Brian Ferneyhough, Christian Herzog writes, is "considered by some to be the world's greatest living composer;" and according to Francois Nicolas, "there is no composer of today more villified."  But there is no question that Ferneyhough is regarded as one of the most significant composers of his generation and certainly the most controversial.

In this second of two concerts we devote to Ferneyhough's music this season, Sospeso, in collaboration with the California Institute of the Arts, undertakes a retrospective of four important large chamber works that constitute the most musically demanding slice of the repertory, and figure as among the most complex and extreme musical works of the postwar. 

Ferneyhough's On Stellar Magnitudes, rarely performed, is an astonishingly virtuosic work.  The String Trio provides an intimate look at Ferneyhough's perspective on the language of music.  And the two solo concerti, Terrain and La Chute d'Icare, take radically different views of the relationship between the soloist and the chamber ensemble.

Sospeso devotes an entire evening to the music of this fascinating composer in New York's first retrospective concert of his work.