In July 2026 Kent Nagano tours George Benjamin’s Three Consorts for chamber orchestra with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, presenting the work at the Concertgebouw (7 July), the Kissinger Sommer Festival (10 July) and Dom St. Stephan in Passau (11 July).
Lasting 12 minutes, Three Consorts express Benjamin’s “intense attachment to [Purcell’s] music while, at the same time, exploring – and, indeed, exposing – the fabric of its intricate polyphony.” The opening movement, In Nomine 1, has a deliberately archaic tone, with its underpinning cantus firmus given to hocketing brass; a transcription of Fantazia on One Note emphasizes the enchanting variety of moods conjured in music built around a static and persistent middle C. Its central movement is hushed and magical – a pair of muted horns wreathed in a halo of strings.
Three Consorts is the second time Benjamin has reimagined Purcell’s music. In 1995 he arranged the middle movement Fantazia 7 for the Aldeburgh Festival for cello, clarinet, violin, and celesta; he remarks that it was a piece whose “mesmerising intersection of line and harmony… changed my path as a composer”. The final piece of the tripytch was also part of the 1995 ‘Purcell Garland’ at Aldeburgh – though then in a version by Oliver Knussen. Benjamin talks more about his music and Henry Purcell in this Radio France podcast.
The transcriptions were first performed by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the BBC Proms in August 2021, conducted by the composer, and subsequently appeared at the Berlin Philharmonie and Elbphilharmonie. It has also been taken up by Daniel Harding with the Bayerische Rundfunk Akademie and Roberto González-Monjas with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw. In May 2026 it made its Antipodean debut with Leo Hussain and the Auckland Philharmonia.
Nagano has been conducting Benjamin’s work for nearly four decades, beginning with Ringed by the Flat Horizon with the New York Philharmonic and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in 1987; notable subsequent performances include At First Light with Ensemble intercontemporain, Antara with the London Symphony Orchestra, At First Light with the Hallé, and Sometime Voices at Festival Présences. In 2013 he gave the Austrian premiere of Written on Skin at the Wiener Festwochen with Klangforum Wien and the German debut of Lessons in Love and Violence at the Hamburg Staatsoper in 2019.