Following performances in London, New York and Warsaw, Forest, Tansy Davies’s concerto for four horns and orchestra, has been nominated for a British Composer Award.
After Forest's world premiere by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen in February, The Guardian described the 20-minute work as ‘teeming with energy’. Pitting a quartet of soloists against a vast tapestry of orchestral sound, Forest is one of Davies’s most vivid and ambitious musical statements to date.
‘An alluringly blended sound of great plasticity that appears to throb and breathe like a living organism. [Solo] lines rarely stand out clearly, but seem partly obscured by the orchestral texture, much in the way moving objects in a forest are perceived in flashes behind branches and foliage… The music maintains a poetic tension throughout.’
The New York Times (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim), 28 April 2017
The winners in each category will be announced at an awards ceremony presented by BBC Radio 3 presenters Andrew McGregor and Sara Mohr-Pietsch at the British Museum in London on Wednesday 6 December 2017. Last year Davies received a British Composer Award for her opera Between Worlds.
More information about Forest can be found in this documentary produced by the Philharmonia Orchestra.