Premiere of Keith Burstein's Sextet - 'Finale with no ending'

Name: Premiere of Keith Burstein's Sextet - 'Finale with no ending'
Start: 2026-05-21T18:30:00+01:00
End: 2026-05-21T21:00:00+01:00
Location: Royal College of Music

Schedule

Thu May 21 2026 at 06:30 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Royal College of Music | London, EN

'Finale with No Ending' - a hypnotic sextet by Keith Burstein where music never resolves - only transforms and continues beyond hearing.
About this Event

Overview

'Finale with No Ending' - a hypnotic sextet by Keith Burstein will be premiering at the Performance Hall of the Royal College of Music on the 21st of May 2026.The performance will be given by Keith Burstein's Ensemble of The Radical Romantics.

Burstein remains drawn to processing complex societal and geopolitical issues through his music. The title literally translates to ‘Ending with no ending’, evoking the current destabilised world as it teeters on the edge of chaos and war.

This is clear in the naming of the movements. The third movement Portents, explicitly evoking the sense of foreboding that is tangible in the music. Another is called ‘DEFCON’ – a cold war term lodged in collective psyche to stir an impending sense of threat. This movement is driven by the ominous reiterations of a morse code.

And yet at the same time the music of the Sextet is joyous and seized of an intense love of life. The final movement 'Heaven's Gate' envisions an implacable and glorious energy carying everything in its path towards the Nirvanic "ending with no ending".
It is the interweaving of elegy and tragedy with joy- in the end the poignant joy of the transition between life and the transformations beyond that which compels the music forward. A vast canvass of more than an hour, this work is an epic journey of the soul.

This new piece marks the next chapter in Burstein’s ongoing musical project to reassert melody and harmony at the heart of contemporary classical composition and to use these to convey a humanitarian and healing vision of our world against the backdrop of turmoil. Scored for clarinet, horn, violin, cello, accordion and piano, it channels the sound world of traditional Klezmer music of the Russian Jewish emigres from the Pogroms of the early twentieth and late nineteenth century, when his family arrived in Britain.Indeed Burstein now identifies as a 'Klezmorim', the hereditary families of musicians born to serve the community at birth, death, marriage and all the social occasions. He recalls from childhood how his parents and the wider family gathered to make music in this manner. It fell to the Klezmorim to express the emotional life of the community and Burstein finds in this the exact parallel with his declared mission to take new classical music out of the ivory tower and once again enable melody and harmony to speak for the whole of Humanity and express and process all the most compelling concerns and experiences of our time.

18:30 - Welcome drinks

19:30 - Introduction and Performance

The work is once again commissioned by his patron Mark Redman, continuing a Medici-esque relationship that has enabled Burstein to develop a bold and uncompromising creative vision.

Premiered by the Ensemble of the Radical Romantics, featuring players who are either former holders of the Michael Redman Scholarship or graduates of the RCM.

The musicians

Clarinet

Alexander McDonald

Horn

Derry Sowinski

Violin

David Horvat

Cello

Marion Portelance

Accordion

Yuliia Humeniuk

Piano