University of York Music Press

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.

Thomas Simaku’s work Soliloquy I for solo violin, performed by Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, was broadcast by the Unam Radio (click here to listen) in Mexico City on 9 October 2024 in a programme of classical and contemporary music, which included works by, among others, Bach, Barber and De Falla, and contemporary composers from Japan and China, Toshio Hosokawa and Wenchen Qin.

Late Music York have two very good concerts coming up this Saturday. Late Music write: "Join us for two terrific concerts on Sat 2nd November. First at 1pm we have Lithuanian pianist Jelena Makarova marking 100 years since Stravinsky’s Sonata 1924 with a programme of music from the last 100 years. Then the Amabile Clarinet Trio will showcase their renowned sensitive ensemble playing with Beethoven, Bernstein, Taverner, alongside a number of new works and Carl Frühling’s rarely heard Trio, 7:30pm (6:45 pre-concert talk with a free glass of wine or juice)."

House composer Sadie Harrison will be featured on a new recording with the Kreutzer Quartet to be released in January 2025 on Metier Divine Art. 

Her work 10,000 Black Men: The Multiple Burdens of Injustice was written for the Kreutzers in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. 

Sadie writes: In 2017, I was commissioned by New Music in the South West to write Coretta, a work for the 50th Anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King on 16 April 1968. King valued music as a force for political change, speaking publicly about its importance for the Civil Rights Movement - on 13 September 1964, addressing the audience at West Berlin’s first jazz festival: ‘When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth..’

UYMP was delighted to read today that Hilda Paredes' work The Hearing Trumpet  has received a nomination for 'Best Chamber Ensemble Composition' at the Ivors Classical Awards. Along with four other nominations in the category, this piece will go forward to the final award ceremony on Tuesday 12th November where the winner will be announced. The event will be hosted by BBC Radio 3’s Kate Molleson and Tom Service at the BFI Southbank in London.

Update, 4th October: The Ian Pace concert on 5th October has been cancelled, due to illness.  We are looking forward to our friends Late Music York’s winter 2024 series of concerts, which begins this weekend.  Late Music York write: 'We can’t wait to welcome you back for our 2024 season. We start with a mini festival for the piano, with amazing programmes from David Hammond, Kate Ledger, Ian Pace and Jelena Makarova. Following this is the return of Amabile, exploring all corners of the Clarinet Trio repertoire, before we finish with the sound of song from both the Micklegate Singers and Art Sung. So mark up your diaries - we hope to see you in October!'