The broadcast recording of A Sutured World, for solo cello and orchestra, is online until 24 Nov. The work was premiered as part of the Musica Viva series in Munich on 25 Oct 2024 by the fabulous ‘cellist Nicolas Altstaedt with the incredible Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ed Gardner. Check out the link for info, program book (in German), photos. Listen here for audio-on-demand (starts about 9:40 into the broadcast).
A couple of reviews:
Altstaedt’s highly committed performance, characterized by an enormous emotional range, is convincing throughout: from mystical immersion to hallucination to ecstatic joy of playing. Rarely has the musica viva audience cheered a solo concerto with such undivided, enthusiastic applause as for Liza Lim’s amazing piece. (Martin Blaumeiser, The New Listener)
…not only is the score immediately seductive, but we can’t help but admire the way the soloist is at one with the score he is playing – his colleagues will be well advised to take up a score that showcases their instrument so well. Right from the opening solo, the soloist imposes his voice: it is from the lyricism and melodic force of this first moment that the first intervention of the orchestra seems to emerge; the cello, in all its expressive and sonorous range, remains at the centre of attention throughout the twenty-five minutes of the work, forging a complex relationship with the orchestra that amplifies its ruptures and sutures: the orchestra listens, but it also acts in reaction to the impulses of the soloist, the balm that heals his wounds. (Dominique Adrian, ResMusica, trans. DeepL)
Liza Lim 