Brian Elias & Ben Goldscheider: Touching The Quick

About this event

Hear the spirit of Anish Kapoor’s dramatic artworks through stirring French horn performances live inside the gallery, composed in response to the sculptures. Acclaimed composer Brian Elias has created a new series of four works for solo French horn, each responding to an artwork in Anish Kapoor and to the spirit of the exhibition as a whole. Celebrated horn player Ben Goldscheider performs these newly commissioned pieces live, as he moves between the sculptures in a spontaneous sequence. Direct engagement with the artworks – through visits to Kapoor’s studio and conversations with the artist – informed the composer’s deep awareness of ‘how alive, how quick the sculptures are, and of the many different kinds of movement present within them’. The music translates Elias’ personal impressions of Kapoor’s artworks, rendering them in musical shape and form. Brian Elias was born in Bombay and studied with Elisabeth Lutyens, Humphrey Searle and Bernard Stevens. His works have been performed and recorded extensively by leading orchestras and soloists including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia, Psappha Ensemble, Jane Manning, Roderick Williams, Nicholas Daniel, Natalie Clein, Ben Goldscheider and the Jerusalem Quartet. He has been a featured composer at Music@Malling and the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival, and in 2021 featured in a Wigmore Hall retrospective. Born in London in 1997, Ben Goldscheider has premiered over 50 new works for horn, spanning concerti, solo, chamber and cross-genre projects, including those incorporating live electronics and lighting. He is Principal Horn of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Principal Player of Camerata Pacifica and a member of the Boulez Ensemble. He holds a professorship at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp and serves as Artist in Association at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.