The Rebels Within
Works that challenge inherited forms through contrast, instability and expressive freedom.
Works shaped by tension between past and present, where echoes of older musical forms emerge through modern harmonic language, shifting textures and moments of instability. Across these four large-scale works, fragments of song, dance and ritual seem continually to surface and dissolve.
Rather than rejecting tradition, these composers reimagine it from within, allowing archaic resonances and contemporary expression to exist in uneasy dialogue.
Frank Martin: Quatre Pièces Brèves
A work shaped by contrast, restraint and shifting harmonic tension, where fragments of melody emerge through textures that feel at once intimate and unsettled. Moments of stillness and reflection are continually interrupted by rhythmic movement, rapid gestures and passages of quiet instability.
Across the four movements, Martin allows older modal resonances and serial techniques to coexist in uneasy balance, creating a sound world that moves between clarity, introspection and restless energy.
Benjamin Britten: Nocturnal After John Dowland, Op. 70
A work suspended between dream and unease, where fragments of Dowland’s song emerge gradually from shifting states of reflection, agitation and stillness. Britten allows familiar melodic traces to remain partially obscured, creating an atmosphere that feels at once intimate, restless and psychologically unsettled.
Across the work, moments of quiet introspection dissolve into sudden rhythmic tension and fragile lyricism, before the music finally arrives at the stillness of Dowland’s original song.
Nuccio D’Angelo: Due Canzoni Lidie
A work shaped by suspended resonance and modal colour, where shifting textures create an atmosphere that feels distant, ritualistic and quietly unstable. D’Angelo draws upon the Lydian mode to construct a sound world that moves between stillness and subtle rhythmic tension.
Throughout the work, repeating patterns and layered voices unfold with hypnotic precision, allowing moments of lyric reflection to emerge from within the guitar’s evolving sonorities.
Lennox Berkeley: Theme and Variations, Op. 77
A work shaped by contrast, clarity and continual transformation, where a single musical idea unfolds through shifting textures, gestures and emotional states. Moments of lyric restraint give way to passages of rhythmic vitality, harmonic tension and quiet introspection.
Berkeley allows the guitar’s expressive range to emerge gradually across the variations, creating a sound world that feels at once refined, unpredictable and deeply personal.