CBSO Centre, Birmingham The number of composers in the audience for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's concert to mark Oliver Knussen 's 60th birthday was its own tribute to a pivotal figure in British contemporary music. As a conductor, Knussen has tirelessly championed a huge range of other composers' works (often, you suspect, at the expense of writing his own music), so it was entirely typical that in this birthday programme there was just one sequence of his own pieces. This consisted of the wonderfully supple ensemble Ophelia Dances, the violin-and-piano Autumnal, and Ophelia's Last Dance – Knussen's recent reworking of 1970s material into a gorgeous, nostalgia-drenched, Scriabin-like waltz, exquisitely played here by Huw Watkins. Knussen conducted three substantial premieres in the rest of the programme; one world and two British. The world premiere came from Tansy Davies . Her single-movement piano concerto Nature came with a programme note about humans and vampires t...
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