Once upon a time
Mesmerising. Radical. Random household objects.
Who’s on stage
Players from Royal Northern Sinfonia and the orchestra’s Principal Conductor Dinis Sousa.
What they’re playing
A night of surprise and delight including Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto plus pieces from musical innovators including the legendary John Cage, together with Pierre Boulez and Pauline Oliveros.
Need to know
Price: £20
Discounts: save if you’re under 17, aged 18 – 30, a group of 10 or more people. Check the details.
Running time: 2 hours, including a 20 minute interval.
Age: under 14s must be accompanied by an adult
What you'll hear
Programme to include:
John Cage Living Room Music (10′)
Pauline Oliveros Breaking Boundaries (5′)
Pierre Boulez Dérive (6′)
Gyorgy Ligeti Chamber Concerto (19′)
Who's playing it
Dinis Sousa conductor
Royal Northern Sinfonia
What's happening in the music?
John Cage was not a composer to do things by the book, and Living Room Music is typical of his defiance of musical ‘rules’. Imaginative, playful and irreverent, it dispenses with regular instruments, inviting musicians to instead use any household objects, with a middle movement consisting of Gertrude Stein’s poetry, either spoken or sung. Ligeti (often described as the greatest composer of the 20th century) wrote his chamber concerto for 13 virtuoso instrumentalists, and conjures up an incredible array of sounds from the ensemble – ghostly, fragile, piercing and unsettling.
The Sound of Silence
John Cage is perhaps best known for his piece 4’33” (four minutes 33 seconds). A piece devoid of any sound, where the performers simply have to stand in silence for the duration of the work. The musical content of the piece is meant to be the background noise heard in the performance space, giving life to the composers often repeated quote that “everything we do is music”. Have a ‘listen’ to a performance of the piece by none other than the Berliner Philharmoniker.
