Critical acclaim for Peter Eötvös project at Barbican Centre

17 May 2011

The Barbican Centre's Total Immersion day celebrating the life and work of Peter Eötvös has been acclaimed by the UK press.

The Barbican saw Eötvös conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a portrait concert with a programme featuring his music including the UK premieres of Levitation and IMA (Prayer). In the afternoon the Guildhall New Music Ensemble and Richard Baker performed music by Eötvös including the UK premiere of Paris-Dakar and Sonata per sei. In addition the film The Seventh Door, a TV portrait of the composer by director Judit Kele (released in 1998) and a film of the production at the Chatelet (from 2001) of his opera Three Sisters were also shown.

Geoff Brown of The Times remarked on the performances:

"Only the composer-conductor Peter Eötvös, the subject of the BBC’s latest Total Immersion day, would take his listeners so far on journeys conceived with such bright curiosity, puckish humour and idiosyncratic colours...".

These views were echoed by the Financial Times' Richard Fairman:

"Here was Eötvös at his best, contrasting a vivid foreground, in which the two clarinets, John Bradbury and Richard Hosford, goaded each other onward and upward in virtuoso flights, against a background of spectral clouds formed by strings and accordion."

The Evening Standard also praised the evening concert, with Nick Kimberley writing:

"Eötvös has an ear for striking sonorities, immediately apparent in the shimmer of gongs and amplified cimbalom that opens Psychokosmos".

Tim Ashley in The Guardian was also drawn in by the composer/conductor's soundscapes:

"He conducted the evening concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus himself, giving pride of place to the UK premieres of IMA and Levitation. Peering at ideas of the supposed Atlantean origins of civilisation, IMA sets the opening of the book of Genesis, translated into an imaginary language, as a primal choral miasma, from which sense and shape gradually emerge. Levitation's starting point is the closing scene of Stravinsky's Petrushka, in which the puppet protagonist's ghost hurls imprecations at the world that made him. Two clarinettists (John Bradbury and Richard Hosford) duelled away impeccably against ethereal strings.“

Barbican Centre website