For decades, it was hard to think of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a brilliant French chamber orchestra formed in 1976, without factoring in the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who founded the group.
Composed in a scant nine months, this brilliant, lascivious, and humane chamber opera has already had more than 30 productions worldwide.
Lotta Wennakoski's recent "Kuule II," for bass clarinet (played by the brilliant Heikki Nikula) and chamber orchestra, begins with hushed sustained tones and phrase fragments that slowly coalesce into organic structures, and is written in a pungently fresh harmonic language.
Lycett also casts new light on Collins's relationship with Nina Chambers, a brilliant amateur pianist to whom he addressed a flirtatious poem: "Miss Chambers has sent me a very sharp letter/ With a gift of some toffy (I never sucked better!)." This is a book full of bright new hard-won details.
Writing in The New York Times, James Reston said that Hiss's lawyer, Lloyd Paul Stryker, was brilliant in staring down Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Hiss of espionage.
In fact, there are lots of openings, many of them associated with the British Council Showcase including Forced Entertainment's Tomorrow's Parties, Chris Thorpe's Confirmation and Greyscale's Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone, all of which are at Summerhall, and Kaleider's brilliant The Money at City Chambers.
"By the time he stood up in the chamber he had a brilliant speech".
Letts, a potentially great writer, is at his most brilliant and intense when he writes small chamber pieces, in which his rough and scary metaphors are in synch with his disillusioned, mad characters.
The following week, in Gniezno, once (in the 10th century) the seat of Polish political power, violinist Janusz Wawrowski and a bunch of his brilliant pals present the Spaces of Music Chamber Music Festival, between the 9th and 17th of September 2011.
ALARM WILL SOUND, a new-music chamber orchestra that in recent years has given brilliant performances of Minimalist classics by Steve Reich and wacky spatial works by Benedict Mason, has lately turned its attention to electronica, with a twist.
