On 4 May the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Richard Tognetti give the Australian premiere of Tom Coult’s Prelude (after Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe), a 5½ minute work for lower strings. It is a reworking of the Prelude from the E minor suite for Viol by the celebrated 17th-century composer and violist Jean de Sainte-Colombe, whose life was dramatized in Alain Corneau’s 1991 film Tous les matins du monde.
The Prelude was commissioned by Festival Musikdorf Ernen, supported by Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, where it premiered on 8 August 2022 as part of Coult’s residency at the Festival.
Coult has created several reworkings and elaborations of Baroque and Renaissance repertoire, many as part of his ongoing composer-in-association role with the BBC Philharmonic. In April 2023 the orchestra premiered After Lassus with soprano Anna Dennis - a 15½ -minute work that takes six duets from Lassus’ Novae aliquot (1577) and refashions them “like plasticine – reshaping, stretching and compressing them”. For Daniel Pioro he previously created a version of Vivaldi’s La Follia – performed recently by Pioro and Manchester Camerata, as well as by the LA Chamber Orchestra – Tartini’s Sonata No.2 in D minor, and Biber’s The Agony in the Garden from his Mystery Sonatas.
Coult’s most recent reworkings for violin and choir of music by Hildegard von Bingen and Byzantine composer Kassia will feature at this summer’s Aldeburgh Festival, where they will be performed by Daniel Pioro and the Marian Consort. On 28 March Pioro and the group premiered the first of the set - O Ecclesia, after Hildegard - at Wigmore Hall.