This year’s Agora Festival in Paris opens on 31 May with a concert by the Arditti Quartet featuring three Ircam co-commissions. The quartet will give the French premiere of Rolf Wallin’s new work for string quartet and electronics, Phonotope 1, which they first performed last October in Oslo at the Ultima Festival, which jointly commissioned the work. Their programme also includes the world premiere of a new quartet by Sohrab Uduman and the French premiere of Helmut Lachenmann’s third quartet Grido.
One of the festival’s main events is a performance of Benedict Mason’s ChaplinOperas by the Ensemble InterContemporain conducted by Jonathan Nott, with soloists Della Jones (mezzo) and Omar Ebrahim (baritone). Mason’s music for two soloists and large ensemble accompanies three silent films by Charlie Chaplin - Easy Street, The Immigrant and The Adventurer. The work was commissioned and premiered by the Ensemble Modern as part of the Chaplin Centenary in 1989.
