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Premieres by Tansy Davies, Tom Coult and Francisco Coll with the London Sinfonietta

Jun. 01, 2016

Premieres by Tansy Davies, Tom Coult and Francisco Coll with the London Sinfonietta

Tansy Davies's brilliant and intense Falling Angel, for chamber ensemble, received its London premiere on June 1 with the London Sinfonietta alongside the world premiere of Spirit of the Staircase by Tom Coult and the first UK performance of Francisco Coll’s Liquid Symmetries. The premieres were part of the London Sinfonietta’s program “Duets in a Frame”, which caps off a 45-year commissioning relationship with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who juxtaposed five of his previous works for the ensemble into a new large-scale work for the occasion.

Davies’s Falling Angel takes its inspiration from Anselm Kiefer’s painting by the same name, notable for its abrasive textures of natural materials. Davies writes: 

Kiefer’s painting is simultaneously very bright and very dark, and it was this that I hoped to capture in sound; I often aim to create music that is “black and shiny”. The musical motifs in my piece include fanfares, marches and an ethereal distorted melody, all of which act as signposts to decide the direction of the music. Rustic dances, quivering chords and metallic bass lines transform into lyrical lines, which are woven together and underpinned or saturated by rough, abrasive textures.

Tom Coult’s Spirit of the Staircase was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta. The composer characterizes the work as including “a lot of very fast music and a lot of very slow music, and often frequent changes between the two.” Liquid Symmetries, composed by Coll for an ensemble of 15 players, was premiered in Madrid in 2014 and received its US premiere in 2015 at the Aspen Music Festival.

Details on the London Sinfonietta program can be found at londonsinfonietta.org.uk.

For more information on Tansy Davies, Tom Coult and Francisco Coll, visit fabermusic.com.

Tansy Davies
Falling Angel (2006)
for chamber ensemble
1(afl, pic).1(ca).1(bcl).Ebcl(bcl).1(cbsn)-2.2(2flhn).0.0-2perc-ekybd-str(1.1.1.1.1)
17’

Tom Coult
Spirit of the Staircase (2016)
for chamber ensemble
1(pic, bfl).1.1(cbcl).cbsn-1.1.1.0-perc-pno(cel).hp-str(1.1.1.1.1)
16’

Francisco Coll
Liquid Symmetries (2013)
for chamber ensemble
1.1.1.bcl.0-1.1.1.0-2perc-pno-str(1.1.1.1.1)
12’

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