Three composers have joined the Music Sales companies in recent months…
HELEN GRIME
Chester Music Ltd
Born in 1981, Helen studied oboe with John Anderson and composition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh at the Royal College of Music. She graduated from the BMus course with First Class Honours and completed her Masters with Distinction in 2004. From 2005-07, Helen was a Legal & General Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music. In 2003 she won a British Composer Award for her Oboe Concerto, and was awarded the intercollegiate Theodore Holland Composition Prize in 2003 as well as all the major composition prizes in the RCM. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas.
Helen has had works commissioned by some of the most established performers including ENO, London Symphony Orchestra, BCMG, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center. Conductors who have performed her work include Daniel Harding, Oliver Knussen, Pierre Boulez and Yan Pascal Tortelier.
Helen is the 2010 recipient of the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund.
BRITTA BYSTRŐM
Edition Wilhelm Hansen
Britta Byström was born in Sundsvall in 1977, and received her first musical training as a trumpet pupil at the municipal music school.
In her teens, she began to compose music and, in 1995, was admitted to the composition degree course at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm. While there, she was a student of, among others, Pär Lindgren and Bent Sørensen, and graduated in 2001.
Britta Byström has composed for most sizes of orchestra and contexts: chamber music, vocal music and opera, but the emphasis has been on orchestral music. Some of those who have performed her music are the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the International Youth Wind Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Since 2007, Britta Byström has been composer in residence with Västerås Sinfonietta, and, in April 2010, she was the subject of a composer portrait at the Stockholm Concert Hall.
Another work that should be mentioned is Farewell Variations (Avskedsvariationer), which was first performed by the New Stockholm Chamber Orchestra (SNYKO) and has since been performed in many contexts. We could also mention the orchestral work Sera, in which a little lullaby-like theme travels through
different musical environments. Britta Byström has described it as a kind of melodic bird flying over a changing landscape of sound, but that itself remains unchanged. She likes to work using that kind of images.
‘I try to create poetic and beautiful music, which can tempt the listener into an aesthetic experience.’
Britta Byström’s music demonstrates a special attention to sound and a sensitivity for the music’s resonance that could be described as impressionistic.
Tony Lundman
Byström's music is published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen.
SØREN NILS EICHBERG
Edition Wilhelm Hansen
Søren Nils Eichberg has recently been appointed the first composer-in-residence in the history of the Danish National Orchestra (also known as The Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra). For three years he will thus put his mark on one of the leading orchestras in Scandinavia.
Eichberg was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany, grew up in Denmark and today lives and works in Berlin. He studied piano and orchestra conducting in Copenhagen and Cologne, but his break-through came as a composer when winning the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium in 2001. Since then, he has risen to become one of the most distinctive composers of his generation. His works have been performed in most European countries as well as in Japan, China, Korea, Australia and the US and have been radio broadcast in the US and europewide.
Eichberg has been commissioned works by Ensemble Modern, Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken, the Opera House of Münster and the Theatre of Stendal, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the International Festival in Bergen in Norway, the International Piano Competition Ferruccio Busoni, the International ARD Music Competition and the Japanese Viva Hall Cello Competition.
His output since 2001 includes more than 30 works, among others a symphony; cello-, piano- and violin concertos; an opera as well as solo-, chamber- and ensemble music.
His prizes and awards include the Composition Fellowship of the Tanglewood Music Festival, the 3-year Composition Grant of the Danish Ministry of Culture, the Composition Stipend of the German Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (Italy / New York) and the Composition Prize of the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.
Eichberg's works are published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen (Music Sales) and Universal Edition Wien.
As a conductor he has worked with: Südwestfälische Philharmonie, Junge Münchner Philharmonie, Danish Radio Symphony, Ensemble Kaleidoskop Berlin, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik and soloists from the Munich and Berlin Philharmonic.
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