This is the link to the PDF handout for my Wednesday lecture at the Iserlohn Guitar Festival 2021.

Wednesday – Received Interpretation

This is the link to the PDF handout for my Friday lecture at the Iserlohn Guitar Festival 2021.

Friday – The Guitar and the Politics of Nostalgia

David Russell’s recording of Cantigas de Santiago is now available on all platforms on the Azica label. In April David released a film of the piece through the Omni Foundation. The film was made in the 12th century church of Santa María la Blanca, Villalcázar de Sirga, Spain. Cantigas de Santiago is a modern reworking of medieval music associated with the Camino. This ancient pilgrimage route leads to the shrine of St. James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

Zoran Dukić has recorded Cinema Paradiso for the Guitar CoOp label, the album will be released in the Autumn. The piece was commissioned by Guitar CoOp for Zoran, who gave the first performance at the Koblenz International Guitar Festival on 3rd June 2017. The piece is based on films by Quentin Tarantino, Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier, Francois Truffaut, and Charlie Chaplin. Cinema Paradiso has been the subject of a DMA thesis on music and nihilism. Here is a link to Zoran’s film of the movement 451.

River Fragments was commissioned by SoloDuo (Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela) for their 2021 concert season. The premiere will take place on 11th September 2021 at the Barco Teatro, Padua, Italy, as part of the International Guitar Festival “Homenaje”.

The Barrios Guitar Quartet gave the premiere of Tarot for four guitars and percussion in Friedberg, Germany in September 2019. The recording will be launched on all platforms on 24th May 2021. Details of the online launch event will be announced soon. The work has 7 movements, each based on a tarot card. The order of the movements and the number of movements played is determined by the dealing or choosing of cards.

Verismo was commissioned by Aniello Desiderio, who was due to give the first performance at the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow on 21st March 2020 as part of the Guitar Virtuosi Festival. Unfortunately, the festival has been cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis. Verismo is a fantasy for guitar based on themes from 19th and 20th Century Italian operas by composers such as Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, and Mascagni. A new date for the premiere in 2021 will be announced in due course. Aniello will record the piece on his next album.

Hiraeth for solo guitar, was commissioned by Ken Murray as part of a project funded by The University of Melbourne to mark the centenary of Manuel de Falla’s Homenaje: Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy. The film of the premiere and the printed edition were released on March 8th 2021, the 100th anniversary of the official premiere of Falla’s Homenaje at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid.

The Patterson Sutton Duo released a CD of Steve’s collected cello and guitar music on the Ravello Records label on 26th June 2020. Still Life, the piece that gives the CD its title, is a celebration of the life and work of abstract expressionist Clyfford Still. Its seven movements explore Still’s passion for jazz, Beethoven, and William Blake. The score and parts for Still Life were published by Doberman to coincide with the album release. Other works on the CD include Motherlands, The Autumn Song, Welsh Folksongs, and Park of Idols. There is an album website with more details here.

The full score and piano reduction of the Koblenz Concerto are now available from Doberman. Orchestral parts are also available for hire. The concerto received its premiere at the 2019 Koblenz International Guitar Festival. The soloists were SoloDuo (Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela) and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie was conducted by Mihhail Gerts.

The Gruca White Ensemble have recorded some movements of From Honey to Ashes on their new album A Different Take. The album was released by Ravello Records on 13th November 2020.

The full score and piano reduction of Steve’s Paganini Concerto for guitar and orchestra has just been published. It was commissioned by Artyom Dervoed, Mikhail Pletnev, and the Russian National Orchestra. It’s based on Paganini’s Grand Sonata M.S.3. The edition includes new extended cadenzas for the first and second movements. The piano reduction is designed for concert performance as well as rehearsal and can be played on 19th Century guitar and fortepiano (as well as on modern guitar and piano).

Petar Čulić gave the premiere of Perpetual Motion Machine, for solo guitar, on 22nd August at the Omiš Guitar Festival in Croatia. The music can last anything from a few seconds to several hours, depending on the routes that the performer takes through the musical material. The performer can begin and end anywhere during the piece. Rather than presenting the music in a linear or cyclical way – a single path, it is presented as a network, in which every point can be connected to any other point.

Matthew Wadsworth commissioned Steve’s Theorbo Concerto through the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, the North York Moors Festival, and Arts Council England. Performances have taken place in Hong Kong, the UK, the Netherlands, and a tour with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The SCO recorded the concerto and the recording was released on the Deux-Elles label in 2019. The recording has received excellent reviews in Gramophone and BBC Music magazines. The full score, solo theorbo part, and version for theorbo and string quartet are all now available form the Doberman website.

Commissioned through Andrew Zohn and Jamie Nix at CSU, Georgia, this concerto for guitar and wind orchestra was funded by a consortium of American wind ensembles. After an initial run of 13 performances in the US, the score and parts for the piece have now been published by Doberman-Yppan. The piano reduction is now also available.

Steve was commissioned by the Chiltern Arts Festival to write the first ever piece for marimba and theorbo. The premiere was given by Evelyn Glennie and Matthew Wadsworth on 5th March 2020 as part of the festival. Details here

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales performed The Shard on 4th March 2020 at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

Ian Bostridge and Xuefei Yang recently performed The Book of Songs in Tucson and Wheaton in. BBC Music Magazine gave Ian and Xuefei’s recording of the song cycle 5 stars for both performance and recording.