In Friday’s (9/27) The Guardian, Stuart Maconie writes, “In terms of pop, it could be said that Manchester is Britain’s pre-eminent musical city. … But there is another musical tradition and culture in Manchester with names just as stellar… Names like Barbirolli, Walton, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies. Manchester’s classical music history is as revolutionary and pioneering as punk, and maybe even as radical. … It’s this heritage and the city’s ongoing dynamism that’s celebrated in the BBC Philharmonic’s 2013-14 season The Mancunian Way, the brainchild of the Phil’s general manager Richard Wigley. Chief Conductor Juanjo Mena this week launches the series with polymath Manchester son Anthony Burgess’s A Manchester Overture… There will be a performance of Elgar’s First Symphony, premiered in the city’s Free Trade Hall by Manchester’s own Hallé Orchestra in 1908. … Young composers Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr together with pianist John Ogdon and conductor/trumpeter Elgar Howarth set out to make a new English music influenced by the bracing new tonalities and techniques from the continent rather than the pastoralism and romance of the Edwardians. … As part of [this] season, their ground-breaking works will be played alongside those of Manchester’s newest and rising compositional talents such as Emily Howard and Gary Carpenter.”
Posted September 30, 2013
