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Tanglewood Features Nancarrow, Ligeti, and US Concert Premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin

Jun. 25, 2013

Tanglewood Features Nancarrow, Ligeti, and US Concert Premiere of George Benjamin’s <em>Written on Skin</em>

The venerable Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music returns this summer, August 8 through 12, with a five-day infusion of the sounds of 20th and 21st-century new music luminaries into the Berkshire mountainsides, curated this year by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. On Sunday, August 11, TMC Fellows boldly delve into Thomas Adès's two piano transcriptions of Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies 6 and 7. Marked by acrobatic rhythmic counterpoints, many of Nancarrow’s studies for player piano could never be interpreted as accurately as that achieved by the pneumatic devices of the player piano. Nevertheless, Nancarrow's less complex studies have been the subjects of many arrangements for a wide variety of live instrumentation. The arrangements for two pianos by the renowned British composer and conductor Thomas Adès presents the ideal opportunity for every experienced pianist to not only listen to the studies but to play them as well. Studies 6 and 7 are joined on the program by György Ligeti’s Monument – Self portrait – Movement, a stark set of three pieces for two pianos.

The headlining event of the 2013 Festival is the US concert premiere of George Benjamin’s electrifying opera Written on Skin on August 12, conducted by the composer. Written on Skin, Benjamin’s second opera, debuted at the Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence on July 7, 2012, and completed its UK premiere run at the Royal Opera House in March of this year. Already in the opera’s brief existence, Written on Skin is overwhelmingly regarded as a masterpiece of the 21st-century operatic repertoire. Partnering again with dramatist Martin Crimp, his collaborator on his first opera Into the Little Hill, Benjamin has adapted the ancient Occitan legend of the 12th-century troubadour Guillem de Cabestany, who seduces a jealous man’s wife only to have his head severed and his heart fed to his lover. A story of adultery, jealousy and vengeance, Crimp creates a gripping narrative out of this gruesome tale that also deals with themes of emancipation, identity, literature and art. Alex Ross writes in The New Yorker, “…immaculate…fusing the legacy of twentieth-century modernism with glimpses of a twenty-first-century tonality… Written on Skin feels like the work of a genius unleashed.”

Faber Music has now published a limited edition autographed full score of Written on Skin. Details on the score can be found here, and the Nimbus recording of the opera is available for purchase here.

Precise details on Tanglewood’s 2013 Festival of Contemporary Music can be found at www.bso.org.

Visit www.fabermusic.com for more on the music of George Benjamin.

Go to www.schott-music.com to learn about the lives and work of György Ligeti and Conlon Nancarrow. 

George Benjamin
Written on Skin (2012)

opera in three parts

text (Eng) by Martin Crimp

for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone and countertenor

3(2.pic, 3.pic & afl).2.2.bcl(cl).cbcl.2(2.cbsn)-4.4(1.ptpt).3.1-4perc-harp-glass harmonica–bass viola da gamba-str(8.6.6.6.4)

ca. 95’

György Ligeti
Monument – Self portrait – Movement  (1976)
three pieces
for two pianos
17’

Conlon Nancarrow
Studies No. 6 & 7 (arr. 1998)
transcribed for two pianos by Thomas Adès
14’

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