The London Sinfonietta’s programme for this year’s Cervantino Festival traces a bold arc through the music of the 20th and 21st centuries - music that pushes boundaries, forever testing the limits of sound and imagination.
The journey begins with the modernist Mexican nationalism of Silvestre Revueltas's Ocho por Radio (1933) and ends with Julián Carrillo's Preludio a Colón (1936), a pioneer of microtonalism who celebrates 150 years since his birth in 2025 and whose vision inspired the world premiere of Arturo Fuentes' Thirteen Pulses , in which the microtonal harp and soprano are immersed in an acoustic microcosm. To arrive at the work of Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, Alien Studies , which reflects on the intersection of Chicano culture.
Other highlights include music by Conlon Nancarrow and Tansy Davies, alongside Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum - written to mark the London Sinfonietta’s tenth anniversary. Dedicated to the artist Paul Klee, the piece encapsulates many of Birtwistle’s lifelong obsessions: the machine, the landscape, poetic form, and the superposition of layers. With a language reduced to its essentials, its rhythmic power recalls Stravinsky and, at times, the modern pastoralism of Tippett.
This is music of ideas as much as emotion - a festival programme that captures the restless invention of composers who continue to reshape how we listen.
Programme includes:
Silvestre Revueltas Ocho por radio
Tansy Davies inside out 2
Sir Harrison Birtwistle Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum
Julian Carrillo Preludio a Colon
Gabriela Ortiz Alien Studies
Arturo Fuentes Thirteen pluses of the sonic microcosm (LS commisson, World Premiere)
Conlon Nancarrow Player Piano Study No. 26 (arr. Matt Rogers)
Conlon Nancarrow Prelude & Blues (arr. John Woolrich) (LS commission, World Premiere)
Conlon Nancarrow Toccata (arr. John Woolrich) (LS commission, World Premiere)
London Sinfonietta
Mimi Doulton soprano
Arturo Fuentes Carrillo harp
Jonathan Berman conductor
The London Sinfonietta is supported using public funding by Arts Council England, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the John Ellerman Foundation and with the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
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