Principal player focus: Jonathan Morton

The start of the Music Programme 2012/13 sees a new Principal player join the London Sinfonietta.   Jonathan Morton, who is also currently Artistic Director and Leader of the Scottish Ensemble, will be taking up the position of Principal player violin 1.  Jonathan has performed with us for many years and we’re delighted to welcome him to the ensemble. We asked him a few questions to get the inside track…

Violinist Jonathan Morton

Tell us a little about yourself.  What projects have you been involved with recently?\

I recently performed at Orchestra in a Field, an outdoor festival in Glastonbury. I played in the Scrapheap Orchestra, on a violin mostly made with plastic waste pipe, nails, and a fork.  I’ve also been having fun performing Schubert’s Trout Quintet and a new quintet by Alasdair Spratt with the wonderful pianist Alasdair Beatson & the Scottish Ensemble.

What was the first recording you bought?

 Probably some cheesy Belgian pop (I grew up near Brussels).

When did you realise you wanted a career in music?

Very late actually. I’m not very good with career strategies.

Although you’ve just become a London Sinfonietta Principal player you’ve performed with us many times before.  Do you have favourite London Sinfonietta experience to date?

So many to choose from… I’d have to pick one of my first experiences with tthe London Sinfonietta, which was a recording of Oliver Knussen’s two operas Where the Wild Things Are & Higglety Pigglety Pop!. I had recently left music college, and to find myself at Abbey Road studios playing this extraordinary music under the composer’s baton was overwhelming. And I’ll never forget a performance of Louis Andriessen’s medieval metal masterpiece De Snelheid at Lincoln Centre in NYC.  (Co-incidentally, Jonathan’s first performance as Principal violin 1 will be in our upcoming BBC Proms performance, when we’ll be re-visiting De Snelheid).

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve been asked to do in a musical work?

Playing the mandolin in Hans Werner Henze’s  ‘Voices’.

What piece of music brings a smile to your face when you see it on your music stand?

Anything by Mozart.

Who or what inspires you?

The landscapes, sea and skies of Suffolk, where I have recently moved to.

And finally, name your 3 most listened to pieces of music at the moment…

I listen to music mainly in the car, where our two children have complete artistic control over what’s played. The three most requested tracks are Stick Stock by Emily Portman, Short Ride in a Fast Machine by John Adams and In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg.  My latest album purchase is Ground of its own by Sam Lee. You should definitely listen to it.

Jonathan’s next performance with the London Sinfonietta will be on Tuesday 14 August at the Royal Albert Hall when we’ll be performing with the London Sinfonietta as part of the BBC Proms. Click here to find out more.

Principal Player Focus: Michael Thompson

 This month, we catch up with our Principal horn, Michael Thompson, who’ll be featured as soloist in our concert on Saturday 12 May when he’ll be performing Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto.

What has been your favourite London Sinfonietta experience?

Can I pick two? Performing Hans Werner Henze’s Voices at La Scala, Milan is particularly memorable.  I was still a student and as such it was one of my early London Sinfonietta experiences.  The work is scored for 15 instrumentalists, plus tenor and mezzosoprano, and all of the players are required to play additional instruments, and sometimes sing – so I can claim to have sung in La Scala!

I’d also pick out performing Messaien’s Des canyons aux étoiles (From the Canyons to the Stars) which is famous amongst horn players for the sixth movement scored for solo horn, but the whole piece is an incredible journey.

 What is the most unusual thing you’ve been asked to do in a musical work?

 I was asked to burst balloons once during a BBC Proms performance!

Michael Thompson, London Sinfonietta Principal horn

What, or whom, inspires you most?

By now, I’ve reached the point in my career where I am inspired by my students.

 Soon you’ll be revisiting Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto, which you gave the UK premiere of with the London Sinfonietta in 2001.  Can you tell us a little about the work?

It’s a challenging work (which I’ve enjoyed revisiting a number of times since the UK premiere), with the soloist being required to play both natural and valved horns.  The ensemble itself contains 4 horn natural horns, each in a different key, which results in the most extraordinary harmonies which include quartertones.

I think Ligeti was a composer who really understood the capabilites of the horn- his writing is challenging, but very idiomatic.

 And finally, what upcoming London Sinfonietta performance are you most looking forward to?

 In Portrait: George Benjamin on Saturday 12 May, including the Hamburg Concerto, of course!

 

A lesson in Panpipe making…

Last month, the London Sinfonietta performed as part of Glasgow’s Minimal Extreme festival.  One of the works, Louis Andriessen’s Hoketus called for some rather unusual panpipes. Eliza Marshall explains…

On receiving a copy of the panpipe parts for Louis Andriessen’s Hoketus, it was quite apparent that we would need to customise our pipes to suit the desired pitches. Whilst both Dave Cuthbert and I play on Romanian-made pipes, they were not specific enough for what we needed.

Eliza's panpipe making kit

Buying other makes would have been expensive, and we would have had to break them up to add/take away notes that we needed/didn’t need. The geography of the notes when playing the panpipes is very important, so having any unwanted notes in the way was unhelpful for a fast moving piece like Hoketus.

We decided that the best optionwas to make our own.

3 metres of black conduit tubing, a tube cutting instrument,  some champagne corks and several hours later we had the exact notes required! David worked out rough measurements for each pitch, and cut the tubing accordingly

Panpipe making in progress

This was reasonably quick. Cutting the cork so that it was the right size was a little more time consuming, but very important to fully block the end of the tube, whilst also being movable so as to allow for tuning the pipes. Then some strong carpet tape and we were ready to go!

Our first rehearsal with Bang On A Can and the guys seemed quite impressed with our home creations. Mark Stewart commented on the fact that he has many instruments that he makes for different occasions and Louis Andriessen also seemed very happy with the instruments.

Eliza, with the finished panpipes

Hoketus is a great piece to play on panpipes, and I will now be adding my black tube creations to my ever-growing bag of ethnic flutes and random instruments.

Eliza Marshall, Panpipe player

Interview with Netia Jones, Projection Designer

We are delighted to be working with Netia Jones, designer of projections for our performance on Saturday 21 April as part of Impossible Brilliance: the music of Conlon Nancarrow. We caught up with Netia to find out what’s involved in producing and  designing her projections.

Can you tell us a little about your background?  How did you end up working as a projection designer?

I currentlywork as an director/designer in opera and concerts always using projection and film. I studied music and visual art simultaneously and introducing technology was a natural progression. Along the way I have worked in editing, installation and interactive media to forage for techniques that can best be applied to dealing with live music in performance, which has its own very specific demands and negotiations.

How do you go about designing projections to accompany existing works?

On any given project I will spend an earnest amount of time in preparation, both listening and reading up. Some projects have a greater narrative content and some, as this one, are just about creating a supporting layer to enhance the listening experience. There is always a visual language that emerges after this period of research, which can only really come out of total immersion.

 And how do you go about realising them?

I film and collate all the visual material, and edit to sound or to scores depending on the project. Then there is an extended period of programming to enable it all to be played live. The fundamental idea is that the film and projection follows the live performance, rather than the other way around. For me visual technology is a fantastic toolbox for responding to sound worlds in a way that enriches the experience of participating in live music. Projection can be as simple as integrated projected text, or it can encompass interactive triggers, sound, live cameras, film, or any combination of these.

Here’s a video of some of Netia’s previous work:

Who, or what, inspires you?

I am completely inspired by quiet geniuses, the kind of creative innovators who are impelled along a certain path whether anyone is listening or not. I’m afraid I am also slightly obsessed with mechanisation, machines, mathematics, science, technology and projected light.

If you could pick a favourite project or personal career highlight to date, what would it be?

Projecting 30 metres high onto Sizewell Nuclear Power station while performing Ligeti, Scelsi, Ockeghem and Mazulis. I can’t believe I was allowed to. Possibly I dreamt it.

Can you tell us about the projections in Impossible Brilliance: the music of Conlon Nancarrow?

Unlike other projects that are more narrative or concept-driven, I see projection in this concert to be a way of supporting this amazing and exhilarating programme, and perhaps suggesting, or allowing, some ideas about the composer to emerge. We have some really wonderful images of Nancarrow, and the tools of his fairly unique trade are so beautiful that I think some reliance on stills, and possibly text, can bring together these startlingly brilliant pieces and create some kind of picture of the man behind them. I am very interested in this quote from Nancarrow: “My essential concern, whether you can analyze it or not, is emotional; there’s an impact that I try to achieve by these means”. I have been slightly in love with Nancarrow for quite a while and it is a pure joy to be working on this project.

 And finally, what is the most played piece of music on your mp3 player right now?

Conlon Nancarrow String Quartet No.1, Oliver Knussen Upon One Note, György Kurtag Jatekok.

From the technicolour fantasies of Disney to the anarchist trenches…

The London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper programme nurtures and promotes the next generation of composers and interdisciplinary collaborators by providing the context and space to develop new work. On Wednesday 16 May collaborative works currently being developed by 3 groups of composers and artists on the programme will be showcased in a works-in-progress preview event at Village Underground, Shoreditch.

Composer Steve Potter and writer/dramaturg Kélina Gotman have been working on 100 Combat Troupes, a music-theatre piece which stages the urgency and ambivalence of dreaming other possible worlds.  In the first of a series of blog posts ahead of the event Kélina gives us an update on the progress of 100 Combat Troupes…

Paul Klee's Angelus Novus, inspiration for 100 Combat Troupes

24 March. 5.18pm: The first thing to say is that it’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting out back in the newly-refurbished Crystal Palace Tavern (CPT, for short- I always want to call it the Camden People’s Theatre, even though it’s not), and Steve is slaving away at home working on the Rivers of the World sequence – Adam’s scene, the most difficult one.

We had a great session this morning, looking back over the script, which I revised – finally – after procrastinating on it for a week or two. Steve had some comments, and we more or less solved (I think) the Messiah sequence, the last scene. It wasn’t really clear what it was about: what the mood was, or what the point, was, really, either. I think we’ve figured out that it’s a coda, silent (no language), but playful. The actors will be doing very little: sitting at a folding card table, which we need to acquire, or find. Pulling out foldable chairs. Talking like old friends, gesticulating. It’s going to be shorter than we had thought. One minute, rather than four. And end in an 8 second burst of Balkan gypsy music, then nothing. It makes sense, after Adam’s wild scene.

I could say more, but I have 100 to 400 words for this blog post, so will move on to the other thing we figured out this morning, lest I try my reader’s patience, and that’s the Disney sequence, which I think Steve has totally nailed.  We had a rehearsal (or a workshop) with the London Sinfonietta on Monday last week, and I was concerned that the soundscape was too disjointed. There were all kinds of things going on, and it was going to be disruptive, and felt random. Kirstin has a huge, intense, monologue – much of it is gibberish (intentionally so), a childish princess-like patter, a grown-up girl’s fetish dreams of infinite girldom, the disaster land of Disney, and the music was going to make the scene too messy. Confusing. But Steve has found the perfect soundscape: we’re still using the sped-up Swan Lake, as per a momentary flash of inspiration from many months ago, but it’s more audible now; it’s also halting. Like a little girl refusing to grow up, not getting anywhere; the tune blasts for a few seconds, then pause, then starts again, a zillion times. Start stop, it’s perfect as a counterpart to Kirstin’s rapid-fire babble about Aibo (the robot dog), Dorothy, and other things, which I won’t get into right now. Let’s just say that she gets suddenly pissed off, swears at the two other actors, who have hit her (accidentally) in the head with a projectile. The trick was to get the music to turn, but without having it be so violent a shift that we would need 100 more rehearsals to get the timing right. Here, our stopwatch structure will allow Kirstin to fire off her scene (in exactly 2’20’’), while the musicians watch her for their cue – Steve was suggesting we ask David Hockings, the London Sinfonietta’s Principal percussionist, to watch for the shift, and then the music turns – subtly, but definitely, darker.

Next on the to-do list for the day: fire off the revised script to Kaite O’Reilly, who has offered ridiculously useful mentoring so far.  See what she says about the changes.

 Kélina Gotman, writer/dramaturg, 100 Combat Troupes

Five Questions with Andrew Watts

Andrew Watts, countertenor and soloist in In Portrait: Olga Neuwirth talks about Hommage à Klaus Nomi, his ideal musical collage, and who he’d most like to be for a day…

Countertenor Andrew Watts

On Saturday 11 February, you’ll be performing as soloist in Olga Neuwirth’s Hommage à Klaus Nomi.  Can you tell us a little about Nomi’s character and how this influences your approach to the role?

Taking on the persona of someone like Klaus Nomi is almost impossible. Unlike such things as Stars in Your Eyes on the television the role is in no way meant to be an impression of Klaus Nomi  (vocally or in a fashion sense!), it is more an evocation of the times and spirits of the period when Klaus Nomi was singing and performing.

My approach to singing this music is to treat it simply in a classical form even though some of the songs are based in the rock genre. Good singing along with a natural performance style is needed for these songs. The arrangements by Olga Neuwirth are incredible and full of musical nuances and detail.

Klaus Nomi used music to adopt a new persona.  If you could be someone else for a day, who would you choose, and why? 

I am fairly happy with being the person I am but if I were to become a person for the day I think I would like to be the President of the United States of America. I have become obsessed with the TV series The West Wing and carry it with me when away from home singing opera around the world. It is incredibly written and has a real insight into the working of politics in the US.  Being President would give me access in to the most secure building in the world.

Olga Neuwirth has said that she has been intrigued by Klaus Nomi since the age of 13 and “was always a fan of his songs and his personality.”  Which performer or hero, real or imagined, intrigues you?

I guess as a classical singer I am supposed to think of some other singer who has influenced me or who has inspired me. Most of the great singers have had some influence on me; I simply love the human voice. This is my healthy obsession. However if there was a person who intrigues me then I would have to say Diana, Princess of Wales. I had the pleasure of meeting her both publicly and privately and together with the rest of the world I still wonder what went on in her mind behind the smile and the gentle nature.

In Hommage à Klaus Nomi, Olga Neuwirth takes inspiration from 9 Klaus Nomi songs that were originally performed by a great variety of performers.  If you were to create your own musical collage of favourites, what songs would you include?

This list can be endless! Looking at my iPod to see what I listen to all the time, I would include the following; The Carpenters We’ve Only Just Begun; The Weather Girls It’s Raining Men, Elton John’s Candle in the Wind,  Defying Gravity from the musical Wicked This is the Moment from the musical Jekyll and Hyde, Isolde’s Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time and anything by Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson.

And finally… in a previous period of his life, Klaus Nomi worked a pastry chef.  If you hadn’t become a musician, what would you be now?

Well I have done many jobs in my time before this music thing took off. I cleaned offices, put the jam in the middle of doughnuts in the local bakery, worked in the local grocers weighting out vegetables, worked in restaurants and pubs, played cocktail piano in a wine bar, and cooked pub food.  I often wonder if I had not been a musician what would I have actually been doing now.

Click here to watch Klaus Nomi on YouTube

And hear to listen to Andrew Watts performing Olga Neuwirth’s Five Daily Miniatures.

Shiva Feshareki reflects on Valentine’s Rhapsody

On Saturday 5 November the London Sinfonietta premiered a selection of chamber works by our Writing the Future composers.  After the event  Shiva Feshareki sent us this blog post about her thoughts on both the concert day and afterwards. Thank you Shiva!

The concert on Saturday 5 November was one of those strange, surreal experiences.  In my opinion, I had the country’s finest instrumentalists on stage ready to perform my piece Valentine’s Rhapsody.  So I was at ease… in that sense. The issue, I must confess, was the feeling of self-doubt.  You see, I had written an extremely personal and difficult piece emotionally, and it is dedicated to someone I love dearly – Valentine Davies – and who has (without exaggeration) saved my life.  I wanted this piece to show a transition, mirroring my life. This is what the piece is about and how Valentine’s impact changed who I am, and for the better.   My doubt was that, on a personal level, this is the most significant piece I have written.  Will it ever have that massive, heart-wrenching impact it had on me whilst thinking and composing it, but in performance? …to others?

I think the conclusion is that one shouldn’t over-think these things (something I have to remind myself every second of everyday).

A) I wrote a piece.
B) I quite literally translated an almost brutal auto-biography.
C) I was honest.
D) The performers respected that honesty.
E) It all represents this eventually positive journey into a short, purposefully understated piece.
F) It was performed better than I could imagine, and it had the opportunity to be heard.

First Conclusion: A+B+C+D+E+F = What more could I want?

Second conclusion: once a piece is written – it is permanent – it does not wither.  So the person the piece was written for will have a permanent reminder of how she helped me, and especially, helped me help myself.  And as for ‘Writing the Future’, quite literally I hope the piece lives on in the future (or at least, I hope that the score of it that I threw into the River Thames off the Embankment Bridge, drifts like a message in a bottle… at least in my thoughts and ponderings).

Thank you to the London Sinfonietta’s Writing the Future for supporting and promoting new music with the same relentless, unique passion as it takes for me to write the music.  This is a relationship that I will cherish, and will inspire me further, both musically and personally.

Click here to  listen to Valentine’s Rhapsody and other Writing the Future works premiered on Saturday 5 November.

 

London Sinfonietta on Tour: Reflections by John Constable

During November we visited both the Wien Modern Festival in Vienna, and the Melos-Ethos Festioval in Bratislava.   London Sinfonietta Principal pianist John Constable kept a diary, and shared some of his reflections with us…

Sunday 30 October, Vienna

The Mozart Saal, Konzerthaus, Vienna

I had been looking forward to revisiting Vienna and going to Bratislava for a long time.  It is always a very special occasion to play in Vienna, partly because you are treading the same streets trodden by the world’s greatest composers and also because of the many marvellous experiences I have had there.  I first went to Vienna in 1969 at three hours notice to assist Sir Georg Solti in a Decca recording of The Magic Flute.  In the cast were two of my singer friends from Covent Garden, Yvonne Minton and Stuart Burrows who I later accompanied in the Brahms Saal of the Musikverein many times. The Musikverein has one of the most important collections of original scores in the world and on several occasions I was allowed to see manuscripts of Mozart piano concertos, the Eroica Symphony, Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’ Four Serious Songs and on one occasion a Beethoven song that I had performed the night before.

But enough of the past!  We arrived at our hotel, which was near the Belvedere Garden which Mahler walked round at lunchtime,  in good time to have dinner at an atmospheric beer house set in the Belvedere itself.  After dinner my colleagues went back to the hotel but I had plenty of energy left to walk round the floodlit centre, past the opera to the Hofburg and round the Musikverein.

Monday 1 November, Vienna

It was a ten minute walk to the Konzerthaus in warm sun for our 11 o’clock rehearsal.  I remembered as I walked in that it was here that the London Sinfonietta gave it’s first concert outside the UK with Luciano Berio, followed by concerts around Europe with Pierre Boulez and David Atherton. (Click here to view the programme for this first concert).  This time we were not in the main hall where we gave a Steve Reich concert a few years ago but were in the very lovely Mozart Saal. Vienna has what, apart from the Wigmore Hall, I believe we don’t have in London, halls which not only have a rich and warm acoustic but also are beautiful and have an atmosphere that positively demands music.  All this without lighting effects or an auditorium so dark that you can’t read the programme!

After lunch overlooking the Burggarten there was time to see the Gustav Klimt exhibition in the Belvedere and an afternoon sleep before the concert.   We played an all British programme including works by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Simon Holt, George Benjamin and Thomas Adès which we had (or most of us had ) played many times before, and the programme was very warmly received. At a reception after the concert Cathy Graham, our previous Cheif Executive, said it was a programme of “London Sinfonietta Greatest Hits”.  She also said how lovely the magical chords near the end of Adès  Living Toys sounded. We were all very excited that Christian Barraclough, our young trumpeter deputising for London Sinfonietta Principal Alistair Mackie, had played so superlatively well in both the Benjamin and the Adès.  After the concert we all went to the beer house near the hotel taking up two large tables, hoping to play at the Wien Modern festival again soon.

Friday 11 and Saturday 12 November, Bratislava

We didn’t arrive at our hotel until after midnight so I went to bed straight away, however, we did have the next morning free so I explored the old town which most of us had not seen before.  It was brilliantly sunny but much colder than Vienna had been, there were no cars in the old town and very few people either. I happened to find an exhibition of Picasso drawings and etchings in a baroque palace after visiting the cathedral and wandering along deserted cobbled streets.  In the afternoon we presented a workshop of works by Slovakian composers plus Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Silbury Air to a public audience.  It certainly enhances a visit when we can do something involving local composers as well as playing a concert.

In the evening we had to rehearse for our concert partly because we had a different first violin to the concert in Vienna, but also because we were playing a new work for wind quintet and piano which involved quite a lot of unusual techniques, by Slovakian composer Iris Szeghy.

Sunday 13 November, Bratislava

John Constable, London Sinfonietta Principal pianist

The coach took us over the Danube to the theatre where we were going to perform. It was immediately obvious that it was a typically dry theatre acoustic unlike the Konzerthaus.  After the rehearsal we all walked back over the bridge, and, after listening to the Police Band play outside the National Theatre and watching a busker who appeared to be sitting suspended in mid-air, a group of us had a good Italian lunch before a sleep and then the coach back to the theatre.  After the concert, there was a lovely reception with food, excellent Slovakian red wine and speeches as it was the end of the festival. Iris was delighted with the way her piece had been played, we all felt that it was the sort of music which has a lot of atmosphere and really comes off in performance. We met many interesting people, all of whom were very enthusiastic about the concert and we certainly hope we will be invited back very soon.

Monday 14 November, Bratislava

We drove to Vienna airport along country roads in, at times, quite thick fog, however, luckily we were not delayed very much and our last trip abroad in a very active 2011 was over.

The Return of Written/Unwritten

In June this year we collaborated with pianist Matthew Bourne in our Written/Unwritten, which involved collaboration between musicians from both notated and non-notated backgrounds.  On Friday 18 November Written/Unwritten returns, and this time we’ll also be joined by experimental percussionist Vladimir Tarasov.  Ahead of the workshops for this event, Matthew tells us a little about his current musical preferences, and reflects on his previous Written/Unwritten experience.

Back in June, you were listening to Shostakovitch’s String Quartet No.13, Peter Gabriel’s eponymous debut album and Ben E. King’s Stand by Me.  What’s on your favoured playlist right now?

Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me, Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’Oiseaux, The Fall: Totally Wired – The Rough Trade Anthology, Dirk Bogarde: Lyrics for Lovers

Tell us a little about your previous experience of working with the London Sinfonietta. Is there anything you might do differently this time?

Matthew Bourne in rehearsal

It was a great experience and I learned a lot from the London Sinfonietta players.

I sketched out some rough ideas and took them along to the workshops and we recorded the results. I then decided which sections would be kept or altered, worked on a new piece and finally ordered the sections.This time the line-up is roughly the same so I’ll be sticking quite closely to the original piece albeit a little shorter in duration…

You’re also to be joined by percussionist Vladimir Tarasov.  How do you think this might alter the process and end performance?

I have no idea! It’ll be fun finding out, though.

Check out our blog next week for an update following the first batch of workshops for Written/Unwritten.

Developing the Double Bass Concerto

Enno Senft, soloist in the world premiere of Dai Fujikura’s Double Bass Concerto on 5 November, talks about his close involvement in its composition.

Enno Senft and Dai Fujikura in rehearsal (image © Briony Campbell)

The Double Bass Concerto grew out of a close collaboration between Dai and I.  After  performing two of Dai’s  challenging ensemble pieces, Fifth Station and Blue Sky Falling, I was excited as well as daunted by the idea of him writing a bass concerto for me. We met at my house looking for inspiration for Dai’s creative mind. I first freely demonstrated the instrument’s more conventional characteristics- its timbre, resonance, harmonics, gentle dynamics, and colours in the middle register.  Then I moved to more experimental, extended techniques, for example treating the bass like a big guitar  (many taxi driver’s preferred description of the bass!), using arpeggio chords, fast tremolo and slap effects.

Dai’s lateral approach to the instrument encouraged me to get carried away with suggestions like changing the tuning of the instrument altogether, extreme tremolo effects on high treble harmonics (imitating an electric guitar) and playing both parts of the stopped string. I forgot in this process that Dai videoed all of this, but certainly remembered when the score of his first preliminary solo piece ES  landed on my music stand! This piece introduced many of the ideas that later became the material for the Double Bass Concerto.  Now I faced unprecedented technical challenges, partly brought about by myself!

Subsequently, we worked closely together to find realistic solutions which make musical sense and fit with Dai’s aesthetic language.  In some ways, the new techniques used in the Double Bass Concerto has meant that learning the concerto has been like learning a new instrument.

I believe that Dai has created a truly innovative concerto that tells its own story and well as realising the full potential of the solo double bass.

Enno Senft, London Sinfonietta Principal double bass

Click here to hear extracts of Enno and the London Sinfonietta rehearsing the Double Bass Concerto.