University News Last updated 04 June 2013
Birmingham Conservatoire are hosting a celebration of the music of two of England’s most individual and contrasting composers this month, including a world premiere performance of a previously unheard orchestral work by Benjamin Britten.
The five-day festival running from 17 – 21 June will be one of the biggest Birmingham Conservatoire has ever hosted and includes fifteen concert programmes celebrating the works of John Ireland and Frederick Delius.
Over 60 individuals from Birmingham Conservatoire, part of Birmingham City University, will be performing with orchestras, choirs and guest artists as they showcase songs, piano pieces and orchestral works, including a performance of Delius’ masterpiece, ‘Sea Drift’.
The celebratory event will culminate with the world premiere of an early work by Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, which has never been played or heard before.
The first ever performance of ‘Chaos and Cosmos’, a symphonic tone-poem composed by Britten at the age of 13, was offered as thanks to the Conservatoire from the Britten-Pears Foundation for their contribution to the online Britten Thematic Catalogue Project and is taking place in the centenary year of Britten’s birth.
Michael Harris, Senior Woodwind Tutor at Birmingham Conservatoire, said: “It’ll be fascinating to hear this schoolboy piece of Britten’s, a work which he was apparently fond of and often referred to later in life.”
To book tickets and for full details of the event programme, please visit the Conservatoire website.