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August 31, 2007
Amazing concert
If you are in London on 19, 20 and 21 September make a date at the Purcell Room on the South Bank in the evening of any or all of these three nights
As part of the London Design Festival a stunning programme called WMD-- for Words, Music and Design-- includes three performances of 'Kottos' by Iannis Xenakis, played by Oliver Coates
At the first performance in 1978 the Financial Times correspondent wrote '...the cellist disappeared behind three music stands which held the enormous score of Xenakis' solo KOTTOS to give its first London performance. It begins with a hackle-raising roar and then bursts into pyrotechnical glissandi and hoarse urgent shouts; there is a long section of steadily permutated phrases in stamping rhythyms and a tiny coda of eerie, weightless whistling from the stratosphere. Xenakis has supplied the framework for a striking tour de force which counts on the cellist to find the thread of musical sense in it: Rohan de Saram did that with fierce conviction and astonishing technical address..'
And if you aren't in London, make plans
Posted by Tim Coates at August 31, 2007 8:58 AM