This is the recording of the premiere of composer Geoffrey Gordon's bass clarinet concerto, Prometheus, featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra, from Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, with conductor Martyn Brabbins and soloist Laurent Ben Slimane, recorded 19 January 2019.

This work was co-commissioned by the Philharmonia, the Minnesota Orchestra and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra.

PROGRAM NOTE:

Prometheus is inspired by the short story by Franz Kafka, based on the Greek legend. That text is as follows:

There are four legends concerning Prometheus:

I. According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.

II. According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

III. According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, the gods forgotten, the eagles, he himself forgotten.

IV. According to the fourth, every one grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

There remained the inexplicable mass of rock.--The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.

Franz Kafka (1917) public domain

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This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's ICE - aut inveniam viam aut faciam, from Mythologies and Mad Songs, on the Orchid Classics label, recorded in Glasgow, featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Martyn Brabbins from 4 October 2022.

"....a massive meditation on Arctic exploration that places a very human sense of struggle in a powerfully evoked world of grinding ice sheets and thunderous menace."

-Richard Bratby

GRAMOPHONE

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"We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders.

We had reached the naked soul of man."

Ernest Shackleton, Explorer (1874-1922)

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This is the live performance of Geoffrey Gordon's Crucifixus for double choir and solo cello, from the Presteigne Festival, Wales, UK - featuring the Choir of Royal Holloway, conductor Rupert Gough and cellist Alice Neary, principal cello of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, within the confines of the 13th century Anglican Priory Church in Leominster, Herefordshire, England, 25 August 2024.

TEXT:

Crucifixus etiam pro nobis

sub Pontio Pilato,

passus et sepultus est.

Et resurrexit tertia die

secundum Scripturas.

Et ascendit in coelum:

sedet ad dexteram Patris.

Et iterum venturus est cum gloria,

judicare vivos et mortuos:

cujus regni non erit finis.

(English translation):

He was crucified also for us

under Pontius Pilate;

He suffered and was buried.

And the third day

According to the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven:

He sits at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again with glory,

to judge the living and the dead;

His kingdom will have no end.

www.geoffreygordoncomposer.com

This is the Asian premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's Fumée for Bb clarinet and chamber orchestra, with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, conductor Christoph Poppen and soloist Horácio Ferreira, from HK City Hall Concert Hall, Hong Kong, 29 June 2024.

PROGRAM NOTE:

Immersed in the magical cultural milieu of Belle Époque Paris at the end of the 19th century, the precocious talent of young composer Reynaldo Hahn (August 9, 1874 – January 28, 1947) emerged, and from an early age, Hahn astounded and delighted his audiences with settings of some of the most beautiful and enduring poems of contemporary writers, including Hugo, Verlaine, Mallarmé. It is said that Verlaine "wept to hear Hahn's songs" and Mallarmé wrote: "Le pleur qui chante au langage du poète, Reynaldo Hahn, tendrement le dégage comme en l'allée un jet d'eau." (“The cry that sings to the language of the poet, Reynaldo Hahn, tenderly releases it like a jet of water in the alley.”)

Inspired by and in recognition of Hahn’s legacy, composer Geoffrey Gordon re-imagines, through his own distinct and intensely expressive musical language, the beguiling atmosphere, adventurous harmonic progressions and profound beauty of Hahn’s exquisite and contemplative chanson, “Fumée” (“Smoke”) – first published by Paris Heugel (1896) - in the form of an alluring and intense new concerto for Bb clarinet and chamber orchestra. Echoing and amplifying Hahn’s setting of the text by Jean Moréas, the concerto idiomatically addresses the poet’s message of a life that goes from ashes to ashes, envying the freedom and transience of smoke which has no past, no responsibility, and is without the hardships of life....vanishing into the ether.

This is a the premiere performance of Exposure for solo violin, by composer Geoffrey Gordon, featuring soloist Elisabeth Kufferath for whom the work was commissioned by the Freundeskreises Hauskonzert Musik für heute e.V.,as part of Musik 21 Lower Saxony. The premiere performance took place at the Calder Saal at the Sprengel Art Museum, Hannover, Germany – 14 November 2021.

PROGRAM NOTE:

Inspired by the TRUE PICTURES art installation, comprised of contemporary North American Photography of the 21st century at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover Germany, Exposure for solo violin responds, sonically, to the powerful artistic visual language of this medium. The contrast of lyrical and explosive, of light and dark, of smooth and abrasive are expressed in sound via the wood and sinew of the solo violin, whose expressive capabilities are explored through both traditional and extended techniques. Exposure, as a term and a title, refers not only to the obvious photographic reference – the amount of light reaching a frame of photographic film or the surface of an electronic image sensor (as determined by shutter speed, lens aperture, and scene luminance), but also to the exposure of thoughts and ideas and concepts which comes of this process, and the way in which, through music, these images can be converted into sound.

This is the world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, At the round earths imagin'd corners, for baritone and piano, after the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, commissioned for and premiered as part of the Oxford International Song Festival, with baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Alisdair Hogarth - Holywell Music Room, Oxford, England... 7:45pm 27 October 2023.

This is the world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, At the round earths imagin'd corners, for baritone and piano, after the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, commissioned for and premiered as part of the Oxford International Song Festival, with baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Alisdair Hogarth - Holywell Music Room, Oxford, England... 7:45pm 27 October 2023.

This is the world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, At the round earths imagin'd corners, for baritone and piano, after the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, commissioned for and premiered as part of the Oxford International Song Festival, with baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Alisdair Hogarth - Holywell Music Room, Oxford, England... 7:45pm 27 October 2023.

This is the world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, At the round earths imagin'd corners, for baritone and piano, after the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, commissioned for and premiered as part of the Oxford International Song Festival, with baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Alisdair Hogarth - Holywell Music Room, Oxford, England... 7:45pm 27 October 2023.

This is the world premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's song cycle, At the round earths imagin'd corners, for baritone and piano, after the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, commissioned for and premiered as part of the Oxford International Song Festival, with baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Alisdair Hogarth - Holywell Music Room, Oxford, England... 7:45pm 27 October 2023.