Sir Harrison Birtwistle Author

Born in 1934, Sir Harrison Birtwistle is one of the most original voices in contemporary music. His monumental lyric tragedy The Mask of Orpheus was staged at English National Opera in 1986 and won the Grawemeyer Award, and his sequence of remarkable ensemble scores including Silbury Air and Secret Theatre are regularly performed by the world's leading new music groups. Recent years have brought acclaim for The Shadow of Night for orchestra, The Minotaur premièred at The Royal Opera in 2008, and Concerto for Violin and Orchestra premièred by Christian Tetzlaff with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine in March 2011. Fiona Maddocks is the Classical Music critic of the Observer. She was founder editor of BBC Music Magazine and chief arts feature writer for the London Evening Standard, and has written for numerous other publications. She is the author of Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age (Faber).