A triptych focusing on conservation and nature

Three pieces focused on nature and conservation: Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus and Gregor Mayrhofer’s Recycling Concerto

Beethoven’s passionate ode to the natural world features the songs of the nightingale, quail and cuckoo which he transcribed during long countryside walks, while the great 20th-century Finnish composer Rautavaara’s soaring 1972 work is subtitled “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra”, with the recorded sounds of curlews, shore larks and whooper swans embedded in this remarkable score. 

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 dramatic and thought-provoking work.

There is also a performance in London >>