On Friday 14th June 2019, Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s work for piano and orchestra Responses: Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless receives its Netherlands premiere with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
The soloist is frequent Birtwistle collaborator, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who premiered the work with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Stefan Asbury in 2014, as part of the composer’s 80th birthday celebrations.
Further performances of Responses have been given by Aimard with the Boston Symphony conducted by Stefan Asbury, the Orquesta Sinfonica do Porto Casa da Música by Peter Eötvös, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra also by Jurowski.
The first performances of Responses were well-received by critics, with The Sunday Times praising Birtwistle’s “turbulent, scherzo-like, brilliantly multilayered score…the soloist-and-tutti relationship sent into a dazzling new dimension”.
An interview with Harrison Birtwistle on the premiere of Responses can be found here.
For more information about the concert, visit the Concertgebouw website.
