'Palimpsests' is a new programme for voice and piano that re-imagines the song cycle: Bernhard Lang and Michael Finnissy explore concepts of collage and remembrance in new works written for me and Mark Knoop.

MICHAEL FINNISSY Andersen-Liederkreis
Hans Christian Andersen is universally famous for his fairy-stories for children, but his lyric poetry and ‘papiers collés’, with even darker force, also tap into the fantastical, droll, tormented, sentimental, macabre, and self-deprecating world of his imagination. The Andersen-Liederkreis will be a cycle of short ‘closed’ forms, unified by cyclical recurrence of musical material. Rather like interwoven sets of variations, each cycle will contain different settings of similar topics: infatuation, mystery, the grotesque, and travel.

BERNHARD LANG Monadologie XXXII - The Cold Trip, part 2

The Cold Trip belongs to a cycle of some 30 pieces called the Monadologies which represent meta-compositions, using original scores from music history between 900 and today. The Cold Trip is a meta-composition based on Winterreise. Part 2, for voice, piano and laptop, deals with songs XIII-XXIV, using a specially created set of samples of prepared pianos for the playback-files to create palimpsests of Schubert’s original textures. The voice traces the lost lines of the songs, sometimes touching them as if remembering.

Juliet Fraser | soprano

Mark Knoop | piano 

This project has been generously supported by Arts Council England, PRS for Music Foundation, Britten-Pears Foundation, RVW Trust and Hinrichsen Foundation, with commission partners MaerzMusik, Transit and hcmf//.

Our recording of The Cold Trip, part 2 was released on Kairos in 2017.

Our recording of Andersen-Liederkreis was released on Hat Hut in 2018.

PERFORMANCES

13 March 2016: MaerzMusik, Berlin (Lang wp)

30 September 2016: Transit Festival, Leuven (Finnissy wp)

27 November 2016: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (Finnissy & Lang UKp)

11 April 2017: City University, London (Finnissy)

18 May 2017: Kammer Klang, London (Lang)

5 July 2017: 'Time of Music', Viitasaari (Finnissy & Lang)

21 September 2017: Klangspuren Schwaz (Lang)

13 December 2017: Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg (Lang)