We recently had a chance to catch up with composer Michael Zev Gordon, composer-in-residence at Presteigne Festival from August 27-31. Presteigne nestles at the heart of the Welsh Marches on the border between Wales and England, surrounded by beautiful, pristine countryside. A breathtaking 26 events will be featured during this unique five-day boutique festival. Commissioned for this year’s festival, Gordon, currently Professor of Composition at the University of Birmingham, has composed Waldeinsamkeit, a spacious and lyrical meditation on woodland solitude for award-winning horn player Ben Goldscheider and pianist Clare Hammond.
Established in 1983, the festival will highlight the contribution of women composers from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Stretching into other genres, the festival presents opportunities to hear poetry, literary and music presentations, a film season from New Zealand director Jane Campion, and ‘Open Studios’ weekend—produced by Presteigne’s community of artists and proven to be a very popular event. Each day comprises a dizzying five to six fascinating events.
Audiences will experience a wide variety of styles, invention, and imagination through the several contemporary composers’ classical music works that will be performed. The music of Mathilde Wantenaar, who represents one of the Netherlands’ young generation of composers, will also be featured among many other rising stars.
Mathilde Wantenaar (© Karen van Gilst)
The programs are brilliantly put together, juxtaposing beloved works such as Ravel’s stunning string quartet with newer works so that concertgoers will be treated to listening with new perspectives.
The festival opens on August 27th with a fascinating conversation: reflections from Music Lessons, a book about the cathartic power of music. The award-winning author and composer Stephen Johnson will explore “7 Composers and What They Taught Me”– works by Bach, Beethoven, Lili Boulanger, Bruckner, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius and Wagner – and will examine the intentions of the composers, and how they have affected him personally. Later that day, a concert of cello works will take place, including Imogen Holst‘s The Fall of the Leaf and the Solo Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor by J.S. Bach. The evening program includes a world premiere by Lillie Harris and the captivating and inspiring piece L’Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky.
Enter Michael Zev Gordon. Born in 1963 in London, he is prominently featured on August 28th.
Michael Zev Gordon
His music, spanning solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works as well as two world premieres, has been depicted as “vivid musical landscapes that explore memory, time, and the pull between turbulence and serenity.” To get a taste of his writing, here is the first movement of his violin concerto and two excerpts from The Impermanence of Things – movement 1 “True singing is a different breath about nothing” and movement 2 – “So we live here forever taking our leave”.
Michael Zev Gordon: Violin Concerto: I. Very still, intense – Moderato (Carolin Widmann, violin; BBC National Orchestra of Wales; Catherine Larsen-Maguire, cond.)
Michael Zev Gordon: The Impermanence of Things: I. True singing is a different breath, about nothing (Huw Watkins, piano; Ian Dearden, electronics; London Sinfonietta; Ryan Wigglesworth, cond.)
Michael Zev Gordon: The Impermanence of Things: II. So we live here, forever taking leave (Huw Watkins, piano; Ian Dearden, electronics; London Sinfonietta; Ryan Wigglesworth, cond.)
Composer Michael Zev Gordon talks about his new piece, A Kind of Haunting
Gordon’s Lachrymae and Stillness a solo work built around a memory-fragment of John Dowland will be performed on the program Event 6 with guitarist Eva Victoria Schockmel; and then during Event 9 – A Trio of Horn Trios Fenella Humphreys violin, Ben Goldscheider horn, and Clare Hammond piano will present Michael Zev Gordon’s Barcarola, for violin, horn and piano, in which the composer imagines a song arising out of dark Venetian waters, (listen below) and the much anticipated world premiere Waldeinsamkeit, for horn and piano.
A Trio of Horn Trios
Michael Zev Gordon: Barcarola (New Music Players)
In between the above-mentioned concerts, also on August 28, one of my favourite composers is being featured, Henriëtte Bosmans, whose lovely String Quartet will be performed. She has written several magnificent cello works, which I highlighted in a previous article, and I am so glad to see her music is being performed.
Henriëtte Bosmans: String Quartet (Solem Quartet)
Two other outstanding works, Nine Fragments (String Quartet No 4) by Sally Beamish and Robert Schumann String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 are also on the program. Sally Beamish here tells us about her String Quartet No. 4, which is influenced by Schumann and her imaginings of his wife Clara’s challenges.
Sally Beamish’s Nine Fragments – String Quartet No. 4
On August 29th, audiences will have the pleasure of hearing Grażyna Bacewicz String Quartet No. 3.
Grażyna Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 3: I. Allegro ma non troppo (Lutosławski Quartet)
And Robert Peate String Quartet in E ‘Grasses’ (Welsh premiere), which are then paired with Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet in F, Op. 18 No. 1, catapulting us all the way back to 1799, Beethoven’s first published string quartet and his unprecedented hand on the genre. I think the side-by-side placement with the brand new Peate work, the 1947 Bacewicz composition, and later Gordon’s take on the string quartet will give the audience a valued and unique look at its development over time.
At 2:00 pm, a program anchored by Prokofiev will present the world premiere of Five Melodies. This is another thought-provoking programming idea: five contemporary composers of five melodies— Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Electra Perivolaris, Lynne Plowman, Claire Victoria Roberts and Mathilde Wantenaar back-to-back with works of established composers Amy Beach, Sally Beamish, and Lili Boulanger.
A flurry of pieces by Michael Zev Gordon follow, including The Gleam of Hidden Skies for tenor, horn and strings. The piece takes Benjamin Britten’s Serenade as its inspiration, exploring the colours and emotions of dusk and night with texts by Byron, Larkin, Blake, Rosenberg and Cummings. Let’s listen to a bit of the Britten.
Benjamin Britten: Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31: Pastoral (Philip Langridge, tenor; Frank Lloyd, horn; English Chamber Orchestra; Steuart Bedford, cond.)
On August 30, Gordon’s Ten Propositions of Baruch Spinoza for tenor and piano, which reflects “the emotions and spirituality behind Spinoza’s spare, philosophical aphorisms,” and his Three Short Pieces for String Quartet performed by Amsterdam’s HearAndNow Collective will be played. Andrew Clements of the Guardian said the quartet moves, “from a Stravinskyan homage in the first movement to something genuinely personal and striking in the last.” We can hear a recording of his String Quartet No. 3 to get an idea of his quartet writing.
String Quartet No. 3 (world premiere) – Michael Zev Gordon
August 31 audiences will be treated to two world premieres for harp and two favorite pieces of Arvo Pärt and on the program entitled Femmes de légende: the World premiere of Michael Zev Gordon’s Diary Pieces 2021, Set 2 for piano, will be performed, comprising seven vignettes “each capturing an image, feeling or fleeting scene,” a sampling of more than sixty such miniatures he has composed.
Michael Zev Gordon: Diary Pieces 2016: I. Before Playing Bach (Joseph Houston, piano)
Michael Zev Gordon: Diary Pieces 2016: III. Ferragosto (Joseph Houston, piano)
Michael Zev Gordon: Diary Pieces 2016: IV. A Hoopoe Lands in Front of Me (Joseph Houston, piano)
On this program are Mel Bonis’s Desdémona, Phoebé and Mélisande and Ravel’s Sonatine.
The penultimate event on August 31, Michael Zev Gordon will be joined by conductor, singer and composer George Parris in a conversation about Gordon’s career and his compositions. This will be an interesting discussion.
Closing with seminal works, the festival concludes with Edward Elgar Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47, Dorothy Howell Nocturne for muted string, another work of Mathilde Wantenaar Rhapsody for piano and strings, Gabriel Jackson Hargrove in the Welsh premiere and the groundbreaking work of Béla Bartók, Divertimento, Sz 113.
The performers are Imogen Whitehead, flugelhorn; Jâms Coleman, piano; the HearAndNow Collective, Amsterdam; and the Presteigne Festival Orchestra, with George Vass, conductor. Listen to the infectious concluding movement of the Divertimento.
Béla Bartók: Divertimento, BB 118: III. Allegro assai (Moscow Virtuosi; Vladimir Spivakov, cond.)
Although the festival transpires over only five days, I am certain attendees will feel as if it has been the culmination of a vast journey through the exploration of time, of sonorities and of temperaments.
https://presteignefestival.com/events/presteigne-festival-2026/
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