Birmingham Contemporary Music Group premiere Daniel Kidane’s Cradle Song and other recent British works

Some concerts you are aware of for weeks in advance and some come your way by happenstance!

This morning I didn’t know I would be going to a performance this afternoon. Then an email landed in my inbox. As a member of Sound World, I was eligible for a free ticket to a concert at St George’s performed by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. It was too good an opportunity to miss so I took up the offer.

The concert was called Songs at Day, Songs at Night and also featured Soprano Mimi Doulton and Tenor Thando Mjandana and conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni. The ensemble included the sort of eclectic instrumentation I love – contra bassoon, saxophone, percussion, woodwinds, strings and piano with some unusual things thrown in – musical boxes and harmonicas!

The performed works were all by British composers and it was indeed a fine showcase. Two pieces each by Daniel Kidane, Harrison Birtwistle and Julian Anderson and one by Hannah Kendall. All of the pieces played were pretty much hot off the press. Only Birtwistle’s Today Too for Tenor, Flute and Electric Guitar was written more than 5 years ago.

The small but very appreciative audience were treated to an hour of exceptional performances by a very committed ensemble. All of these pieces involved singing accompaniment with the exception of the first, Primitive Blaze for tenor saxophone, electric guitar and ensemble by Daniel Kidane.

This was very exciting, modern music delivered with gusto. Certainly, it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea but I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were several highlights:

I think my favourite piece was Hannah Kendall’s Tuxedo: Between Carnival and Lent. This started off with musical boxes and included “cuffed violins”. I had to look up what this was. Essentially, a “prepared violin” with three aluminium dreadlock cuffs. Violinist Colette Overdijk played whilst also partaking in supporting vocals to Doulton. I say supporting vocals but it almost sounded like disgruntled cat calling/heckling! Kendal also threw in harmonicas and vocals behind cupped hands as well a musical box playing a version of Beethoven’s Fur Elise in the middle of the composition. It was all very intriguing and memorable. Unfortunately, the programme notes had nothing on this work, not even the song text so I am left guessing as to what it all meant. I’ll have to do a bit of sleuthing to find out more.

I thought Birtwistle’s Today Too was wonderful. This set text from Tanko’s Japanese Death Poems and along with Kidane’s Cradle Song (receiving its World Premiere) were a perfect vehicle for Thando Mjandana’s impressive vocals and stage presence.

The final piece was THUS by Julian Anderson which uses an extract from The Rain in Summer by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This involved the whole of the ensemble including the soprano taking it in turns to bang their feet as they played/sang. The St George’s stage took a pounding. It was great stuff.

I’d love to listen to these works again but they are all so contemporary, and some of them perhaps just a little too avant garde for them to yet appear on Spotify. However, the premieres Kidane’s Cradle Song for tenor and ensemble (setting of William Blake) and Julian Anderson’s Mitternachtslied and THUS will feature on a forthcoming edition of BBC Radio 3’s New Music show. I was also reminded of something I heard on Radio 3 last Saturday. The Conductor Suzi Digby was guest presenting the Inside Music slot. She was talking about Oliver Messiaen and said that he is one of the few composers that you simply have to see being played. That it is not enough to listen in your own living room. I think the same could be said of these works. All of them will lose something if you are not present to experience the music being played. And of course, the sad thing was that there weren’t that many there to witness at first hand. That said, I for one am definitely a convert and I’ll be in line when Birmingham Contemporary Music Group next play in Bristol.

It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t look for a Copland connection. And for each composer there is one (to some extent!).

1. Julian Anderson says that in his piece Seadrift there is an “oblique homage to the lean textures of Copland’s Short Symphony, particularly at the start of the second movement, because I wanted something clean, clear, ruthless, crystalline.”
2. Hannah Kendall’s related work Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama was on the same bill as Copland’s Quiet City in the First Night of the Proms during the lockdown year of 2020.
3. Daniel Kidane’s work Be Still was premiered at a concert also featuring Copland’s Appalachian Spring suite.
4. Copland’s Piano Variations and Birtwistle’s Variations for the Golden Mountain both feature on a recent highly acclaimed album of pianist Clare Hammond called Variations.

I am sure there are many more links but this is what I came up with from half an hours searching on Google. I’ll certainly be given all of these works a listen.

A final note: It was great to meet Harrison Birtwistle’s son, the artist Silas Birtwistle and his wife after the concert. He mentioned that the sparse audience was nothing new to him. He said that as a young lad that he often went to concerts, featuring his dearly departed Dad where there was hardly anyone in the audience. It emboldens me to keep championing this type of music.

Friends, Blog Readers, Countrymen and women – Lend me your ears!