Ollie and George Benjamin's Dream of the Song

Ollie and George: powerhouse pair! George Benjamin's Dream of the Song , given its UK premiere by Oliver Knussen and the BBCSO at the Barbican London.  Listen here on BBC Radio 3.  Benjamin's Dream of the Song starts at 1h:11. One of the perils of modern writing is the rush to instant judgement as quickly as possible even if such comment is so shallow as to be utterly meaningless. No point in rush if you have nothing to say! That might well be George Benjamin's motto. Benjamin works with the meticulous  pace of a medieval illuminator working with gold and precious powders.  And so I've tried to live with Benjamin's Dream of the Song to give it some of the care Benjamin put into it. I don't know if I'll succeed, but it's better than to try than gloss over it.  Thank goodness for the BBC's Listen again policy.

Dream of the Song is based on texts by three poets. Two of them lived in Granada, the jewel of Islamic civilzation, where education, art and philosophy were honoured.  Samuel Hanagid (993-1056) and  Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. approx 1050) were Talmudic scholars but also fluent in Arabic, for this was a time when Granada was a haven of tolerance in a Europe plagued with prejudice. Benjamin sets their poems with one by Federico García Lorca, the radical modernist  who was assassinated by fascist forces in Granada in 1936.  Songs silenced across the centuries: chances are that the "Dream" Benjamin is referring to is no reverie.

Significantly Benjamin blends and combines the poems into a seamless flow.Strange rustling bell sounds and a cry that sounds like the call of a mullah; "Naked" sings Iestyn Davies, the word broken into fragments but reiterated. An epigrammatic opening, opening out, like a window onto another vista. "The multiple troubles of man" The oboe calls out plaintively, its firm, clear sound probing outward as if searching across time itself.  In the central section, the countertenor's lines are haloed by a chorus of female voices, from the BBC Singers, intoning Lorca. the words don't really matter. In Andalusian art, images aren't representational but  myriad intricate patterns and colours. epitomized by the Palace of Alhambra.

Instead, Benjamin writes patterns of sound which serve the purpose of rhymes.  Brief images float into the foreground in typical Benjamin style "A girl in a garden" elides smoothly, to suddenly switch to terse staccato "tending her shrubs".  a transition built on pizzicato - suggesting the passage of time, perhaps, or splashing water, a concept fundamental to Andalusian metaphysical thought.  The women's voices herald a change of direction - bright, sharp and urgent. Then a brief pause, the silence almost imperceptibly interrupted by quiet tapping.   The male voice returns, singing strangely abstract semi harmony  "Written", Davies sings but in what /the word is unintelligible but the sound is  magically clean and pure, shining all the brighter against a backdrop of a murmuring horn.  "The stars....." Davies sings, and the sound seems to break off. But perhaps that is the point ; the music, the "Dream of Song" does not die with its makers.

Benjamin's Dream  of the Song is a milestone. It represents a return to the meticulous craftsmanship of his work before Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin, though the operas are distinctively Benjaminesque.  Although it's written for small orchestra, it's  ambitious  compared with some of his earlier output, utterly assured and confident.

Also on the programme, the UK premiere of Dreamscape (2012) by Gunther Schuller , who mentored Knussen in his youth.  Nontheless, Schuller's late  work reminds me a lot more of Knussen than of Schuller. It's quirky, humorous in an episodic way and worlds away from Benjamin's Dream of the Song.  Very good performances, too,  of Debussy Nocturnes and Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements. 
photo of Geirge Benjamin courtesy Askonas Holt

Coming up in May

"Kabul. Baghdad. London. Three places to avoid this summer". Please take time to read this article by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian. He says things that need to be said, but no-one dares say but many feel. No-one's done a cost benefit analysis of the Olympics.Or factored in the wider costs to the community. As for the "cultural" Olympics, they're taking credit for things liker the Proms which would have happened anyway. So all the more reason to cherish what we have this month before the frenzy. Already the Embankment and surrounding roads (London's traffic nexus)  have been closed off simply so that team buses can drive unimpeded on the wrong side of the road!

At the Barbican tonight, Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach starts a short run. Review to follow. Over at the ENO. another revival of Madam Butterfly, but even more interesting, starting 25/5, the first London staging of Detlev Glanert's Caligula. This is important. Do not panic because its modern or German. What matters is whether something's good or bad, and that's subjective. The main thing is what you learn from the experience. Glanert isn't scary. He was one of Hans Werner Henze's few students, so his opera credentials are solidly mainstream. Although Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers was badly misunderstood at the Young Vic, the music didn't upset anyone. So give Glanert a chance, whatever the production might be. 

The Glyndebourne season starts on 20th May with Janáček, The Cunning Little Vixen. Since Vladimir Jurowski is conducting, expect rapturous beauty in the orchestra. Since the production is by Melly Still, the opera might be defanged. Sorry, Vixen Sharp Ears! Watch it in cinemas and online.

At the Royal Opera, La Boheme, Salome and Verdi Falstaff. Good casts, which make revivals worthwhile.  Every production is unique, because the people doing it change, and balances shift. If an opera is any good, there'll always be something to pick up. A test of sensitivity and learning.

These days I don't do nearly as much chamber music and song as I used to, but several red letter days at the Wigmore Hall (where there's nearly always something interesting). Véronique Gens this week, unmissably good ! Read about her recent Massenet programme here. This time, she's singing Fauré, Hahn, Chausson etc. Should be divine. Fêtes Galantes with Graham Johnson, Sophie Daneman and Ian Bostridge, who's due more respect because he isn't bland or generic. The Jerusalem Quartet, Mitsuko Uchida and Kozena, Bavouzet,  Janine Jensen, and much else. But the ones I'm interested are a bit more esoteric, like The Cardinal's Musik feature on William Byrd The Hidden Catholic (17th),  Florilegium's focus on music at the court of Frederick the Great (24/5) and the Wigmore Hall debut of the Phoenix Piano Trio on the 13th. The name may be new, but they're good. The players are  highly experienced members of other ensembles, dedicated to the more esoteric repertoire for piano trio. In this case, Beethoven, Dunhill and John Ireland.

Next week, at the Barbican Peter Eötvös conducts Szymanowski's Third Symphony : second of three different performances this year. Read about Jurowski's version here and about last week's concert with Christian Tetzlaff here. Gergiev, Jansons, Haitink too, but the wild card may be Ned Rorem's  Our Town (GSMD) from 29th to 6th June. GMSD productions are always lively and Rorem isn't common fare.

On the South Bank, which is increasingly becoming a place for anything but music, there's a major celebration of George Benjamin, "meticulous" and "craftsmanlike" as the info says, but not boring. Later in the month, the Chelsea Opera Group returns with Donizetti's Maria Padilla, and the Venice Baroque Orchestra brings "The Olympoics in Opera". So we can't escape, even though the music is legit baroque and the musicians are period specialists.

George Benjamin, 50, London Sinfonietta

George Benjamin turned fifty last week. He's been composing since he was 7, seated at his first piano, improvising the music he heard in his imagination. The Queen Elizabeth Hall was packed with composers, conductors, and musicians for the London Sinfonietta George Benjamin at Fifty tribute, but in many ways, the measure of his stature was seeing him completely alone, playing his Piano Figures (2004). Benjamin's now one of the world's greats, but this connected him to the instrospective boy he was long ago, embarking on a voyage of discovery.

Piano Figures is a series of ten miniatures each built around a mood growing from a simple motivic cell. As in many things in life, "simple" doesn't mean "easy". These pieces don't demand extreme virtuosic technique, but they do challenge the mind. Each vignette builds on a mood or image ("Spell", "In the mirror", "Whirling") but moves on swiftly without exhausting the possibilities. While this isn't a showcase, it's valuable because it turns the player back onto himself, to think and dream, just as Benjamin started out all those years ago.

That sense of rapt listening comes through in Viola, viola (1999). This time, the contemplative dialogue is between Paul Silverthorne and Eniko Magyar. This is music about listening, as well as about making sound: intelligent listening is an underrated skill. Themes bounce between each player, the balance constantly shifting. Long, exploratory lines, countered by affirmative semi-staccato, a pulse connecting, then gracefully receding. Matthias Sperling and Rachel Krische have created a ballet Duet, duet, around Viola, viola. It seemed very sensitive to the flow of the music. At one point the dancers freeze mid air, arms and bodies stretched without touching. They hold the position for a brief moment, then the pulse changes and they move onwards. This is such thoughtful, contemplative music that it needs concentration, so I ended up listening to Silverthorne and Magyar. Fortunately, the dancing was filmed by BBC Radio 3 (which does podcasts), so there will be opportunities to listen and watch again.

Benjamin's At First Light, was written when he was only 22, after the success of Ringed by the Flat Horizon. It was inspired by J M W Turner's Norham Castle at Sunrise, pictured here. Cue for wavering colours and impressionistic effects showing Benjamin's debt to Messiaen, and to Messiaen's hero Debussy. As Benjamin says, the idea was to create music that shows how objects can be formed in "punctuated, clearly defined phrase", but then "melted into a flowing, nebulous continuum of sound".

It's imaginative, more original than the slightly earlier A Mind of Winter, another landscape in sound depicting a winter scene in Wallace Stevens's The Snow Man. Claire Booth sang the vocal part well, but even she couldn't make this piece feel that, as music for voice, it isn't little more than relatively straightforward orchestral song, albeit in a modern style. Still, it's worth hearing to show how far Benjamin has changed and learned from the past. His opera Into the Little Hill is a masterpiece where he's at last achieved his potential as composer for voice. I was one of the lucky ones who heard it in full at the Linbury Studio (please see HERE) Get the CD and get tickets at Aldeburgh and the Almeida this summer.

The London Sinfonietta showed their true colurs in Palimpsests (1999-2002). Such vibrant, animated playing! Such energy and sense of purpose, even though the directions are often wayward, reflecting the initial concept of "palimpsests", medieval documents where different layers of writing are superimposed, often at contrary angles. Like Viola, viola, there are double elements, but here they co-exist rather than communicate. One element is defined by lively polyphony, four flutes and four clarinets acting as "voices". The second element is unusual too, eight double basses and eight violins/violas - no cellos. Three harps, plucked like giant celli. Thundering brass, led by high trumpet, a cataclysmic rolling rumble.

The trajectory and sense of form in Palimpsests reminds me of Boulez, who premiered this work and to whom it is dedicated. Because there's so much nonsense about modern music, the energy and almost organic vivacity of Boulez's music is often overlooked. As Benjamin said in his pre-performance talk with Julian Anderson, Boulez's music is underrated. The talk was good, overthrowing some miscomprehensions, like the idea that spectralism derives from Sibelius (Alex Ross). Messiaen was much too nice a guy to roll in his grave. More likely, he's chuckling, up there in Heaven.

Listen to this programme on 13th Feb on the BBC Radio 3 website (see "Hear and Now") , online and on demand for a week. Sound samples HERE on the London Sinfonietta website.

Aldeburgh Festival 2009- big on the European circuit

The Aldeburgh Festival is very much a fixture on the European music circuit. Far more than any other British composer, Britten saw himself as European at heart, so the Aldeburgh Festival has always had an international, progressive outlook, with strong connections abroad. Londoners don't know what treasures they have "in their own backyard".

Britten's ideals come to fruit in this year's Festival, titled "Glitter of Waves". It's Pierre-Laurent Aimard's first full year as artistic director, and he brings sharp new focus. Even the buildings have been extended to provide new theatres and workshops, at last fulfilling Britten's vision for Snape.

Harrison Birtwistle's two new chamber opera set the tone. Dowland's Semper Dowland, semper dolens, is "theatre of melancholy, in which Birtwistle adapts Dowland's Seven Teares figured in Seven Pavanes and interweaves them with Dowland's songs. Early English music reinvigorated with modern British music.

The big premiere is The Corridor, a scena for soprano, tenor and six instruments. As Orpheus and Eurydice escape the Underworld, he looks back on her despite being warned not to do so, and he loses her forever. "I see the Corridor as a single moment from the Orpheus story magnified, like a photographic blow-up", says Birtwistle. Given his long standing fascination with primeval myth this should be interesting. Libretto is by David Harsent, who wrote The Minotaur and other important Birtwistle milestones, so expect limpid, lucid poetry in direct modern speech - extremely moving on its own terms. Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Atherton sing the lead roles. The London Sinfonietta, Britain's best modern music ensemble, will perform. VERY high profile indeed. Even if it's repeated in London, seeing it first at Aldeburgh is part of the experience, for it was here 41 years ago that Britten and Birtwistle met. Britten apparently wasn't impressed. But Birtwistle's come a long way since Punch and Judy. Perhaps Britten would now be pleased, for Birtwistle has developed and is now an Elder Statesman himself, undisputedly this country's foremost opera composer.

Next morning there's another Sinfonietta concert featuring bits of The Io Passion, and the 3 Settings of Celan - Claire Booth whom we hear everywhere and for good reason! Then Harrison's Clocks where Hideki Nagano plays the brilliant Birtwistle piece as part of an installation around the new buildings at Snape - very unusual. That same evening, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with ensembles, will produce a "free thinking musical fantasy". Moto perpetuo movements from Beethoven and Bartok are interlaced with serene moments from Brahms and Messiaen. The finale is Ligeti. Aimard excels in imaginative juxtapositions like this - see the links on right for what he did last year at Aldeburgh with Bach and Kurtag. That's just the first weekend, 12th and 13th June.

The following week starts with a Britten song symposium, more performances of the Birtwistle operas, and some very interesting recitals including Christiane Oelze, (highly recommended!), Zimmermann, and Exaudi. Vladimir Jurowski conducts a chamber orchestra on Wednesday 15th - Gabrieli, Stravinsky and Birtwistle. The big concert on Friday night, 19th June, has George Benjamin conduct the BBCSO, in two premieres, Julian Anderson's Fantasias and Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra - with Aimard as soloist. Of course this will be broadcast, but the atmosphere at Snape is part of the fun, you want to "be" there.

Elliott Carter is the focus of the second week. In fact, he's planning to be there in person, scheduled to talk with Aimard, with whom he goes back decades. Carter's presence alone should make attendance compulsory, for he is an icon. He's closely connected to so many involved with this Festival, including Oliver Knussen who will be conducting the keynote Saturday night concert on Saturday 20th. This features yet another Carter premiere, On Conversing with Paradise, a song cycle to poems by Ezra Pound, for baritone and orchestra. This is rumoured to be powerful stuff. In recent years, Carter's style has distilled into intense zen-like depths, perhaps well suited to Pound's verse, which Carter has long loved.

This second week is the week to come for more Elliot Carter, Birtwistle and Thomas Adès chamber music. Ian Bostridge, Louis Lortie, Mark Padmore and Nicholas Daniel will appear in recital, too. The blockbuster concerts, though, will be the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, one of the hottest bands in Europe. This was founded by Claudio Abbado. Daniel Harding's been seminally involved since 1998. He's now principal conductor, but their first concert on 25th (Hadyn, Ligeti, Birtwistle) will be conducted by Susanna Mälkki, the charismatic conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain. Aimard plays Birtwistle's Slow Frieze. Aimard conducts the second concert on 27th, another eclectic mix, Haydn, Stockhausen and Beethoven. Since the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is exceptionally good, and rarely heard in the UK, these are concerts that shouldn't be missed.

Then, on Sunday 28th, Masaaki Suzuki returns to conduct Bach's St Matthew's Passion. Suzuki's Bach is legendary. He's working with the Britten-Pears Orchestra. Its members are young, but enthusiastic. Britten and Pears would be thrilled.

Seats sell fast and accommodation gets hard to book, so check Aldeburgh Music sooner not later.

George Benjamin Into the Little Hill

The big news about the long-awaited London premiere of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill was that it wasn't. A power cut minutes into the performance and that was it. Read about it on boulezian and intermezzo's blogs (follow link at right). Intermezzo has pix!

Since many people don't live within taxi distance, the "solution"to the power cut was pretty unfair. Lots of people are out of pocket and not just for tickets. Next time let's hope they do the right thing and offer refunds. There must be insurance for these things.

Luckily, I had cancelled my tickets for the first night and caught the whole show on the second night. For a change I hit the jackpot. This was a wonderful performance with Benjamin himself conducting the London Sinfonietta. Claire Booth and Susan Bickley, often raved here on this blog, sang the vocal parts. This is a new production by The Opera Group. Follow the link below to read more about them and the background to the opera. Their site has photos, video and audio clips - recommended!

Into the Little Hill reminds me of many things - the cartoon/novel Maus, even Michael Jackson's truly creepy song "Ben", where the disturbed kid makes friends with a rat. The story is desolate. A man appears in a little girl's bedroom. He has no face...no nose...no eyes. Yet the father does a deal with the sinister stranger and swears on the little girl's life. Seriously sick. The whole opera pivots on ideas of dissimulation, concealment, crawling into dark recesses, nothing is safe from being gnawed away.

This production seems, from pictures, to be more atmospheric than the French one. A circle of black gauze screens orchestra from singers. That's very well thought through, for even the music here is cloaked in disguise. You hear something eerie, or harps or bells. Sure enough, look behind the screens afterwards and there's a cimbalom right in the heart of the orchestra. You hear something tense, tinny and shrill : it's a banjo, and conventional strings being played like banjos, strings plucked high up the shaft, not bowed. Much emphasis is on low toned instruments like bass flute and bass clarinet, whose sensuous, seductive themes weave through the piece like a narcotic night blooming flower. At one point it sure feels like there's a sound so high pitched that the human ear can't quite hear it : but rats can hear at higher frequencies than we can....

Benjamin's writing for voice is a revelation. Unlike Thomas Adès, he doesn't force voices into painful contortion. While the lines are extremely challenging, they flow naturally, almost as speech even when they range up and down octaves. Part of this may be the texts themselves, written thoughtfully, like haiku, allowing the listener's thoughts to form. "The hum of a refrigerator in summer" sings the mezzo, and you know what she means and why it's relevant. Bickley and Booth don't sing "roles" and often their lines are reported speech, echoes perhaps of the ancient tradition of story telling. But there's no mistaking the modernity of this truly disturbing, ambiguous piece. It has a force of its own, which I suspect, even Benjamin and his librettist, Martin Crimp, have channelled as opposed to having consciously written.

What a brilliant idea, too, to pair Into the Little Hill with Harrison Birtwistle's At the Greenwood Side, from 1969. The whole Punch and Judy ethos gives me the creeps, whatever its artistic validity, because it is sick and unhealthy. Perhaps that's the point Birtwistle is making. The mummers and their play are frauds, utterly sordid. You can almost smell their stench in this production. But there's a thin line between ironic comment and the celebration of sickness. At least At the Greenwood Side is concise and gets to the point without too much fuss. And Booth's bag lady murderess is so clearly nuts, she's sad, not vicious, unlike the male characters. Nice touch, too, that the London Sinfonietta are dressed in white tie, which for them is "costume". This distances them from the drunken tramps the actors portray. Pity though that the piece is more speech than music. But then is Birtwistle implying that the barbarians have breached the gate ? This piece feels like graffiti in the meanest sense, smeared on art. Good performance and production though. Perhaps that's why it's so effective (and upsetting).

Here's The Opera Group's link, with photos, video clips and audio samples:

http://www.theoperagroup.co.uk/productions/more/into_the_little_hill_down_by_the_greenwood_side/

George Benjamin on Messiaen

"Fais le chien" said Mme Loriod, and George Benjamin would do dog imitations, making Olivier Messiaen burst into smiles. That's the sort of thing that happens in truly close families, complete naturalness and no "front". That is why I love Messiaen. More than just the music, Messiaen the man is inspirational. He was one of those rare genuinely good souls who make a difference to others simply by being themselves.

"Faith is simple", Messiaen used to say. Yet simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve. It just "is". A million times deeper than mindlessness. Whatever faith you may follow - and it doesn't matter - this inner stillness, purity of spirit - is a truly rare thing. That's why Messiaen chose St Francis of Assisi for his only "mortal" subject. St Francis abjured worldy values. "Listen to the birds" he said. Utterly simple and yet profound. Some folks go violently ballistic at the very thought of "listening" to things they don't already know. Please read what George Benjamin has to say :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/05/olivier-messiaen-centenary

Gérard Grisey Les espaces acoustiques

Gérard Grisey’s Les espaces acoustiques is a ground breaking work which defies assumptions about what music “ought” to be. Not for nothing did the composer describe it as “a great laboratory”, exploring the way we listen.

Written from 1974 to 1985, it’s actually six pieces which can be enjoyed separately. This was the first UK performance of the whole cycle. It starts with a single violist, expanding to ensembles for 7, 18, 33 and 84 musicians. Grisey uses chords that endlessly morph and oscillate, displaying the full spectrum of sound. Hence the term “spectralism” which Grisey later abandoned. This is very organic music, in harmony with the biorhythms of the human body, like breathing, steadily exhaling and inhaling. This isn’t music to “audit” passively as it’s complex, but it’s also strangely therapeutic. Afterwards, you feel refreshed, like you’ve had a workout. If you’ve been listening well, you probably have, since the more you put into this, the more you get back.

Yet Les espaces acoustiques grows outwards from extreme simplicity. A basic melodic cell repeats like in spiral, back and forth, each time with tiny gradations of pitch. It’s a tour de force. Paul Silverthorne demonstrated why he’s the foremost violist in Britain, and a long term stalwart of the London Sinfonietta : fifteen minutes of seamless bowing, energetic yet subtly refined. Grisey himself said such progressions were specially difficult on viola, so Silverthorne’s virtuosity deserves much praise. Even when the viola plays alone, though, there’s a “réponse fantomatique” with the other instruments. The viola is the heartbeat, they are the echo, unheard at first. In the second section, Périodes, Grisey adds to the breathing motif an extra level of “rest” as natural rhythmic as walking. It’s never mechanical but blurred, allowing variations of tempo, stillness and pitch. Most dramatic perhaps is the theme on double bass, played by Enno Senft, but there are many other intriguing variations. This is music that proliferates, building elaborations upon itself, like cell divisions, like fractals in mathematics.

Grisey was a student of Olivier Messiaen, and dedicated the 4th section, Modulations, to him. Since George Benjamin was also Messiaen’s student, this performance took on overtones reminiscent of Messiaen, particularly Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. The double bass theme reflects the “walls of solidity” and the extensive brass the “final trumpet” fanfares. Benjamin connects Les espaces acoustiques to the ideas of time, space and eternity in Messiaen, like borrowed vistas in landscape. Just as Grisey’s music expands from simple cells, it thus grows “beyond” itself, into a vast new conceptual universe. Benjamin was extremely perceptive, for this “value-added” approach enhances Grisey’s concept of infinite possibility. You can enjoy this music in a vacuum, but it’s so much more fulfilling in a wider context. In some circles, it’s fashionable to call Messiaen “history” but anyone with any knowledge of his influence on composers as diverse as Stockhausen, Boulez, Xenakis, Grisey, Murail, Anderson and Benjamin himself, will know that’s nonsense.

Messiaen also influenced conducting style, since music of such subtle colour needs performance of great clarity. Benjamin is a lucid conductor, and gets brilliant results. The London Sinfonietta has long championed Grisey’s music. Balances were finely judged, even details like the varied mutings of brass deftly executed. When the viola resurfaced between the 5^th and 6^th sections, it shone clearly, proving its central role in the whole structure of the cycle. In the Epilogue, the four horns stood proud above the massed orchestra.

Please explore this blog for lots of other pieces on Grisey, Murail, Messiaen, Scelsi, Vivier, Sciarrino, Dufourt, Stockhausen, Xenakis and others ! This is one of the biggest blogs for new music, welcome back anytime.

Please see the whole with extra pix
http://www.musicomh.com/classical/grisey_1008.htm

Prom 27 George Benjamin

In the photo, George Benjamin is sitting with Olivier Messiaen. To Benjamin's right, is, I think Myung Whun Chung ! Benjamin was just 16. This Prom showcased Benjamin's Ringed by the Flat Horizon written just four years later. It was a smash hit when it was premiered at the Proms in 1980 - not many students achieve that kind of fame ! It's vivid, swooping chords, that disintegrate into sparkling chromatic showers, étincelante as they say in French. The Messiaen influence is obvious,and good. Benjamin is writing with images of lightning, filling space. So it was apposite hearing it after L'Ascension. This is very early Messiaen, indeed, still not quite fully formed. The orchestration is unusual, winds and brass alone then arching towards a muted ensemble of strings. It's quite experimental in its own way, but hasn't quite the magnificence of the version for solo organ we heard in Prom 6 played by Olivier Latry. I wonder how many noticed they were the same piece (almost) ?

After listening to Ringed by the flat Horizon, I listened again to Toru Takemitsu's Corona from 1973. Listen to Roger Woodward's recording and then to the Prom repeat broadcast (or to the recording conducted by Mark Elder) and compare. Both Takemitsu and Benjamin are writing pieces that evoke movement across planes/plains, both have images like rolling thunder, flashes of sudden illumination against darkness, but of course are totally independent pieces.

This Prom gave us early Messiaen and early Benjamin, hinting at what was to come. So it followed up with Early Ravel and later, the Pavane pour une Infante défunte first written in 1899 then orchestrated in 1910. Benjamin segued it straight into Bolero without a break to emphasize the progression. Bolero is so often heard played like a raucuous party piece : Benjamin instead understands what Ravel was really up to, working with blocks of sound - movement again, like a procession. Overfamiliarity makes us forget just how unusual Bolero is in musical terms. It takes a composer like Benjamin to help us "hear" it afresh.