Hear and Now - Matthias Pintscher Conducts…. by Ligeti, Neuwirth, Henze, Aπό (2017/2017), αγωγός Matthias Pintscher, City Halls, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Matthias Pintscher, the BBC SSO’s Artist-In-Association, curates another evening of works, all originally commissioned for one anniversary or another. Ligeti’s frantic, scuttling culmination of his explorations into musical polyphony was written for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s 60th birthday. Hans Werner Henze’s Seventh Symphony commemorated the Berlin Philharmonic’s centenary and references Beethovenian symphonic form, German dances and the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin. Olga Neuwirth’s recent work, meanwhile, began as a tribute Mahler to mark the centenary of his death but is inspired by memories of her grandfather’s life by the Danube and is, in her own words, “an impossible attempt to stop time by composing”.