59
Lecture
Facing the Past / Facing the Future
By Peter Sheppard Skӕrved
5 October 2015
Duration: 90’
Peter Sheppard Skӕrved’s lecture
Facing
the Past / Facing the Future
as part of the 7
th
International Pharos Contemporary Music
Festival was a foretaste of the concert he
gave the next day at The Shoe Factory, with
horn player Carly Lake and pianist Roderick
Chadwick, during which the two great horn
trios of Johannes Brahms and György Ligeti
were featured.
Brahms looks back to the horn-playing
tradition of the Baroque, as well as the memory
of his childhood. Both composers succeed
in breaking the bonds of traditional chamber
music, both in virtuosity and reach. Likewise,
all the composers presented as part of the
next day’s concert (Brahms, Ligeti, Olivier
Messiaen, Luigi Nono and David Gorton) saw
the future whilst in conversation with the past.
Skӕrved, instrument in hand, explores some of
the dialogues between these pieces, the pasts
they evoke and the futures they foresee. Peter
Sheppard Skӕrved is the dedicatee of over 400
works for violin, and is a Viotti Lecturer at the
Royal Academy of Music in London, where he
was elected Fellow in 2013.
Facing the Past / Facing the Future
Johannes Brahms
Olivier Messiaen
Luigi Nono
David Gorton
György Ligeti
