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Tom Service presents live from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, with a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London. This programme celebrates the 70th birthday of composer James Dillon, with the premieres of two major works.

James Dillon: Pharmakeia (WP)
London Sinfonietta conducted by Geoffrey Paterson

James Dillon: Echo the Angelus (WP)
Noriko Kawai (piano)

Also tonight, Robert Worby interviews James Dillon in depth about his music.

One of the world’s most acclaimed composers, Dillon’s route was unexpected: he initially played in bands, teaching himself how to play and compose music. In the past 40 years, he has gone on to make music that many consider the genre’s most daunting and complex. Really, though, it is just that it is his work that only an artist this restless could envision and execute. His music twists through modes of expression. At times it is bombastic, employing striking phrases and intense bursts of energy; at others, it is enchantingly mysterious, referencing historic poetic tomes and ancient painters. Tangled up in Dillon’s web is a confounding kind of music: it pulls listeners in before having them pull it apart, all in search of an answer.

Pharmakeia is a four-part cycle that began with 2017’s Circe. Tonight is the premiere of all four movements, performed in their entirety. Pharmakeia celebrates Dillon’s 70th birthday perfectly: it draws on a typical set of ‘eclectic influences’ and niche passions, paying tribute to the Greek goddess of magic Circe through music that seems able to create illusions and shift shape. The ensemble promises an ‘otherworldly, unnerving fairy-tale’, a piece that speaks not only to the mystery of Dillon’s work, but also his ability to pull off feats of magic.

Joining Pharmakeia is something completely different: a piece of solo piano music from four years ago that has only now found its way to the stage. An artist whose piano work has been esteemed as ‘the most significant contribution to the pianist’s repertoire since Ligeti’s Etudes’, Dillon’s Book of Elements series uses the instrument to build an insurmountable tension. In this broadcast, renowned Japanese pianist Noriko Kawai will premiere echo the angelus, traversing the piece’s ‘eerie silences’ and ‘unsettling mood’.

Kawai has maintained close contact with the composer’s work since 2006, when she performed his piano piece Andromeda. She has had a long time to sit with echo the angelus, but for her, it’s Fate that it should reach the world in 2020. She says it echoes a world in lockdown: ‘it takes me to somewhere unknown, a deadly silence, where fragile, transient memories leave poignant, bittersweet afterimages’. One of Dillon’s most evocative pieces ever, Kawai characterises it as ‘heart-wrenching’, a piece that emphasises the composer’s love of fragile, breaking sound.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, hcmf 2020 is taking place on Radio 3 and online for three days (Friday, November 20 – Sunday, November 22) over what would normally have been the festival’s first weekend. Two specially commissioned audio-visual installations will also be on show at venues in Huddersfield for a limited and socially distanced public.

The New Music Show across three consecutive nights presents exclusive live broadcasts showcasing the festival’s varied programme, including premieres, fixtures of the experimental scene, and music by the icons and rising stars of contemporary classical music.

The broadcasts will include a 70th birthday concert for James Dillon tonight – featuring the World Premiere of Pharmakeia from the London Sinfonietta and a specially recorded and previously unheard piano work written for Noriko Kawai – as well as a plethora of premieres from Explore Ensemble on Friday, and two innovative duos last tonight: Heather Roche (clarinet) and Eva Zöllner (accordion); and piano/percussion combo GBSR Duo.