‘Pleasure Garden’ – violin concerto for Daniel Pioro & BBC

My new violin concerto for Daniel Pioro, Pleasure Garden, is being performed next week by Daniel and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Elena Schwarz. The world premiere happens at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on 6 November, and the orchestra will also be filming a performance, without an audience, for broadcast – more details to follow. There’ll be a broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as well.

The piece was co-commissioned by Salford University in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society, to mark the opening of Salford’s new RHS Bridgewater Gardens. Its premiere was originally scheduled to be summer 2020 but we’ve obviously had to re-organise.

The other pieces in the concert will be Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2 & Ravel’s Ma mère de l’oye.

This is my first big piece as Composer-in-Association with the BBC Phil – I take over the Composer-in-Association post from (or slightly overlap with) Mark Simpson. The BBC Phil commissioned my Sonnet Machine in 2015.