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Sir Michael Tippett's Opera, New Year, Recorded Live by The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers, and Martyn Brabbins

Apr. 12, 2024

On April 13, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and an internationally-renowned team of solo singers will assemble at City Halls in Glasgow to record a live, public performance of Sir Michael Tippett's opera, New Year. This highly-anticipated event will result in the first commercial recording of New Year, and "marks 35 years of NMC Recordings and its support of great titans of British contemporary music." Writer and music critic Paul Griffeths, notes:

"The wildest and most open of [Tippett's] operas, New Year is an extraordinarily youthful conception for a composer in his mid-eighties, a work that spins his lyrical ecstasy and rhythmic vitality into a new world on the point of disintegration. Unlike its four predecessors, all of which had been written for the Royal Opera House, this one was composed for Houston Grand Opera, a relocation that encouraged Tippett to veer from opera to musical, even rock musical, giving space to pop song, spoken dialogue, joke and, above all, dance—the communal movement of bodies that would, as in The Midsummer Marriage but now within a much looser framework, with music say what words could not. Jo Ann and Donny—young woman and young man, white and black, both orphans—cannot join the dance, isolated as they are inside their personal fears and fantasies. And the dance itself is imperilled by social unease in this city that is ‘Somewhere and Today’. To it come visitors from ‘Nowhere and Tomorrow’: the captain (Regan), pilot (Pelegrin) and computer wizard (Merlin) of a space vessel—though these science-fiction characters turn out to be ritual agents (and to have human problems of their own). Donny undergoes a magical transformation; Jo Ann, through love, gains the courage to leave the room in which she has been hiding."

The concert is preceded by a discussion at 6:45 PM in the Recital Room with Oliver Soden, Author of Michael Tippett: The Biography and Sally Groves, a friend and colleague of Michael Tippett, in her former role as Creative Director of Schott Music. This panel is presented by Kate Molleson. The event is free but ticketed. Tickets may be reserved here.

Listen to "Go Down, Moses" from Tippett's A Child of our Time (1939-1941):

"Go Down, Moses" from A Child of our Time/Sir Michael Tippett/Sir John Tomlinson, bass/Rundfunkchor Berlin/Simon Halsey, chorus master/Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle, conductor

To learn more about Sir Michael Tippett, visit schott-music.com.

Sir Michael Tippett
New Year (1986-1988)
an opera in three acts
3(1.,2.,3.pic).2.eh.1.bcl.3sax.1.cbn-4.2.3.1-perc(xyl, vib, glsp, tub bells, jazz kit [trap set: 2wdbl, 5tom-t, s.d, sus cym, h.h, b.d], ten d, slit dr, 2steel dr [high/low], 2brake d, clav, guiro, whip, cow bells, sm tam-t, clashed cyms, hand-held cyms played with mallet/steel bar, lg tri)-hp.egtr.bgtr-str (4.4.4.4.2min)-electronic tape-sampler kybd
100'

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