MACMILLAN: QUICKENING / THREE INTERLUDES FROM ‘THE SACRIFICE’

In this his fiftieth year James MacMillan conducts Quickening which is a large-scale complex work commissioned by the BBC Proms and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It uses poetry by a frequent Macmillan collaborator, Michael Symmons Roberts, and explores the themes of birth, new life and new impulses, but as Macmillan says, it also has a dark side from which hope is glimpsed. Premiered at the BBC Proms, the work is here performed by the BBC Philharmonic which is joined by the Hilliard Ensemble and City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Youth Chorus. Quickening is coupled with Three Interludes from MacMillan’s second opera, The Sacrifice, which was premiered in 2007 by Welsh National Opera and won the 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Opera and Music Theatre Award. MacMillan is one of the UK’s leading contemporary composers, whose writing has been hailed as some of the most distinguished since Benjamin Britten.