Total immersion? With a composer as protean as Karlheinz Stockhausen, three concerts, a talk and a film are hardly an immersion: more like testing the waters with a toe. Yet this first of the BBC’s one-day composer portraits earned its keep with one just work. Written in the early 1970s, Inori, for orchestra and two mime artists, emerges before concert audiences about as often as a blue moon. So we were on a voyage of discovery, just like the composer himself when he wrote this 70-minute piece pushing the elements of music to extremes.
In a brisk introduction the conductor