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ARTISTS

BBC Symphony Orchestra,

The BBC Symphony Orchestra has played a central role at the heart of British musical life since its inception in 1930, and as the flagship orchestra of the BBC provides the backbone of the BBC Proms with at least a dozen concerts each year, including the First and Last Nights. Strongly committed to twentieth-century and contemporary music, it has given the premiere of more than 1,000 works by composers such as Bartók, Britten, Hindemith, Holst, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, and more recently has premiered BBC commissions by Simon Bainbridge, Jonathan Dove, Michael Nyman and Sir John Tavener among others. Its annual season of concerts as Associate Orchestra of the Barbican includes a weekend each January focusing upon a single composer from the twentieth or twenty-first century, most recently James MacMillan, Elliott Carter and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Jiří Bĕlohlávek took up the post of Chief Conductor in July 2006 and David Robertson was appointed Principal Guest Conductor in 2005. The BBC SO works frequently with Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis and Artist-in-Association John Adams. All concerts are broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and a number are televised, giving the BBC Symphony Orchestra the highest broadcast profile of any orchestra in the UK. The BBC SO is committed to innovative education work, with ongoing projects including the BBC SO Family Orchestra and Music Intro, introducing families to concert-going.

The BBC SO has appeared on 34 of NMC’s CDs, including the best-selling recording of Elgar’s Third Symphony.

Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/symphonyorchestra
Martyn Brabbins, Conductor
Artistic Director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music 2005-2007, he was Associate Principal Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 1994-2005. He is Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, a position which started in September 2009. After studying composition in London and then conducting with Ilya Musin in Leningrad, his career was launched when he won first prize at the 1988 Leeds Conductors' Competition. Since then Brabbins has regularly conducted all the major UK orchestras and is much sought-after in Europe, notably in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Scandinavia.   
 
Brabbins’ symphonic engagements have included appearances at London's  South Bank in subscription with the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras, his Tokyo debut, with the Tokyo Metropolitan (where he returns in 2011); and visits to the Netherlands Radio Chamber in the prestigious Matinee series, the Residentie Orkest, Salzburg Mozarteumorchester and Lahti Symphony.  He is a regular guest with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Halle and BBC Philharmonic orchestras, and appears several times each season with the BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony orchestras in subscription and at the BBC Proms.
Website: http://www.intermusica.co.uk/
BCMG,
BCMG was formed in 1987 from within the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and is established as one of Europe’s leading ensembles.   Sir Simon Rattle is the Group’s Founding Patron and has conducted BCMG in the UK, on tour in Europe and America, and on several EMI recordings. The Group has strong relationships with its two Artists-in-Association Oliver Knussen and John Woolrich, and also with Thomas Adès who conducts the Group during 2006/07 in Birmingham, London, Cologne and Paris, and with whom BCMG is invited to Carnegie Hall, New York in 2008. BCMG was awarded The Arts Ball 2002 Outstanding Achievement Award and has also won prestigious Prudential, Royal Philharmonic Society, Gramophone and PRS Millennial awards. In May 2005, BCMG was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Audience Development for its popular Rural Tours programme.
 
The core of BCMG's work is the performance of new music, and the Group has premiered over 100 new works by leading UK and overseas composers. Most have been commissioned with the help of a large number of individuals through BCMG’s ground-breaking Sound Investmentscheme. The Group regularly tours nationally and internationally. Recent UK engagements have included appearances at the Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festivals, and at the BBC Proms with Birmingham Opera Company for Benjamin Britten’s CurlewRiver.  In April 2006, the Group toured the UK with New York-based jazz trumpeter, Dave Douglas, performing Blue Latitudes, a piece commissioned through BCMG’s Sound Investment scheme. Previous projects have included a European tour with Sir Simon Rattle in 2000, a tour of India in 2002 with Judith Weir and Indian storyteller Vayu Naidu and visits to the Berlin, Radio France Présences and Vienna’s Wien Modern Festivals, Denmark, Sweden and Portugal.   
 
BCMG is committed to engaging the widest possible range of people with its work, and runs extensive learning and audience-building programmes in pursuit of this aim. Projects with young people in and out of school and with adults in a range of community settings are complemented by free performance projects such as the Group’s popular ‘Rural Tours’, Late-Night performances and Meet-the-Composer days. BCMG broadcasts often on BBC Radio, has made TV programmes for BBC and Independent Television, and numerous CD recordings.  The relationship with NMC is particularly strong, with the recent launch of a new CD of Britten’s film music and several more discs planned.
Website: http://www.bcmg.org.uk
Susanna Mälkki, Conductor

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Tracks

Disc 1
1
11'
09"
2
8'
48"
3
8'
02"
4
3'
13"
5
10'
34"
6
11'
58"
7
15'
16"
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COMPOSER:

David SAWER

DESCRIPTION

The first full-length disc from highly-acclaimed young composer David Sawer, featuring scintillating orchestral score the greatest happiness principle, ensemble works Tiroirs and The Memory of Water, and a specially-arranged orchestral suite taken from Sawer’s opera From Morning to Midnight, heard here for the first time.

The disc features the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Martyn Brabbins and Susanna Malkki

REVIEWS

"Though the most substantial work in this collection is the 'symphonic' suite that the composer extracted from his opera, From Morning to Midnight, ... the other pieces, all from the late 1990s, show the unfailing originality and distinctiveness of everything David Sawer composes. The chamber orchestral Tiroirs is a sequence of razor-sharp images, each perfectly scored and imagined, and shuffled with a conjuror's virtuosity; The Memory of Water, for string orchestra and a pair of solo violins whose spatial relationship steadily shifts through the course of the piece, is a compelling musical flux that Sawer likens to a flowing river from which ideas emerge only to be submerged again."
The Guardian 2007

FUNDING

RECORDING CREDITS

From Morning to Midnight/ the greatest happiness principle:

Recording date: 19-21 September 2005
Recording venue: BBC Studio 1, Maida Vale, London
Engineer: Neil Pemberton
Producer: Ann McKay

Tiroirs/ Memory of Water:
Recording date: 6 March 2005, 12 February 2006
Recording venue: CBSO Centre and Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham
Engineer: Mike Clements
Producer: Andrew Walton

Cover image: Francois Hall

(P) 2007 NMC Recordings Ltd

Catalogue number:
NMC D116
Release Date:
1 February 2007