Bernard Hughes’s narrative drama The Death of Balder will receive its first concert performance as part of the City of London Festival on 3 July, at St Giles, Cripplegate, London.
The BBC Singers and conductor James Morgan will perform the piece in its final version. They have already recorded an earlier, slightly shorter version, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 17 April 2008.
The performance is the culmination of a long creative collaboration with the BBC Singers and James Morgan. They initially performed an extract of the work at Wilton’s Music Hall in June 2006, as part of the Spitalfields Festival, which itself came out of a workshop with the BBC Singers, their producer, Michael Emery, and the composer Judith Bingham. ‘At the time,’ Hughes says, ‘ although I was aware that this piece would probably be a bit longer, I didn’t realise that it would grow to be not five but twenty-five minutes long!’
Following the 2008 broadcast, Hughes set about ‘tidying up’ the piece - which involved making over 100 minor alterations, and subtantially extending two sections of the score. It was a slow and painstaking process. ‘At times,’ Hughes recalls, ‘I felt like a sculptor who is nearly finished but wants to make a few improvements, and is terrified of accidentally chiselling off an arm by mistake!’
For further details of the forthcoming performance, visit: