• Menu

    What’s it going to be then, eh?

    The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
    About Anthony Burgess
    • Introducing Anthony Burgess
    • The Books of Anthony Burgess
    • The Music of Anthony Burgess
    Discover More
    • A Clockwork Orange
    • Earthly Powers
    • Anthony Burgess and Shakespeare
    • Dystopian Fiction
    About The Foundation
    • Our Mission
    • Visiting Us
    • The Burgess Bar
    • Support the Burgess Foundation
    • Join our mailing list
    • Contact us
    Anthony Burgess Archive
    • About the Archive
    • Visiting the Archive
    • Object of the Week
    • Contact the Archivist
    What's On
    • News and Blogs
    • Event listings
    • Venue hire
    • Burgess Prize
    • Exhibitions
    • Podcasts
    The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
  • What’s it going to be then, eh?

    OPENING TIMES
    Bar Open for events
    Reading Room Available for pre-booked appointments 10.00am - 3.00pm weekdays
    Office Hours By appointment: info@anthonyburgess.org
    HOW TO FIND US
    Engine House
    Chorlton Mill
    3 Cambridge Street
    Manchester
    M1 5BY
    Nearest train station Oxford Road More information
    Next event
    Literature: Poets & Players Sat 25 Mar 2023 2:30 pm Free More information
  • The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
  • What's it going to be then, eh?

    Exhibitions. New writing. Concert commissions. Academic research. Public events, in venues and online. And at the core of everything, preserving and promoting our extensive Anthony Burgess archive.

    Your donation to the Burgess Foundation supports our mission to promote the life and work of Anthony Burgess in so many ways.

  • What’s it going to be then, eh?

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Manchester International Festival: The World Was Once All Miracle

  • Will Carr

  • 8th March 2017
  • category

  • Blog Posts
  • tagged as

  • Burgess 100
  • Manchester International Festival
  • Music
  • Raymond Yiu

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation and the Manchester International Festival announce the world premiere of a new song cycle for baritone and orchestra by the composer Raymond Yiu, The World Was Once All Miracle.

Commissioned by the Burgess Foundation as part of the celebrations of the centenary of Anthony Burgess in 2017, the new piece is a setting of six poems by Burgess that will be performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Manchester International Festival at the Bridgewater Hall on 4 July 2017.

Raymond Yiu has had a long creative relationship with the writing and music of Anthony Burgess. He writes:

“My first contact with Anthony Burgess was through a copy of his musical autobiography This Man and Music that I picked up more than two decades ago. I have always had an image of him as a composer who wrote books rather than a novelist who wrote music. His music, especially the magnificent Symphony in C, has become a fascination of mine. The World Was Once All Miracle provides me the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to an artist whose cross-disciplinary talent is too all-embracing and dazzling to be appreciated fully in a single artform.”

Raymond Yiu (姚恩豪, b. 1973) is a composer, jazz pianist, conductor and writer on music. Born in Hong Kong, he came to England in 1990 and started piano lessons at the age of four. He began writing music as a teenager, and took up composing again while he was studying at Imperial College. As a composer, Raymond – like Anthony Burgess – is largely self-taught. And again like Burgess he has written for many different ensembles, including work for orchestra, chamber groups, brass bands, chorus and many more. In 2015 Raymond was commissioned by the BBC to write Symphony, for countertenor and orchestra, a piece inspired by a poem by Basil Bunting and setting texts by Walt Whitman, Constantine P. Cavafy, Thom Gunn and John Donne. The world premiere was given by Andrew Watts, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner as part of the BBC Proms 2015.

This major new commission continues our ongoing collaboration with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and we are delighted to present a concert for the first time in partnership with the Manchester International Festival. Conducted by Michael Francis and with Roderick Williams performing baritone, this event is a highlight of our year-long celebration of the centenary of Anthony Burgess.

The world was once all miracle. Then everything started to be explained. Everything will be explained in time. – Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers (1980)

For tickets and booking information please visit Manchester International Festival.

  • Share | 
  • Print
Related Blog posts
A Shorter Finnegans Wake: editing an epic Andrew Biswell
Inside the archive: Restoring Joyce and Belli Anna Edwards
Blowing the horn for Anthony Burgess in 2023 Andrew Biswell
The 2023 Observer / Burgess Prize has a winner Ian Carrington
SEE ALL NEWS AND BLOG POSTS
Go to home page
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Go to home page
Follow us

© 2023 International Anthony Burgess Foundation

Charity no. 1102623

International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Engine House Chorlton Mill 3 Cambridge Street M1 5BY
  • Site map
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms of use
  • Designed by Instruct
  • Built by OH Digital