Nash Inventions

Nash Concert Society, London, UK

This edition of the Nash Ensemble’s annual selection of contemporary music brings together works by three composers once united under the banner of ‘the Manchester school’: Alexander Goehr, Harrison Birtwistle and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. For the concert on September 20, 2017 the three Mancunians will present recent works of the past few years: Alexander Goehr’s latest chamber work, scored for an intriguingly mixed quintet and in five short movements, is a Wigmore Hall commission for the Ensemble; Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s single-movement Trio, with its uncharacteristically abstract title, was first heard in Germany in 2011; the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s String Quintet (with two cellos) – in four movements, ‘Chacony’, ‘Reel’, ‘Slow Air’ and ‘Stamash’ – was first performed in a Nash Inventions concert in March 2015 as part of the Ensemble’s 50th anniversary celebrations. The Mancunian connection is maintained through a newly commissioned Quintet for clarinet and strings by John Casken, former professor of music at Manchester University: the composer describes the work as making use of ‘folk-like melodies, shadowy voices accompanying one through maginary and changing landscape’. In an echo to the three members of ‘the Manchester school’, the EvS Music Foundation supports the compositions commission to John Casken. There will also be a collaboration with the Royal Academy of Music involving their students in a side-by-side project, open rehearsals and free tickets.

September 20, 2017

Wigmore Hall, London

www.nashensemble.org.uk