| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 5-Mar-2013 Konzerthaus: Mozart Saal | In Europe series, Klangforum Wien surveys Greece | Zwölftöner |
 Give the Austrian body politic a victim complex to nurse, and it will gladly let off xenophobic steam. By now this well-oiled masquerade is possessed with Pavlovian inevitability. So nothing unusual then, when populist indignation about perceived Austrian vulnerability to the ongoing Greek crisis rapidly descended into ugly national stereotyping.
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| 18-Feb-2013 Jack NY | "It's about chickens who want to go to outer space": Composers Now Festival at JackNY | Rebecca Lentjes |
 Here’s a secret: on any given night in New York City and Brooklyn, groups of regular-looking people perform exceedingly difficult music in front of other regular-looking people, sometimes for one hour, sometimes for twelve. Often this music is being performed for the first time, and since much of it is aleatoric, or indeterminate, the audience witnesses a one-of-a-kind experience: completely unique, never to be repeated.Read full review... | ||
| 15-Nov-2012 The Jam House | Hebrides Ensemble: Eight Songs for a Mad King | Alan Coady |
 The Jam House is a jazz and blues club occupying the BBC’s former Queen Street Studios in Edinburgh. Now owned by Jools Holland and designer Neil Tabbitt, its spacious Georgian interior is occasionally given over to theatrical and musical events. Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) qualifies as both music and theatre, and this production, which was directed by Ben Twist, designed by Fiona Watt and lit by Martin Palmer, was certainly theatrical.
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| 14-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 44: A pocket history of post-war music with the London Sinfonietta | Verity Quaite |
 To judge by the continued chatter, no-one noticed 100 metronomes on stage being set in motion, signalling the beginning of György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique (1962). Even when the lights were dimmed it only dawned on people slowly that the concert had actually already begun. And yet once the realisation hit home, the entire audience was drawn into the piece, the suspense palpable as one by one the metronomes, each set at a pre-fixed speed, dropped out, eventually leaving only three... then two... then one.Read full review... | ||
| 10-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall: Elgar Room | London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists at the Royal Albert Hall | Paul Kilbey |
 Contemporary classical music is happening in all manner of unexpected venues in London at the moment, from Peckham car parks to pubs. But it isn't just getting edgier – it's also getting more respectable, if last night's suave affair in the Royal Albert Hall's Elgar Room is anything to go by. Set in a relaxed, up-market bar lounge area with the performers having to squeeze their way past beer-sipping patrons to get to the stage, all that separated this recital from a debonair evening of light jazz was a rather reverential, attentive atmosphere and some intense lighting. Oh, and the music.
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| 3-Mar-2012 The Roundhouse | London Contemporary Orchestra at the Reverb Festival | Paul Kilbey |
 There's classical music, and there's pop. You can throw as many violins into the bridge section as you like, and you can amplify the orchestra all you want as well. It's unfortunate, but a certain divide looks set to stay. However, we were given a glimpse of a better world on Saturday night with the London Contemporary Orchestra, who somehow succeeded in filling the Camden Roundhouse with keen, engaged listeners drinking Becks, for a cutting-edge Reverb Festival concert which included works by arch-modernists Xenakis and Stockhausen.
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| 3-Jun-2011 Kings Place: Hall One | Written Unwritten | London Sinfonietta with Matthew Bourne | Katy S Austin |
 Maverick improviser Matthew Bourne and London Sinfonietta’s reliable principal players created an extraordinary concert in this second of the Sinfonietta’s Written/UnWritten series. Despite the harmonics and echoes behind a diverse collection of twentieth-century pieces and irreverent improvisations, few risks were taken by anyone other than Bourne, but the result was an impressive and often hypnotic series of the most carefully crafted contemporary classical music of the last fifty years.
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