Schumann Orchestrations – 12, 13 & 14 July

The talented young players of the Britten Sinfonia Academy are performing my new set of orchestrations of Robert Schumann’s Studies in Canonic Form Op. 56, on the 12th, 13th and 14th July.

I’m delighted that they’re being performed alongside two of my desert island pieces – Webern’s arrangement of Bach’s Ricercar a 6, and Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. All of the music in the concert, then, involves orchestrations and arrangements of earlier keyboard works (Webern’s of Bach’s, mine of Schumann’s, and Ravel’s of his own).

The concerts will be at Norwich’s St Andrew’s Hall and Cambridge’s Mumford Theatre, then a fun final date on the Theatre and Dance Stage at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk.

I’ve had a great year as composition mentor on the Britten Sinfonia Academy’s Composition Lab, with four great young composers – Jasper Eaglesfield, Morgan Overton, Ben Pease Barton and Alexia Sloane. They’ve each written two pieces – the first performed by Academy players at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum (I conducted Ben’s Portraits of a Septet), and the second professionally recorded at Anglia Ruskin University, with fantastic conductors William Cole and Darren Bloom.