Postcards from Martin Suckling #2

Our real-life postcard from Martin

We’ve commissioned Martin Suckling to write us musical postcards throughout our 2012-13 season, with the first, In Memoriam EMS, arriving in time for our Illuminations concerts in Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Inverness on 22 – 25 October and at our 1st concert of the 2012-13 series at Wigmore Hall on 30 October 2012.

Postcard

We were thrilled to receive our first ‘real’ postcard this morning from Martin – here’s what he had to say about the performance of his first musical postcard for us:

Dear Scottish Ensemble,

Thanks for the amazing performances of In Memoriam EMS over the past 10 days! Watching you play is such a thrill – it’s given me lots of ideas…

I’m writing your next postcard-piece at the moment. My starting-point is the memory of your striking entry into the Caird Hall in Dundee – the pied-piper Pachelbel ground swelling the ranks of the Scottish Ensemble with players from the local youth and amateur orchestras. We’ll see where it leads me – it’ll all end in microtones again, no doubt!

Very best wishes,

Martin

In memoriam EMS

If you’re in the UK, you can listen to Martin’s piece broadcast live from Wigmore Hall on the BBC iPlayer until Tuesday 6 November. In Memoriam EMS appears around 1 hour 5 minutes into the programme – though why would you want to miss out on SE’s performances of Mozart Divertmento in D major, some Purcell Fantasias and music from opera and Bach’s Violin Concerto in E with our very own Jonathan Morton as soloist?

You can also listen to Martin chatting backstage after the very 1st rehearsal of In Memoriam EMS in this blog post, or catch his next musical postcard to us in our Variations concerts by candlelight in Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Aberdeen and Inverness from 3 – 8 December.

Postcards from Martin Suckling #1

Welcome to the first in an occasional series of postcards from composer Martin Suckling

image from Glaswegian.info

New Music

Martin is going to be writing us ‘musical postcards’ in response to the music we’ll be performing this season, so you’ll be hearing a lot from Martin during 2012-13. We asked him to send us a little postcard to let us know how he’s getting on…

Postcard from Martin Suckling #1

Dear Scottish Ensemble,

Hello!  I’ve not finished your ‘musical postcard’ yet so this written one will need to suffice for the moment.

I’m trying to make your first piece bright and shiny and energetic, with everyone playing a single line full of open strings and dance-like rhythms, but it seems that certain instruments keep on veering off on their own. I’m inclined to let them; there’s something fun about having a melody fracture into lots of different lines – eventually it stops sounding like a melody at all and becomes a sweeping, shimmering harmony.  Oh, there will be microtones, by the way.  But they’ll be of the delicious rather than the discordant variety, I promise.

The weather is lovely and I’ve bought a new bike to speed the composition along.  I’m sure it’s helping.

Wish you were here?  Of course, but I’m not sure I’ve got room for all twelve of you, particularly since I seem to be writing each of you individual parts.  How could I resist using all 48 strings?  Think of all the juicy chords in natural harmonics that might be possible!  But I’m getting ahead of myself: that’s for the next piece. . .

See you in October!

Martin

Performances

Martin’s first musical postcard will be performed during our Illuminations concerts in October and at our Wigmore Hall concert on 30 October 2012. Visit our website for full details