Britten Sinfonia, Helen Grime

The British composer Helen Grime celebrates Sir Simon Rattle’s arrival with a personally-curated programme of her own music and its inspirations.

Helen Grime is one of many living composers being championed by Sir Simon Rattle as Music Director of the LSO. She’s responded with a programme that places her own richly-imagined music amidst the works – from Purcell to Stravinsky – that helped shape it.

So there are many living friends and inspirations in the mix: lovingly-crafted works by Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès and George Benjamin. Britten Sinfonia has this music in its artistic DNA, just as it’s superbly placed to trace Grimes’s roots through Stravinsky and Britten and right back to Henry Purcell: the acorn from which a living tradition took root.

Programme curated by the composer

Purcell Fantasia Upon One Note
Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin and
Colin Matthews A Purcell Garland
Helen Grime Into the Faded Air
Oliver Knussen Cantata
Helen Grime A Cold Spring
Thomas Adès Court Studies from The Tempest
Britten Sinfonietta
Stravinsky Dumbarton Oaks