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Description: Martyn Brabbins conducts the world premiere of Judith Weir's BBC commission, CONCRETE. The composer's Moon And Star and Michael Finnissy's Red Earth also feature.
Phone: 0845120 7500
Website: www.barbican.org.uk
Email: info@barbican.org.uk
Trains: Tube/BR: Moorgate/Barbican 
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 11am-8pm
Extra info: Food, Pub, Parking
This year sadly marked the last of the BBC weekends devoted each January to a major contemporary composer. In future they will be single days spread out through the year, a formula which will allow for more breadth of coverage but less depth.
Fifty works by Judith Weir were heard this weekend in seven major concerts and a raft of fringe events including folk fiddling in the foyers.
Folk music is central to Weir's art and the concert performance of her opera, The Vanishing Bridegroom, demonstrated just how tellingly she weaves the motifs of traditional regional stories and songs into her conception. Each of the three acts presents a scenario in which a bridegroom or husband disappears in mysterious, supernatural circumstances.
A sense of foreboding is intimated from the start with nagging string figures and piquant Stravinsky-like motifs on woodwind. Kurt Weill is recalled also in the ensemble refrains that punctuate the outlining of the story. But Weir is always her own woman: the hard-edged, syllabic declamation that never outstays its welcome could not be by anyone else.
An excellent cast led by Ailish Tynan, Jonathan Lemalu, Anna Stéphany, Owen Gilhooly and Andrew Tortise projected words clearly - just as well, since the surtitles gave up the ghost after the first act. The BBC Symphony Orchestra negotiated its way deftly through the ambiguities of Weir's tantalisingly suggestive score under the assured baton of Martyn Brabbins.
The BBCSO, together with its excellent chorus and the BBC Singers, also featured in last night's closing concert. Moon and Star, a setting of a poem by Emily Dickinson, seems to pay tribute to Messiaen in both its richly harmonised blocks of sound and its freewheeling ecstatic quality.
Concrete (world premiere of a BBC commission) is a "motet" celebrating London, and specifically the Barbican area, with texts by John Evelyn and others declaimed by Samuel West, while BBC choristers masqueraded more or less convincingly as Cockney orange-sellers.
Catch the Radio 3 broadcast on Tuesday evening and you may feel that licence fee is worth it after all.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
