Ensemble Resonanz: Rebecca Saunders // Ann Cleare

Standard £35 // Solidarity £45.50 // Kirklees Resident £33 // Under 30 £10
Our Solidarity ticket price is an opportunity for audiences to support our work by purchasing a ticket at a slightly higher price (the cost of a Standard ticket plus 30%). Read more about Solidarity prices here.

Advance booking required

Estimated end time: 8pm

Ensemble Resonanz
Enno Poppe conductor

Ann Cleare (Ireland, 1983)
new work (2026) 15’ UK Premiere

Rebecca Saunders (UK, 1967)
new work (2026) 35′ UK Premiere

A self-governing string ensemble without a permanent conductor, Ensemble Resonanz moves between repertoire, contemporary creation and experimental formats, providing a collective space for new musical encounters. Drawing hcmf// 2026 to a close, they premiere new works by Rebecca Saunders and Ann Cleare; two leading voices in contemporary music whose music shares a fascination with sound as physical and spatial material, explored in distinct ways through texture, space and listening.

Saunders – winner of the 2024 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale and in 2019, the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize – is a long-time collaborator of both Ensemble Resonanz and hcmf// (where she was Composer in Residence in 2010). Commissioned as an extension of Ensemble Resonanz’s ongoing series of pieces for formations derived from four string quartets, Saunders’ new work expands this configuration with the addition of two double basses, setting pulsating rhythmic structures against highly expressive melodic lines, layering and intensifying both elements into dense polyphonic textures.

Cleare – also a 2019 Ernst von Siemens Prize winner and a previously featured artist at hcmf// – represents a younger generation of composers exploring the physicality of sound in distinctive ways. Treating individual sounds with great precision and organising them across shifting densities, layers and perspectives, her new work for Ensemble Resonanz continues the exploration of sound and listening for which her music is renowned.

Premiered at Donaueschinger Musiktage before travelling to Huddersfield and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, these two major new works place hcmf// 2026 at the heart of an international journey, bringing together exceptional composers, performers and audiences in a celebration of contemporary music at its most compelling.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Culture Ireland; also supported by Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation and Vaughan Williams Foundation

Commissioned by Ensemble Resonanz, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ Amsterdam, Klangspuren Schwaz and hcmf// with support from Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS

Photo: Ensemble Resonanz © Co Merz