A triptych focusing on conservation and nature

A triptych focusing on conservation and nature: Gregor Mayrhofer’s Recycling Concerto, Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony and Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus.

Beethoven’s symphony features birdsong melodies he transcribed, while the great 20th-century Finnish composer Rautavaara’s work is a “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra”, with the recorded sounds of curlews, shore larks, whooper swans and others the soloists running throughout. Mayrhofer’s Recycling Concerto was written for the virtuosic percussionist Vivi Vassileva. Together they have collected and tuned an enormous battery of percussion from repurposed rubbish, which Vassileva makes full use of over the course of this powerful and thought-provoking work.