Faber Music is delighted that four of its composers have been shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards.
 
Created by BASCA in 2003, the Awards seek to promote the art of composition, to recognise the creative talent of composers who live and work in the UK and to bring contemporary classical and jazz music to a wider audience.  The winners will be unveiled at Goldsmiths' Hall on Tuesday 3 December, in a ceremony broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Instrumental Solo or Duocategory
Cirrus Light by Jonathan Harvey
 
This 2012 work was one of Harvey’s very last, written when he was terminally ill. “The starting point for Cirrus Light,” writes Harvey, “was the long hours sitting in my wheelchair gazing at the summer sky. The cirrus clouds, which are so high, well-formed and slow changing, were often illuminated by a beautiful light. The clarinet searches the sky for them.”
 
The piece was commissioned by InternationalenMusikwettbewerbs de ARD and has since been performed in London and New York.
 
 
Matthews Fourth Quartet was premiered in 2012 by the Elias Quartet. The seven-movement work references styles as disparate as the habanera and spectral music and traces an arc form, with quick outer movements surrounding a still centre. The piece is dedicated to Matthews’s brother David.
 
‘…a wonderful range of contrasting themes ideas/styles which were contained in an incredibly economic compositional form/ structure.’
Seen and Heard International (Geoff Diggines), 19 November 2012
 
Stage Works category
Written on Skin by George Benjamin
 
George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin has taken the world by storm. In the 15 months since it was premiered it has been performed over 40 times – in France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, USA, Austria and Germany – and everywhere it’s gone it’s received unanimous acclaim.
 
'A great moment of contemporary opera.A great moment of opera itself.’
Le Figaro (Christian Merlin), 10 July 2012
 
‘Written on Skin… as immaculate as anything composed since the heyday of Ravel… feels like the work of a genius unleashed.’
The New Yorker (Alex Ross), 25 March 2013
 
Liturgical category
I saw the Lord by Matthew Martin
 
The Festival Anthem I saw the Lord (2012) is a setting of words from Isaiah Chapter 6, some of which are perhaps better known in the context of the great Victorian anthem by John Stainer. This Trinitarian/Dedication text (starting with the words “in the year that King Uzziah died”) is both powerful and full of dramatic imagery - flying seraphim, live coals, cries of the Tersanctus - as well as containing darker and more reflective passages.
 
See the full score here