OLIVER KNUSSEN CONDUCTS WORLD PREMIERE OF NEW WORK BY JAPANESE COMPOSER JO KONDO The programme Jo Kondo: Standing Morton Feldman: The Viola in My Life II Oliver Knussen: Requiem – Songs for Sue* Jo Kondo: Three Songs Tennyson Sung * (World Premiere / BCMG Sound Investment commission 2011) Stefan Wolpe: Chamber Piece No. 2 Harrison Birtwistle: Silbury Air Oliver Knussen is a long-standing champion of the Japanese composer Jo Kondo, whose new Sound Investment commission for soprano and ensemble, Three Songs Tennyson Sung, is unveiled in this concert. Kondo’s music has been compared to the pointillism technique of painting developed by Georges Seurat. He pays great attention to the colour and sonority of individual notes and instruments, with a particular interest in ‘hocketing’ – passing the notes of a melody between different instruments. Kondo’s new work comprises settings of three poems by Tennyson (Sweet and low, Ask me no more and The splendour falls) for soprano (Claire Booth) and small ensemble. In 2006 BCMG and Claire Booth gave the UK premiere of Knussen’s Requiem - Songs for Sue, a memorial piece for Knussen’s former wife, which sets poetry by Rilke, Emily Dickinson, Machado and WH Auden. Twice revived by BCMG in 2007, this moving requiem makes a welcome return to the repertoire. A group of pieces from mid-sixties to late-seventies complement these recent works: Morton Feldman’s The Viola in My Life II is one of a series of four compositions written in 1970/71. Feldman’s quiet, slowly unfolding music has a kinship with Jo Kondo, whose second piece in this cosmopolitan programme, Standing, is a work for three instruments from different families. Harrison Birtwistle’s classic ensemble piece Silbury Air and one of Stefan Wolpe’s final pieces, Chamber Piece No. 2 - composed between 1966-68, complete the programme.