra, and also performed Thomas Ades’s violin concerto in LSO St. Luke’s with London Contemporary Orchestra.

Football managers vs. conductors

The analogy between football managers and conductors is hardly new, but there is a mildy amusing article on the subject from Andrew Mellor in today's Guardian. As a North Londoner (and that's the Arsenal bit of North London) I am a great admirer of international maestros. But hang on a moment, what is the sporting equivalent of bands such as Britten Sinfonia which use conductors ever more rarely?

Octo at West Road

Octo, the University's symbol for its 800th anniversary, is popping up all over Cambridge, building an iconographic gallery over the course of the year. Today, it visited West Road Concert Hall just before our lunchtime concert, and can be seen on Cedric Tiberghien's page-turner's piano stool.

Today's concert was recorded for future transmission on BBC Radio 3 - we will let you know when the broadcast date is announced, but the concert can be heard in London (Wednesday), Birmingham (Thursday), and in Norwich (Friday), all at 13.00.

Court Studies from The Tempest in Poland

If my memory serves me correctly, Richard Harrold's Ink is the 12th Britten Sinfonia commission to receive its world premiere in Krakow as part of our residency here. The snow today did not keep the audience away. It is always hard to judge a piece on a first hearing (and that is one of the advantages of our project, where each commission gives a piece five outings in a week, allowing the performers to really get to grips with it), but the passage I find most appealing is a long solo piano transition section which binds the opening with the concluding sections. Our UK audiences will have a chance to hear the work in Cambridge, London, Birmingham, and Norwich later this week.
Thomas Ades' Court Studies from The Tempest received – I imagine – its Polish premiere: what a rarefied, mysterious (as one would expect from The Tempest) work, with a spine-chilling final section of incredible beauty, fading to a solo violin niente. I’ve heard myself before saying this blog is not a travelogue, but Britten Sinfonia has such a strong link with the musical life of Krakow, a few photos taken during the transition from rehearsal to dinner last night seem appropriate.