Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

James MacMillian Weekend at the Barbican

In the world of classical music, you usually have to be dead to get the kind of attention that James MacMillan (b. 1959) is getting this weekend. height=

The Scottish composer is the focus of this year�s annual Composers Weekend at the BBC which begins today and ends Sunday night with a series of concert, talks, films and events including a late-night ceilidh. Entitled Darkness Into Light: the music of James MacMillan, the festival will be held at the Barbican. MacMillan is Composer/Conductor with the BBC Philharmonic until September 2006.

The weekend features works that catapulted MacMillan into the limelight such as Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, which was composed for Evelyn Glennie and has received over 350 performances to date from many of the world�s leading orchestras and conductors, and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, which catapulted him to fame after it was performed at the BBC Proms in 1990. There will also be London premieres of recent works and music by composers who taught and inspired MacMillan including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, John Casken and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Works by MacMillan also include Seven Last Words from the Cross for chorus and string orchestra, screened on BBC TV during Holy Week 1994, In�s de Castro, premiered by Scottish Opera and toured to Porto in 2001, a triptych of orchestral works commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra: The World's Ransoming, a Cello Concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich, and Symphony: 'Vigil' premiered under the baton of Rostropovich in 1997, and Quickening for The Hilliard Ensemble, chorus and orchestra, co-commissioned by the BBC Proms and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Recent MacMillan works include Symphony No.3: 'Silence' premiered in Tokyo in April 2003, Piano Concerto No.2 first performed with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon at New York City Ballet, and A Scotch Bestiary commissioned to inaugurate the new organ at Disney Hall with soloist Wayne Marshall and the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Future works have been commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra and Welsh National Opera.

The BBC web site says MacMillan�s music ��represents a deep-felt reaction to the human condition, is fired by a fusion of his Scottish heritage, his Roman Catholic faith and the influences on them by Celtic music and the traditions of the Far East, East Europe and Scandinavia.�

I�ll have to take their word for it. Having seen and heard his work performed live and listened to many recordings of his work I must confess I�ve never sensed any of those influences. What I hear is deliberately provocative, in-your-face anger that leaves me feeling like I�ve just spent an hour or so locked in an overcrowded elevator with some extremely bad dudes who were playing rap loudly on a boom box.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1/14/2005