Jonathan Harvey: Bird Concerto with Pianosong

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Offer,Jonathan Harvey: Bird Concerto with Pianosong

Hidéki Nagano (piano), Gareth Hulse (oboe) & Sound Intermedia (live electronics), Paul Archibald (trumpet) & Sound Intermedia (live electronics), Tim Gill (cello) & Sound Intermedia (live electronics)

London Sinfonietta, David Atherton

Here is yet another mesmerising disc of music by Jonathan Harvey. Bird Concerto with Pianosong is a work of remarkable, beguiling beauty, in which the sounds of real birds intertwine with the... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2012, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 14th Nov 2011
Catalogue No: NMCD177
Label: NMC
Length: 54 minutes

BBC Music Magazine

January 2012

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Harvey, J: Bird Concerto with Pianosong

Work length30:39

Album only

Jonathan Harvey, Hideki Nagano
London Sinfonietta
David Atherton
Recorded: 2009

Harvey, J: Ricercare una melodia for oboe

Work length5:26

$1.00

$1.30

Gareth Hulse
Sound Intermedia

Harvey, J: Other Presences

Work length11:08

$2.05

$3.85

Paul Archibald
Sound Intermedia

Harvey, J: Ricercare una melodia for cello

Work length6:50

$1.00

$1.30

Timothy Gill
Sound Intermedia

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About

Jonathan Harvey won a Gramophone Award in 2008 for his NMC CD Body Mandala. The works, commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, explore his fascination with Eastern philosophies.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra celebrates the life and work of Jonathan Harvey in two days of concerts, films and talks at the Barbican, London. Total Immersion runs from the 28-29 January 2012.

Harvey’s Bhakti was the first release on NMC in 1989.

Jonathan was invited by Pierre Boulez to work at IRCAM in the early 1980s.

Bird Concerto - Harvey's hommage to Messiaen - is a celebration of the kind of technical advances in electroacoustics which the creator of Oiseaux exotiques and the Catalogue d’oiseaux was never able to explore. Harvey started writing the piece when he was in California and says that ‘indigo bunting, orchard oriole, golden crowned sparrow ... are some of the forty colourful Californian birds whose songs and cries sparked the ignition of this work’. The bird sounds have been innovatively transformed to create a mesmeric dialogue between nature and art. Harvey sets the piano soloist (the work was commissioned by pianist Joanna MacGregor) the challenge of combining piano playing and triggering a sampler/ synthesizer so that the live electronics can be realised in real-time performance. Other works on this disc are Other Presences, for trumpet and multi-loop effects, and two versions of the canonic Ricercare una melodia (1984) originally written for trumpet and quadraphonic tape-delay system, but here performed on oboe and cello, with live electronics from Sound Intermedia.

Reviews

January 2012

Here is yet another mesmerising disc of music by Jonathan Harvey. Bird Concerto with Pianosong is a work of remarkable, beguiling beauty, in which the sounds of real birds intertwine with the transformations of their song by the soloist and ensemble...Other Presences from 2006 is an involving example of dialogue between solo trumpet and electronics...Strongly recommended.

February 2012

He meets the implied, self-imposed comparison with Messiaen head-on...In the hands of a lesser composer the result may appear overly literal, even naive...But Harvey has never shirked away from direct expression when it's suited him...this intriguing work offers Harvey's trademark deftness and acoustic stimulation in equal measure.

January 2012

Hideki Nagano renders the exacting solo part [of Birdconcerto] with assurance, the London Sinfonietta sounding no less impressive in the hands of David Atherton...Performances are as authoritative as might be expected from musicians such as Gareth Hulse, Paul Archibald and Tim Gill

13th November 2011

Actual (Californian) birdsong opens the half-hour movement; the work proceeds as an ever-alert, ripplingly inventive dialogue between raw nature and musical modernism. Art wins out, of course, but the frame of reference has been fascinatingly shifted. Hideki Nagano’s performance is scintillating.

17th November 2011

The common factor between the three works by Jonathan Harvey on this disc is their use of electronic sampling to extend the range and complexity of the solo instrumental writing...If the technology used in Ricercare is much less sophisticated than in the later works, Harvey still uses it to striking effect

Offer,Jonathan Harvey: Bird Concerto with Pianosong

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