Origin: Shifting sounds | City of London Sinfonia

Explore the power of music to shock and change through pieces that have shifted contemporaries towards yet undiscovered soundworlds.

At a first glance, it may seem that music by Jean-Féry Rebel, Beethoven and Donghoon Shin – composers in different periods, with different styles – do not belong in a programme together. But if you dive deeper, you soon find that each composer is forward-looking; they have shocked and pushed the boundaries of composition amongst their contemporaries.

Our second ‘Origin’ concert features the UK premiere of My Shadow by emerging South Korean composer Donghoon Shin, co-commissioned by City of London Sinfonia and the Heidelberger Frühling. Consisting of ten contrapuntal miniatures, My Shadow is a contemplation on the dark side of the human soul, where the distinctive timbral discrepancy of the piano takes on the character of the mysterious shadow-like figure in the eponymous poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The full orchestra comes together to perform Beethoven’s First Symphony, regarded as a masterwork that is thought to have signalled the beginning of a new musical age, as well as Jean-Féry Rebel’s Les élémens suite, which opens with what is thought to be the first notated tone cluster in the history of Western classical music.