Werk: Secret Psalm

This month the BBC’s Total Immersion series celebrated the 60th birthday of British composer Oliver Knussen. A sensitively devised programme given at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on Sunday featured five works composed between the 1970s and the 1990s.

When Stravinsky brought his radical ballet Petrushka to Vienna in 1912, the composer recounts in his autobiography, the orchestra was full of complaints about the demands of the score. Disillusioned by this, Stravinsky found comfort from the unlikely figure of the man who raised and lowered the stage curtains. “Don’t let’s be downhearted”, he said, “I’ve been here for 55 years...