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A composer-conductor's insight yields lasting rewards in Earth Dances and the Eroica at the Royal Albert Hall. 

Fine performances from Claire Booth and Nash Ensemble conjure up the dramatic landscapes of Andalusia, the Hebrides and the wilds of southern Wisconsin, as portrayed by Harrison Birtwistle and Simon Holt. 

The London Sinfonietta and Martyn Brabbins pay tribute to Sir Harrison Birtwistle with a programme of very fine music-making at London's Southbank Centre.

The massed ranks of the LSO, the London Symphony and CBSO Choruses, Dame Sarah Connolly and Louise Alder gather for a staggering Mahler 2 at the BBC Proms. 

How various the orchestral sounds of this era -  here were four in one programme, written between 1913 and 2000, by an Englishman, a Frenchman, a  Greek and a Russian.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle is remembered by Edward Gardner before a performance of Deep Time, followed by Mahler's Song of the Earth. 

The Knussen Chamber Orchestra with Ryan Wigglesworth debuts at the Proms with music by Knussen, Birtwistle, Waley-Cohen, Abrahamsen and Putt.

On the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing, the musicians of Yellow Barn played a wide-ranging program of works inspired by the night sky. 

Another classic Rattle concert produced a very strong sense of occasion at the Barbican. Sir Simon is certainly making his mark on the London concert scene...

Alasdair Beatson presented a dazzling programme of 20th-century piano music, with Harrison Birtwistle at its centre. 

Two new music specialists revel in the sheer textural variation of Kontakte. 

A celebration of fifty years of the London Sinfonietta was a well-deserved pat on the back for this valuable institution.

Sparks flew as two British music giants, Vaughan Williams and Birtwistle, collided at the Barbican.

An intriguing programme marked by diversity and novelty from two world-beating ensembles. 

Simon Rattle returns to the UK in a (self-)portrait concert with the London Symphony Orchestra showcasing contemporary music

Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin shine in an inescapably political programme.

The Staatskapelle Berlin brought a showcase programme to the Berlin Philharmonie under chief conductor Daniel Barenboim and made a case for themselves as one of the best bands performing today.

An excellent performance of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s The Last Supper receiving its Scottish première, with Roderick Williams and Susan Bickley heading a luxury cast.

Fantastic performances can't quite elevate a disconnected audio-visual experience

Two short works by Harrison Birtwistle put forward interesting views of classical themes: the psychologically involved The Corridor and a dynamic new vision of Medea, The Cure. 

Hashimoto is clearly a brilliant technician, but often felt overly cautious in this St John's Smith Square programme.

Forward-looking programme celebrates contemporary repertoire, with two world premières in a concert of works written within the last 35 years.

John Woolrich's Songbook project provided the vocal material on show at the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group recital at Wigmore Hall, featuring sopranos Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski.

Birtwistle’s Responses poses more questions than it answers, but Aimard’s Messiaen was a triumph. 

Red Note Ensemble's Sounding Brass in a unique afternoon of brass, percussion and electronics in an imaginatively scouted industrial setting.

Lean yet nuanced performances from Oliver Knussen and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in commemoration of Harrison Birtwistle's 80th birthday

Edward Gardner directs the National Youth Orchestra’s annual prom performance in an exhilarating Russian and Polish programme.

Lapland Chamber Orchestra debuts at the Proms with a brilliant performance ranging from unusual classical pieces such as Sibelius’s intimate and tender Rakastava to disturbing contemporary pieces by Birtwistle and Davies. 

With murky machinations in the low strings and piercing, vivid woodwind solos above, Harrison Birtwistle’s Night’s Black Bird and Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major have surprisingly similar openings.

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are masterful, but chamber works lack context during the birthday celebrations at Milton Court.

As a very generous birthday present for ‘Accrington’s Finest’, Harrison Birtwistle, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martin Brabbins pulled out all the stops to give a revelatory performance of the composer’s most Wagnerian opera, Gawain.

Celebrating 40 years of championing the contemporary string quartet, the Arditti Quartet concluded a day-long marathon with six quartets from composers around the globe. Polished beyond belief, they gave mesmerising performances.

Utrecht has endured a long wait for its new concert hall complex, Tivoli Vredenburg. The official opening is still a few months away but we were afforded a sneak preview Saturday evening in one of the smaller halls aptly named Hertz, a play on words combining the musical term for pitch and Vredenburg’s famed architect, Herman Hertzberger. 

Infectious fun from the BBC Philharmonic, as Mancunian trained composers McCabe and Birtwistle received a warm welcome at Bridgewater Hall, and Holst's ever popular Planets triumphed. 

Joanna MacGregor's 'Exotic Birds', in an imaginatively programmed Auckland Philharmonia concert, gets our reviewer all aflutter.

A wonderful performance of Harrison Birtwistle's Earth Dances at the New Music Dublin Festival, but can it still qualify as “new”?

If I had to come up with a unifying theme for the BBC Singers’ Proms Chamber Music concert at Cadogan Hall, it would be “mystery”. Sir Harrison Birtwistle linked moths with mysteriousness in his mid-concert interview prior to the UK première of The Moth Requiem. Gustav Holst explored the mystery expressed in the ancient Rig Veda texts in his Choral Hymns of the Rig Veda.

This second of two SCO Britten centenary concerts saw its subject juxtaposed with two living British composers and Mozart. Cynics might consider the closing Symphony no. 40 in G minor (1788) a reward for surviving the rest of the programme’s modernity.

It’s pretty rare for a major concert hall to program more than ten minutes of music that was composed post-1900, and it’s even rarer to see an entire program of music that was composed post-1900. But at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall Monday evening, that’s exactly what the audience was treated to, courtesy of pianist Nicolas Hodges. Mr.

Revivals of 21st century operas on the stages of major houses are rarer than hens' teeth, so the Royal Opera were making a strong statement when they announced the revival of Harrison Birtwistle's 2008 The Minotaur, with the original director and much of the original cast.

“Affection is an impossibility”, says Harrison Birtwistle, describing how he feels towards his own compositions. After a Kings Place concert devoted entirely to his works last Wednesday, he talks to Tom Service about his music.

New music sounds all the newer when played by new performers, and so the Royal College of Music’s New Perspectives concert was refreshing to say the least, with a programme played by the College’s own ensemble featuring two world premières and two more pretty recent works.

Gloria Cheng is an uncommon artist. A specialist in contemporary piano literature, she has made a career championing new music and performing programs of adventurous (which is to say, esoteric) works. She is a frequent collaborator with some of the leading lights of contemporary music, including Pierre Boulez and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Two sisters, a knight, a miller, and a blind harpist. Such is the cast of Tony Harrison and Harrison Birtwistle's Bow Down, their 1977 music-theatre piece currently being toured around the UK by The Opera Group. It's an elemental, mythic piece, but also a testament to the endless capacity for novelty that old, grim folk tales like this have.

The work of Sir Harrison Birtwistle isn't necessarily the sunniest music in the world, and coming into the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night for a serious-minded evening of discussion and performances of his intricate, modernist-style music by the London Sinfonietta, I confess to having felt a little reluctant to be leaving behind the sweltering heat of the South Bank.

Ein atemberaubendes Abonnementkonzert mit Sir Simon Rattle und der Staatskapelle Berlin.

Ein vielseitiger Klavierabend mit Werken von Messiaen, Ravel, Birtwistle und Bartók im Muziekgebouw, der viel zu schnell vorüber war

El Nash Ensemble ofreció un gran concierto desde el Wigmore Hall con obras contemporáneas entre las que se contaban tres estrenos mundiales.

Jurowski treibt in der Rolle des Hoffmann’schen Kapellmeistersdie Musiker des RCO mit teuflischem Spaß zu immer mehr virtuosem Schabernack an.