Description:
This introductory course offers a lively tour through the huge variety of the 20th century’s classical repertoire, including concert works, film scores, electronic pieces, improvisations, opera and ballet.
Content:
1) Sibelius – the Tone Poems from Finlandia to Tapiola
2) Schönberg – Gurrelieder, Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Op.19 and the Violin Concerto Op. 36
3) Stravinsky’s ballet revolution - The Rite of Spring
4) Ralph Vaughan Williams and the English Arcadia– Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
5) Naughty, but nice! - The music of Les six
6) Aaron Copland and the ‘Great American’ Symphony
7) Dmitri Shostakovich – “Most of my symphonies are tombstones”
8) Karlheinz Stockhausen – from Kreuzspiel to Licht: in search of ‘strange beauty’
9) Philip Glass and Akhnaten
Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour du loin – new opera for the new millennium.

David Lesser studied the piano at the Royal College of Music in London and then the music composition at the University of Huddersfield. He was Senior Teaching Fellow in Music and Open Studies Certificate Co-coordinator at the University of Warwick (1993-2007). His music has been widely performed in Britain and Europe by Ensemble Aleph, Accroche Note, Linda Hirst, Ian Pace and others. As a performer he specializes in the music of the Twentieth century, vocal repertoire, and has given a number of world and British premieres. He is active as a composer, performer, lecturer and teacher.