‘Three Pieces that Disappear’ premiered by BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, are premiering Three Pieces that Disappear on the 1 April at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall – the second of my three major pieces as their Composer-in-Association.

Also in the concert are Berg’s Seven Early Songs (with soprano Francesca Chiejina) and Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony. You can hear the broadcast of the concert on BBC Radio 3 on Friday 14 April.

The piece is for orchestra and pre-recorded audio, in three movements. Here’s the programme note:

The three movements of this piece are linked by a vague, loosely connected set of ideas about music being remembered, forgotten, misremembered, imagined or deteriorating:

• A sense of music (including my own) disappearing, fading away, during the COVID-dominated year of 2020.
• Having a child during that period, and tuning into the musical worlds that signify childhood.
• Health conditions during 2022 resulting in blackouts and the sense of familiar words, sights and sounds becoming blurred or indistinct.
• A dictaphone ‘misremembering’ sounds in 2021 – the record button had been pressed at the wrong time.

All of this might have found its way, audibly or not, into this piece. Most of the music, at least in some distant way, takes something I have written previously – often something that is itself based on something older still – and transforms it, misremembers it, sometimes beyond recognition.