Simon Cummings is a composer, writer and researcher based in the Cotswolds. He composes instrumental and electronic music, exploring aspects of algorithmic composition, and has recently completed a Ph.D. in composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire under the supervision of Richard Causton and Howard Skempton. His musical tastes are ludicrously broad but are focused most on contemporary/avant-garde classical and electronic music. When not composing, he writes regularly about new music; Simon is the author of the contemporary music blog 5:4 (5against4.com), and regularly contributes articles for a variety of books, journals and websites. Follow him on Twitter @5against4.
Nicola Benedetti and the CBSO under Kazuki Yamada bring impressive levels of sensitivity and honesty to Dvořák’s New World Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.
Elizabeth Watts gives an unforgettably powerful performance of Finzi’s Dies Natalis in an otherwise problematic concert, marred by Adrian Partington’s uncertain approach.
Rolf Martinsson opts for clichéd opulence in his song cycle Ich denke Dein…, while Emilia Hoving delivers a sublime, conflicted account of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.
Finnegan Downie Dear oversees a decidedly conflicted concert of works by Beethoven, Britten and Cassandra Miller that veered between ravishing beauty and unsynchronised sloppiness.
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’ largely forgotten Symphony no. 2, "Odysseus" proves exhausting, while works by Ireland and Howells tap into rich veins of mythical wistfulness and excruciating pain.
The world premiere of Gabriel Jackson’s ambitious but inert The World Imagined and a complacent Enigma Variations are outclassed by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s gorgeous Solemn Prelude at Worcester Cathedral.
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla with the CBSO and mezzo Karen Cargill tease out the contrasting inner and outer emotional tension in music by Weinberg and Mahler.
