September 2024 sees two new releases of music by George Benjamin: the world premiere recording of his fourth stage work with Martin Crimp Picture a day like this (Nimbus) and selection of his pieces recorded in 2023 with Ensemble Modern, conducted by the composer – listen here.
The opera, which lasts just over an hour, is cast in seven scenes. It tells the story of a Woman who has lost her child: if, before nightfall, she meets one truly happy person and cuts a button from their sleeve, her child will live again. In this search she meets a pair of lovers, a Composer and their Assistant, an Artisan, Collector, and the mysterious Zabelle. Listen to Picture a day like this here.
The recording is drawn from the world premiere run of the opera at the 2023 Aix-en-Provence Festival, with Benjami conducting 22 members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The cast comprises Marianne Crebassa (Woman), Anna Prohaska (Zabelle), Beate Mordal (Lover 1/Composer), Cameron Shahbazi (Lover 2/Composer’s Assistant) and John Brancy (Artisan/Collector).
Following its debut at Aix, the world premiere production from Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma has appeared at the Linbury Theatre of the Royal Ballet and Opera in London, and, in September 2024, at the Opéra de Strasbourg. In October will appear at the Opéra Comique, conducted by the composer, and in spring 2025 at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, conducted by Corinna Niemayer. In July 2025 Niemayer conducts the Austrian premiere of the work at the Tiroler Festspiele.
Ensemble Modern’s own label have released the fruits of their tour with Benjamin from autumn 2023, marking thirty years of collaboration between composer and ensemble. This latest release opens with Palimpsests. The title of the 21-minute work, cast in two parts, describes the superimposition of layers of material, culminating in a striated structure of beguiling, fiendish complexity, as the simple song that opens the work becomes almost immediately imperceptible. “My aim”, Benjamin notes, “was to achieve something akin to dusk or dawn in the desert, or at high altitude in winter, when the sun is very low and the light almost horizontal, and crystal clear.”
Anna Prohaska joins the ensemble for A Mind of Winter, Benjamin’s 10-minute setting of Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man. Its snow-covered, frozen terrain is evoked through an immobile A minor chord, suspended cymbals, and string glissandi; the titular snowman is evoked by a muted piccolo trumpet around whom the soprano weaves slow, angular phrases.
It also features At First Light, a 20-minute piece for a chamber orchestra of 14 players, inspired by Turner’s painting Norham Castle, Sunrise; Benjamin previously recorded the work with the group in 2004. The disc concludes with the first recording of Canon & Fugue, his 2007 transcriptions of Bach’s Art of Fugue for an ensemble of nine players. Benjamin’s orchestration of Canon in Hypodiapason and Contrapunctus VII – flute, two horns and six strings – is the same as Boulez’s Mémoriale.