Programme:
Bach-Busoni, Goldberg Variations (1915)
Michael Finnissy, Seventh Political Agenda (2024-25) [World Premiere]
Michael Finnissy, Extra Goldbergs (2021)
Michael Nyman, Nyman’s Goldberg (2018) [World Premiere]
Please note the early start time of this event, 6:30pm. Book tickets online here:
https://www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2025/july/ian-pace
About this event
In a characteristically innovative programme, Ian Pace, Professor of Music, Culture and Society at City St George’s as well as an internationally-renowned pianist, presents three highly distinct reworkings of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg-Variationen (1741).
The first was created in 1915 by Ferruccio Busoni, whose transcriptions, free fantasias, and highly creative editions of Bach occupied him throughout much of his compositional career. Busoni freely adds embellishments, doublings or rewritings, as well as expression markings more in keeping with his time than Bach’s, removes repeats and also suggests omission of nine variations, to produce a quite new type of concert piece.
Michael Finnissy’s Extra Goldbergs (2021) is a set of twelve short pieces which range from recognisable if freely adapted versions of some of Bach’s original variations to highly creative and unique modern constructions drawing upon just a few identifiable attributes.
City St George’s has the honour of hosting the world premiere of Michael Nyman’s Nyman’s Goldberg (2018) in which each variation is replaced by a montage of modified fragments from across the cycle, with continuously changing tempi in line with those assigned to the originals, punctuated by a range of repetitions in line with the composer’s characteristic language.
A further world premiere is Finnissy’s recently composed Seventh Political Agenda (2024-25), a series of pieces all entitled Ballet-Szene (after Busoni’s works of this name), the first written for the 50th birthday of ballet-lover Lindsay Edkins. Finnissy draws upon ballet music of Herman Severin Løvenskiold (La Sylphide (1836)), Léo Delibes (La Source (1866)), and Chaikovsky (Щелкунчик/Caisse-Noisette/The Nutcracker (1891-92)) to create a musical commentary on a 2019 government-backed advertisement ‘Fatima’s next job could be in cyber / she just doesn’t know it yet / Re-think. Re-skill. Re-boot.’
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