The late composer Jonathan Harvey, who died last month at age 73, described his Speakings (2008) as the most complicated and ambitious work he had ever written. A 25-minute composition for orchestra and electronics, the piece certainly warrants that description on the levels of scale and logistics alone.
The first piece at this afternoon concert, in the beautifully restored Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall in the School of Music at Leeds University, dated from 2004: the song-cycle In Praise of Dreams, four poems by the Nobel prize-winning Wisława Szymborska translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, composed by Birmingham-based Joe Cutler.
