Coming Soon,
A new musical 'exhibition' from NMC Records.
NMC Records, the charity and contemporary music label founded by composer and musicologist Colin Matthews, turn 25 this year, and we were very glad to join them at their birthday festivities in London last Thursday.
In the course of the evening, NMC's executive director Anne Rushton revealed that they'd be celebrating their quarter-century with a very special (and suitably innovative!) new project in association with London's Science Museum: conceived as an homage of sorts to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Objects at an Exhibition will see the Aurora Orchestra and their dynamic young conductor Nicholas Collon premiere short works by Gerald Barry, Barry Guy, Christopher Mayo, Claudia Molitor, Thea Musgrave and David Sawer, all of which will be themed around a particular exhibit or collection displayed in the museum (the first radio-transmitter and a nineteenth-century mail coach are among the objects which have inspired the composers!). Objects will premiere at the Museum itself in South Kensington in October 2015, and will also provide a springboard for cross-curricular projects for secondary-school children.
You can read more about NMC's 25th anniversary celebrations here - their plans for the next couple of years also include collaborations with the Wigmore Hall and with the dance company Rambert.
Meanwhile, here at Presto we're marking their significant birthday by offering 25% off the entire NMC catalogue (which you can browse in full here) until 24th December.
Recent releases
The most recent of the three releases made possible by NMC's 2013 Opera Appeal (the other two are listed below), Barry's madcap Wildean opera is scored for forces including 40 dinner plates and a bass Lady Bracknell!
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Part of NMC's Debut Discs series introducing new composers, this collection of music by Scottish composer Helen Grime (b.1981) includes her Clarinet Concerto as well as orchestral and chamber works. Grime is a former Hallé Associate Composer, and Mark Elder conducts the Hallé forces in the larger-scale works.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Weir's hugely atmospheric operatic triptych sets three distinct but related Scottish folk-tales, all dealing with mysterious disappearances, sex and money; singers include Ailish Tynan, Anna Stéphany and Jonathan Lemalu.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Premiered in 1991 and originally released on Collins Classics, Birtwistle's macabre medieval legend was re-issued as part of the Opera Appeal and stars many of the original cast-members, notably John Tomlinson as the uncanny Green Knight.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
