ConcertPulse
London Symphony Orchestra/Maxime Pascal
Barbican Centre, Barbican Hall (London)
Celebrating Pierre Boulez and his influences, in the composer’s centenary year: his beloved Debussy, alongside three intriguing world premieres.
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Celebrating Pierre Boulez and his influences, in the composer’s centenary year: his beloved Debussy, alongside three intriguing world premieres.
Experimenting is the name of the game here. ›Ultraschall Berlin‹, the festival for new music, regularly presents new sounds at the beginning of the year in the Haus des Rundfunks broadcasting centre. Whether world premieres and first performances in Germany, works of the recent past, or classics of the avant-garde – ›Ultraschall Berlin‹ combines a look at the new, the wild, the unconventional with forays through the music history of the past 70 years. Organised by the radio3 and Deutschlandfunk Kultur radio stations, the festival continues the ›Musik der Gegenwart‹ series, with which the DSO has been bringing the most recent compositions to the Berlin stage in legendary concerts since the 1950s. In 2025, the orchestra will again be performing the opening and closing concerts of the festival.
The Arditti Quartet is the leading string quartet of the modern age. Its musicians have premiered more than 1,000 works since 1974 and collaborated with a number of legendary 20th- and 21st-century composers, including György Ligeti, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez. In 2017, they were given the honour of being the first string quartet to perform in the Elbphilharmonie Recital Hall. The Arditti Quartet now returns to that concert hall to celebrate its 50th anniversary. In two 70-minute segments, the four musicians pack in the most exciting pieces the contemporary music scene has to offer: from the video-animated sounds of Olga Neuwirth and Elliott Carter’s challenging String Quartet No. 3 to the timbral experimentations of Rebecca Saunders, to whom the Elbphilharmonie is dedicating an extensive spotlight this season. In conversation, the musicians also share rare insights into their work and look back at an eventful half a century. A defining moment of contemporary music.