University of York Music Press

We are absolutely thrilled that the young pianist Yash Saran has just won the Ethyl Smyth Award for Performance of a Work by a Female Composer in the 2025 Woking Young Musician of the Year Competition 2025, adjudicated by George Caird. He performed the first movement of house composer Sadie Harrison’s Lunae (1. ...around and a round...) for solo piano.

Yash Saran has been playing the piano since the age of 6, and now studies at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department with Eleanor Hodgkinson.  He is a thrice winner of Woking Music Festival's Junior Musician of the Year and twice runner up of the Piano Prize at the Academy. 

We are happy to announce that our friends Late Music York’s 2025 season begins this Saturday 1st February.  As usual, concerts will take place in the beautiful Unitarian Chapel, 31 St. Saviourgate, York, YO1 8NQ. Late Music write: ‘From Bingen to Bingham! Join us on Saturday 1st February for the first concerts of 2025. At 1pm we’re taking flight with women writing for women as Nia Rhein Passmore and Kate Ledger explore music by female composers from Hildegard Von Bingen to the present day. This is followed by the Bingham String Quartet at 7:30 (with a pre-concert talk at 6:45) taking on Phillip Glass’ fascinating 3rd Quartet, ‘Mishima’ alongside new works by Anthony Adams and Steve Crowther.

Premieres of works by David Lancaster and NCN composer Hayley Jenkins, performed at the Late Music Concert Series, York, have received superb reviews from Paul Conway, in Musical Opinion’s January-March 2025 issue.  The 2nd November lunchtime recital by pianist Jelena Makarova marked the centenary of Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata and the evening concert was given by the Amabile Clarinet Trio.   

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.”

UYMP offers huge congratulations to composer Luís Tinoco, who has been awarded the Pessoa Prize 2024, the most prestigious award in Portugal in the fields of the sciences and the arts. Named after Fernando Pessoa, the prize was initiated by the Expresso newspaper, sponsored by Caixa Geral de Depósitos, and aims to recognize Portuguese people who play a significant role in the country's cultural and scientific life.

This is just the third time in 38 years of the Pessoa Prize that a representative in the Music profession has been honoured. Only pianist Maria João Pires (1989) and composer Emanuel Nunes (2000) have preceded Luís Tinoco. The choice was welcomed by the Minister of Culture who, in a statement, recognized Tinoco's “commitment to teaching and training young musicians and his ability to project Portuguese musical creation across borders, with a unique and innovative artistic language.” Musicologist Rui Vieira Nery, one of the members of the jury, explained that they reached a firm consensus on Luís Tinoco as winner of the prize.

We are absolutely delighted that Dida Condria, a previous BBC Young Musician Keyboard Finalist, is performing two movements Labyrinth and Lizard from house composer, Sadie Harrison’s Impresa Amorosa at the Dublin International Piano Competition Irish Preliminary Competition on 20 December 2024. Dida and Sadie worked together on Labyrinth for the BBC Young Musician Competition in 2022 and we are thrilled that she continues to do so well on the public stage. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the National Concert Hall of Ireland, Casa Verdi Milan and the Sibiu Filarmonica and also on RTE Lyric FM. We wish her much luck in the forthcoming DIPC, now considered one of the world’s leading competitions.

A substantial new work by Thomas Simaku, Catena IV (for solo piano), will receive its world premiere at London’s most prestigious hall of chamber music, Wigmore Hall, on 2 January 2025. The piece is written for and dedicated to Danny Driver – celebrated British pianist, whose “most recent release of György Ligeti’s Piano Études has met with particular critical acclaim”.

This is Simaku’s fourth work in the Catena Cycle - the first three have been recorded by Joseph Houston and Dimitri Vassilakis, and released by BIS Records and NMC Recordings in 2000 and 2023 respectively. The overall formal structure of Catena IV consists of nine main sections and four interludes played without a break. The main sections are considered as self-contained units in a chain of events, which are linked by interludes and silences; in a nutshell, the work as a whole is in one movement lasting some 20 minutes. As Simaku writes in his programme note, “Focal points of the entire work are the 4th and 5th sections entitled Hommage à Chopin' and Hommage à Ligeti respectively. The first uses the exact notes of Chopin's opening motif from his Ballade No 1 in G-minor Op. 23. Although in a completely different stylistic environment, Chopin’s six different notes peacefully co-exist in a non-tonal canvas within the spectrum of total chromaticism.

David Lancaster's saxophone quartet Swan, published by UYMP, received a broadcast on RTE Lyric FM in the Republic of Ireland last week, from the CD recording Bowie, Berlin and Beyond made by the brilliant Delta Sax Quartet. Swan was featured on the 'Vespertine' show, presented by Ellen Cranitch, which features a wonderfully wide array of music. Here's a link to the broadcast – please click here to listen (Swan is 43:55 minutes into the programme).

Late Music York have a couple of fantastic final concerts of 2024 lined up, for Saturday 7th December.  The lunchtime concert includes a world premiere of a work by local composer James Else.  Late Music York write: ‘Our final concerts of 2024 promise to be absolute crackers (pun intended)! First up at 1pm on Sat 7th Dec, the Micklegate Singers give us a Christmas concert based on Joanna Marsh's In Winter's House, including Poulenc, Tallis and Vaughan Williams.  Then at 7:30 Art Sung celebrate the 60th anniversary of Edith Sitwell’s death, with music by Walton, Britten and Satie, featuring photography, 3D imagery and video. And don’t forget to join us for a free glass of wine or juice with the preconcert talk at 6:45.

We are excited about a new and important podcast initiative recently launched by the charity SOUND WORLD, including an interview with house composer Sadie Harrison. The podcast asks: "is our musical culture facing an existential threat? With ever smaller numbers of young people learning instruments, the gradual erasing of music from state education and years of declining funding, things may be worse than you think. Sound World investigates the state of music today and looks at what we can do to safeguard it for future generations".

In the first episode, the podcast looks at the value of music both to individuals and to society and asks why those in power don't always recognise this value. In the second, guests talk about how they discovered music and what enabled them to develop their interest into a life-long passion; it also asks whether they would have had such opportunities had they been growing up today.

The series is written and presented by Julian Leeks with series guests Sally Beamish, Daisy Fancourt, Peter Flach, Jess Gillam, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Sadie Harrison, Iain McGilchrist, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, Nico Muhly, John Pickard, and Jörg Widmann.