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Richard Ayers's No. 50 "The Garden" and Ryan Wigglesworth's Piano Concerto Nominated for 2020 Ivors Composer Awards

Nov. 01, 2020

We are delighted to announce that two works by the Schott composers Richard Ayres and Ryan Wigglesowrth have beennominated for the 2020 Ivors Composer Awards! 

Richard Ayres's No. 50 "The Garden", a theatrical concert work for baritone and amplified ensemble has been nominated for the large chamber award following its UK premiere by co-commissioners, London Sinfonietta, at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in April 2019. The performance with soloist Joshua Bloom was praised by the press at the time, while its imagined future paralleled the spring's climate protests on the bridge just outside the hall.

The work, which draws inspiration from a number of sources including Hieronymous Bosch and Dante, plays out a cartoonish and darkly comical tale of a discontented man in search of meaning. The Garden was commissioned by Asko|Schoenberg and London Sinfonietta with initial development funded by The Royal Opera.


(The London Sinfonietta performs Richard Ayres's No. 50 "The Garden" as part of their ReAssemble Online series)

In last year's BBC Proms season, Ryan Wigglesworth led the Britten Sinfonia in a program featuring himself as composer, conductor, and soloist. The highlight of the Prom was the world premiere of Wigglesworth's Piano Concerto with soloist Marc-André Hamelin. The work has since premiered in the US, The Netherlands, and Finland and has been nominated in the chamber orchestral category.

At a little over 20 minutes for a classically-sized orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth's Piano Concerto is a masterfully compact work that ties in classical aspects of the form with a series of evocative images. At its heart is the lightly scored Notturno. The orchestra is reduced to just strings and harp, accompanying the soloist in a small set of variations based on a Polish folk song Wigglesworth first heard around a campfire. His personal association of the melody with night is rendered in the dream-like and occasionally nightmarish quality of this movement.


To learn more about Richard Ayres and Ryan Wigglesworth, visit schott-music.org.

Richard Ayres
No. 50 (The Garden) (2017-2018)
for amplified ensemble, bass voice and soundtrack
Text (Eng) by the composer incorporating words by Dante, Leopardi, Shakespeare, Poe, Rossetti and others
1(pic.).0.1.bcl(cbcl).1-1.1.0.euph.0-1perc(glsp, vib, alm, mar, timp, s.d, tenor drum, b.d, metal wind chimes, sound effects [frog, mosquito, digging])-keybd.tape-str(1.1.0.0.1)
52' 

Ryan Wigglesworth
Piano Concerto (2019)
for piano and chamber orchestra
2(2.pic).2(2.ca).2(2.bcl).2(2.cbsn)-4.2.0.0-timp.perc-hp-str(12.10.8.6.5)
25'

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