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The BBC Philharmonic Premieres Martin Suckling’s This Departing Landscape

Jan. 01, 2020

The BBC Philharmonic Premieres Martin Suckling’s <em>This Departing Landscape</em>

On February 12, the BBC Philharmonic and Ilan Volkov will record Martin Suckling’s 20-minute orchestral work This Departing Landscape for broadcast on Radio 3 and inclusion on an orchestral portrait disc to be released on NMC. The composer notes: 

"Morton Feldman used the phrase "this departing landscape" to highlight how music slips away from us even as we are hearing it. The sometimes-hyperactive energy of my new work is far removed from Feldman’s sound world, but his characterization of music’s elusiveness provided the starting point for a journey across an imaginary landscape in constant flux. There are two movements, which run together without a break. The first presents a kaleidoscope of sharp-edged fragments constantly shifting into new configurations. There are abrupt changes of material and tempo: patterns loop, repeat and transform irregularly. In the second movement the pace is radically reduced. This is music of glacial energy: extremely heavy, extremely slow, an inexorable continuity of gradual transformation. Tone becomes microtone becomes noise – and out of the noise, pulsation returns, a series of accelerations spiralling unceasingly, and then suddenly cut off."
 

Listen to Martin Suckling’s Candlebird (2011):

(Candlebird/Martin Suckling/London Sinfonietta/Leigh Melrose, baritone/Nicholas Collon, conductor)

Other recent works by Martin Suckling include The Tuning, a song cycle for mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons setting poems by Michael Donaghy. Additionally, Suckling’s flute concerto, The White Road, was recently shortlisted for the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco’s prestigious Musical Composition Prize.


To learn more about Martin Suckling, visit: fabermusic.com.

Martin Suckling
This Departing Landscape (2019)
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20’

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