Further Reading
30th July 2024
Ahead of the world premiere of her new work The Gorgeous Nothings at the BBC Proms tonight, the British composer discusses the Augmented Orchestra technology involved in the piece - and her forthcoming album SHORTHAND, out on Sony next month and featuring Avi Avital, Yo-Yo Ma and The Knights.
Anna Clyne: Mythologies showcases the composer’s enormous palette of colours and effects in five of her orchestral works, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed composers - Marin Alsop, Andrew Litton, Sakari Oramo and Andre de Ridder.
Anna Clynne’s enormous palette of colours and special effects coalesce into an aural three- dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Anna’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi- media - including poetry, visual art and videography - combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal. The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four inter- nationally-acclaimed conductors. Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, captures the spirit of that quintessen- tially English tradition. The title evokes an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers.
This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramon Jim nez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work’s inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats. More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring.
The album concludes with <<rewind<<, conducted by Andr de Ridder. It’s a wild romp imagin- ing the backwards scroll of a video tape complete with glitches, skips and freezes. Anna Clyne: Mythologies is available digitally as downloads and streams, CD digipak and a limited edition deluxe 2-LP vinyl release (available November 2020). CRITICAL ACCLAIM “I’m struggling to remember the last time a piece of contemporary music made me cry ... in the final movement of Anna Clyne’s DANCE, a cello concerto in all but name, a bear-hug of a theme emerges through angry, percussive col legno snaps that is so beautiful, so heartfelt that it instantly drew tears on first hearing. Repeated listening had a similar effect.” - Gramophone Editor’s Choice (on Anna Clyne’s DANCE for cello and orchestra, AV2419) “British composer Anna Clyne has written perhaps her most ambitious and appealing work so far. It’s hard to resist the gorgeous opening of DANCE, her new cello concerto ... Clyne’s orches- trations are keenly attentive to color and light, and she’s fearless in filling the concerto with melodies of undisguised beauty. Some are folkish, others are regal. All linger in the ear, begging to be heard again. - National Public Radio, 25 Favorite Songs of 2020 (on Anna Clyne’s DANCE for cello and orchestra,
