hcmf// is featured prominently on the airwaves this month, with coverage of the 2021 festival broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show.
A full live recording of Laurence Osborn’s new hcmf// commission, Essential Relaxing Classical Hits, is available now, presented alongside an interview with the composer. Ensemble Klang premiered the piece alongside vocalist Agata Zubel, realising Osborn’s disorienting maze of classical music history. A bitterly poignant take on the commodification of sound, and our complicity in the process, it is a step beyond the norm for Osborn – an artist who is constantly trying to rewrite the narratives attached to his work.
In a crossover of Fielding Talent artists, pianist Zubin Kanga gave a wonderful performance of composer and producer Georgia Rodgers’ piece Ringinglow, which was recently played on Tom Service’s festival round-up. It can be heard on the show alongside Kanga’s performance of Pretty Sound (Up and Down) by Simon Steen-Anderson.
Alongside this plentiful coverage of hcmf// 2021, BBC Radio 4 have revisited the story of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s visit to Huddersfield way back in 1988, on the festival’s tenth anniversary. Ian McMillan, Robert Worby and the festival’s founder Richard Steinitz discuss the composer and his attempts to bring his piece Sternklang to life in the town’s local sports hall, and his place in the lore of hcmf//. It’s a fantastic bit of festival history, full of facts and foibles about the composer and the immense, large-scale work he brought with him. Listen back here.