We are delighted that House Composer Sadie Harrison has received a most positive review in Musical Opinion Quarterly Spring 2025, for the premiere of her work The Book of Stars and Sorrows by the fabulous pianist Lauryna Sableviciute. The concert took place on 10 August at Stoller Hall, Manchester, one of several events held during the 23rd Chetham’s International Piano Summer School.  

UYMP was pleased to hear David Lancaster's Swan broadcast on the RTE Lyric FM radio programme Vespertine hosted by Ellen Cranitch. The recording, made by the Delta Saxophone Quartet for their outstanding album Bowie, Berlin and Beyond, was played on Saturday evening (5th Jan).

"Thomas Simaku is one of the most distinctive voices in British music today" – Jim Samson.

Part of a compelling programme by the acclaimed British pianist Danny Driver, including ‘sublime works’ by Chopin and Ligeti’s ‘complex creation of 1951-3’, the world premiere of Catena IV for piano by Thomas Simaku took place in London at a packed hall of Wigmore Hall on 2 January 2025. British musicologist Jim Samson – a leading authority on the music of Chopin, and author of several books – wrote, in his programme note: “Born in Albania, but granted British citizenship in 2000, Thomas Simaku is one of the most distinctive voices in British music today. Catena IV, given its world premiere in this concert, is the fourth work of his Catena Cycle for solo piano. The composer stresses that, despite its nine self-contained sections and four interludes, it was conceived as a single movement, a linked chain of events rather than episodic form. Our programming here is strategic, given that its fourth section is a ‘Hommage à Chopin’ (built on the exact notes of the opening of First Ballade) and its fifth section a ‘Hommage à Ligeti’ (a re-working of Ligeti’s signature lamento motif). Fittingly, the eighth is titled ‘Ligeti meets Chopin’. Here the Chopin quotation is overlaid by different manifestations of the lamento motif, and at registral extremes.”