Principal Sound – Sarà Dolce Tacere

Bringing together some of contemporary music’s most respected ensembles with the UK’s most exciting young talent – including St John’s Smith Square Young Artists George Barton and Siwan Rhys – the festival offers the opportunity to be immersed in the contemplative works of these two giants of post-war music, both of whom opened up new worlds of sonic exploration, focussing on the minutiae of individual voices, textures and sounds.

A new choral work by Linda Catlin Smith, setting fragments from Virginia Woolf’s The Years, crowns this intricate programme from Explore Ensemble and Exaudi which sets luscious Machaut chansons alongside John Cage and Rebecca Saunders. Elsewhere, the fractured soundworld of late Nono finds resonances in a pair of dusky chamber works by John Croft, Wolfgang Rihm’s imposing Quo me rapis, and fragile miniatures by Feldman and György Kurtág.