July (miniature score)

Premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall under the baton of the composer July 1943.

Psychologists agree that dreaming is essential to our mental well-being. Artists have always been intuitively aware of this and the above lines are one illustration of this awareness. Composers as well as painters and writers have frequently drawn upon the fantastical imagery of dreams and The World Again is an attempt to convey some of the power of this imagery in music.The work is cast in the shape of a rondo with a coda which is really asummation of the piece. The ritornelli sections depict a dreamless sleep and the episodes represent dreams. The ritornelli are based on a simple motif which is heard in either C major or minor and never strays far from thosekeys.The World Again was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic and first performed by them on 9 October 1984 at the Royal Festival Hall with Jane Manning (soprano) and conducted by Andrew Litton.In 1986 ChristopherBruce choreographed the work for the London Festival Ballet who gave the first performance on 18 July 1986 at the London Coliseum with the Orchestra of the London Festival Ballet with Sarah Leonard (soprano) and conducted byGraham Bond.

Par BENJAMIN GEORGE. Picture a day like this is the fourth collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose acclaimed partnership produced Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence, and Into the Little Hill. The opera – “a kind of Alice in Wonderland, but for adults”, says Crimp – lasts just over an hour and is cast in seven scenes. It is scored for five voices (S-S-MS-CT-Bar) and twenty-two instrumentalists. It premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2023, conducted by the composer. Picture a day like this is a bittersweet fable of grief and renewal. Benjamin and Crimp tell the story of a Woman who has lost her child: if, before nightfall, she meets one truly happy person and cuts a button from their sleeve, her child will live again. In her search she meets a pair of lovers, a Composer and their Assistant, an Artisan, Collector, and, in a beautiful garden, the mysterious Zabelle. This limited edition of the full score is one of only one hundred and fifty, presented in a cloth-bound hard cover. It is signed by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp and includes facsimile reproductions of pages from the manuscript and Benjamin’s sketches, and a photograph of Benjamin, Crimp and directors Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma in rehearsal at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. ‘Benjamin proves with this taut, sharp miniature that he is the finest opera composer of today…a work of depth of feeling, humanistic artistry and expressive rigor…a drama that is miraculously condensed.’ Süddeutsche Zeitung (Reinhard J. Brembeck) 9 July 2023 ‘…spare, haunting, immediate…a fable of loss and anguish for our times… The whole has the slick perfection of a piece crafted specifically for exceptional performers…the score [is] deft and restrained, its occasional outbursts of passion all the more intense for the careful control of the rest…There is a ritualistic slowness to the movement, resembling an underwater memory or the trance-like dullness of bereavement…For Zabelle’s enchanted garden, video artist Hicham Berrada has created an ambivalent scene of blossoming chemical reactions — toxic and vibrant, sinister and fascinating…It is fiendishly clever…. [the opera] tackles huge subjects with daring economy of means…Its impact is unsettling...For all its beguiling beauty, its moments of dark wit and bitter social observation, Picture remains a voyage beyond all comfort zones.’ Financial Times (Shirley Apthorp) 7 July 2023 / Date parution : 2023-10-31/ Répertoire / Choeur et Orchestre