
Save the dates of two premieres from Philip Cashian in January:
Thursday 21 January 2021, 7pm
A House of Rumours
Performed by Riot Ensemble
Kings Place, London
A House of Rumours takes it’s title from a poem by the Scottish poet Robin Robertson and refers to book XII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “In the centre of the world there’s a place and to it’s listening ears comes every sound. A shadowy throng and a thousand rumours, false mixed with true, stray this way and that, whole confused words flit about. Some of them pour their stories into idle ears, others carry off elsewhere the tales they have been told, the story grows, and each new tellers adds something to what he has heard.” The pieces consists of seven movements that run into one another.
Due to the current national lockdown, the concert listed above has been postponed. What Riot Ensemble’s website for further information.
Saturday 30 January 2021
Scenes from the Life of Viscount Medardo
Performed by Richard Watkins (solo horn), Red Note Ensemble
Sound-Scotland Festival

Viscount Medardo of Terralba is a character in Italo Calvino’s short story The Cloven Viscount. After being split in two by a canon ball in battle with the Turks, the left half and the right half of the Viscount (a good half and a bad half) each separately return home to Italy, falling in love with the same girl and eventually having a sword fight on horseback to decide who shall marry her.
Unfortunately due to recent coronavirus restrictions in the UK this planned livestreamed performance with Red Note Ensemble and Richard Watkins has been postponed. Instead a recording of the original version of Philip Cashian’s Scenes from the Life of Viscount Medardo performed by Richard Watkins (horn) and Joseph Havlat (piano) will be broadcast via YouTube. Afterwards Richard Watkins and composers Philip Cashian, Rylan Gleave and Aileen Sweeney will join in a discussion about their new works.
Tags: A House of Rumours, Commission, Kings Place, Philip Cashian, Red Note Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, Scenes from the life of Viscount Medardo, Sound-Scotland