James MacMillan: composer and conductor for Dresden residency
The Dresden Philharmonic presents a series of James MacMillan performances within its British Festival this season, including the German premiere of Symphony No.4 conducted by its dedicatee Donald Runnicles and Cantos Sagrados conducted by the composer himself.
James MacMillan’s Symphony No.4 launches a series of performances presented by the Dresden Philharmonic within a residency for the composer, embracing his orchestral, chamber and choral works across five programmes. This German premiere on 22 November is conducted by fellow-Scot Donald Runnicles, who is the dedicatee of MacMillan’s symphony, providing a highlight in his first season as the orchestra’s Chief Conductor. The Dresden Philharmonic celebrates all things British with a year-long festival ranging from Bliss and Holst to contemporary music, with artists including Anna Lapwood, Jess Gillam and Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Symphony No.4 was composed in 2015 as a response to the music of Scottish Renaissance composer Robert Carver, whose intricate multi-part choral works had been loved by James MacMillan since his student days. Embedded in the score are allusions to Carver’s 10-voice Mass Dum sacrum mysterium and at certain points its vocal lines can be heard in the distance, played delicately by the back desks of the violas, cellos and basses. The composer describes how “there are four distinct archetypes in the symphony, which can be viewed as rituals of movement, exhortation, petition and joy”.
MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto, imbued with Scottish folk music and Gaelic psalmody, is featured on the Dresden Philharmonic’s programmes on 17 and 18 April, with Jess Gillam as soloist and conductor Paolo Bartolameolli. Smaller scale instances of MacMillan’s art are provided by his second string quartet ‘Why is this night different’ played by the Collenbusch Quartett on 23 November and his wind quintet Untold performed by DivertiVenti on 19 April.
The MacMillan residency ends with two performances of a programme combining Dresden choral forces with the orchestra on 9 and 10 May. The composer collaborates with singers provided by the Dresden Philharmonic Choir and Children’s Choir, Chorus 116 and the University of Dresden Chamber Choir. Heard here in its powerful version with orchestral accompaniment, Cantos Sagrados sets poems by Ariel Dorfman and Ana Maria Mendosa on the subject of political repression in Latin America combined with traditional religious texts in Latin. The programme also features two short choral gems by MacMillan: Os Mutorum for women’s choir and harp and the Heyoka Te Deum for children’s voices, flute, tubular bells and piano. The concert is completed with two orchestral works which are MacMillan favourites, Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, together with choral music by Bach and Pärt.
> Visit the Dresden Philharmonic website
Just published by Boosey & Hawkes is a vocal score of James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio, which the composer conducts at the Barbican in London on 19 December with soloists Rhian Lois and Roderick Williams and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. A study score of Christmas Oratorio in the Hawkes Pocket Scores series is in preparation.
Other MacMillan season highlights are the US premiere on 22 January of his recent euphonium concerto Where the Lugar meets the Glaisnock, with soloist David Childs and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner. A new oratorio Angels Unawares, commissioned by the Genesis Foundation, will receive first performances next spring with The Sixteen and Britten Sinfonia conducted by Harry Christophers.
> Further information on Work: Symphony No.4
Photo: James Bellorini