Anna CLYNE (b. 1980)
Mythologies
Masquerade (2013) [4:57]
This Midnight Hour (2015) [12:43]
The Seamstress, for viol, voice and orchestra (2014) [21:25]
Night Ferry (2012) [20:13]
<<rewind<< (2005, rev. 2006) [7:58]
Jennifer Koh (violin); Irene Buckley (voice)
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, André de Ridder
rec. live 7 September 2013, Royal Albert Hall (Masquerade), 7 May 2011, Barbican Hall (<<rewind<<), 11 January 2013, Barbican Hall (Night Ferry), 15 January 2016, Barbican Hall (The Seamstress) & 21 March 2018, Barbican Hall (This Midnight Hour)
AVIE AV2434 [67:24]
I must confess that I had already read about Anna Clyne's music but had never heard any of it before receiving the release under review. I was thus quite interested to hear these pieces and make up my mind about the music. I do not want to spoil anything, but I may now tell you that I found her music colourful, full of energy and overflowing with ideas which grip you from first to last. The present release of her compositions spanning the decade from 2005 up to 2015 thus offers a fine survey of her recent orchestral music and there is no better place to begin with than the first work recorded here, the short Masquerade, a brilliant concert-opener if ever there was one. The music skips along with high spirits until it concludes with a quotation from John Playford's The English Dancing Master which comes as a surprise - although I for one would not be surprised to learn that that very tune had already been there since the very beginning but cleverly and subtly disguised. Anyway, this short and brilliant work presents Anna Clyne's music-making in a nutshell, as it were.
This Midnight Hour was inspired by “an aphoristic definition, by Juan Ramón Jiménez, of music as a naked woman running mad through the pure night” and by Charles Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir, a “sickly-sensuous evocation of evening”; the latter poem is clearly echoed in the music: “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir/Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!” The piece opens with ostinato scales and some angular writing suggesting Jiménez's naked woman, then, some instruments (a flute, then a tuba) sketch the outlines of a waltz. All these elements proceed until a folk-like melody played by the clarinets appears to disappear almost instantly. Thus, everything remains undecided until a brass chorale ushers in what appears to be a radiant ending – but that is not to be, as the piece ends with a “violent thunderclap”.
By sheer coincidence, while preparing this review I received my January 2021 Gramophone in which Anna Clyne is the contemporary composer of the month introduced by Richard Whitehouse who obviously knows and appreciates Clyne's music. One of his remarks made its mark on me, i.e. that “folk-like elements are a constant though reticent presence”. This most clearly applies to the substantial violin concerto The Seamstress, in which she seems to me to draw on her Celtic roots, something one may also hear in her marvellous cello concerto Dance (AVIE AV2419) which I heard after going through the present release under review. The subliminal program behind the music is both a pencil drawing by William Butler Yeats and his poem A Coat printed in the insert notes and spoken (on tape I suppose) in the course of the work. (Incidentally the otherwise excellent notes do mention the recitation of Keats' poem, which is clearly a typing mistake.) Once again, the music alludes to some folk-like elements, although no folk song is quoted, but the very opening of the piece played by the violin harks back to some folk fiddle traditions. (Incidentally, the notes also tell us that that tune is built on a 12-tone row.) Although not overtly programmatic, the music nevertheless briefly hints at graphic allusions such as small motifs repeated to suggest needlework and the like, but this should not be carried too far for the work as a whole is a beautiful piece of musical poetry and finesse which I for one find most moving in its own way. All in all, The Seamstress is a magnificent work and I hope that it will soon enter the repertoire of enterprising violinists. One may also add that the violin part is quite exacting in technical dexterity and in terms of pure musicality, which Jennifer Koh possesses aplenty.
Written during Clyne's tenure as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Night Ferry was her first large-scale work for full orchestra. It received the endorsement of music director Riccardo Muti whose performance was subsequently issued on the orchestra's in-house label. As Richard Whitehouse comments in Gramophone, “Muti was doubtless attracted to music whose virtuosity tests even an outfit of the CSO's abilities yet whose intricacies are never at the expense of sonic allure or visceral immediacy”. As far as I am concerned, I think that “sonic allure” and “visceral immediacy” aptly describe Anna Clyne's music. Again, the background of the work is to be found in some extra-musical stimuli. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to be performed alongside music by Schubert. It is well known that Schubert suffered from cyclothymia characterised by violent mood swings and bouts of manic creativity. Reflecting this, “Clyne wrote a piece about stormy voyages in space and of the mind” (Corinna Fonseca-Wohlheim in her insert notes). The piece opens as an agitated stormy seascape forcefully swelling up and down punctuated by often strident brass and percussive assaults momentarily pausing in a section of insistent basses and pounding drums. Eventually, as in This Midnight Hour, the music seems willing to settle into a peaceful - though ambiguous - chorale. The title of the piece comes from Seamus Heaney's Elegy for Robert Lowell who also suffered from manic depression:
“You were our Night Ferry/thudding in a big sea...” Night Ferry is yet another powerful score and a splendid example of Anne Clyne's imaginative and ear-catching music.
In <<rewind<<, the music rarely pauses and is propelled with almost unstoppable energy. It again contrasts low and high registers (which seems to be one of Clyne's hallmarks) in an unrelenting pulsation till the music's pace briefly slows down before resuming its implacable rush forward.
These superb works receive committed readings from all concerned and, besides singling out the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing at its customary best, I would like to draw attention to Jennifer Koh's impressive take on the violin part in The Seamstress, one of the gems in this collection. I hope that many will derive as much musical pleasure from this very fine release as I have, and that it will not take too long before more of Clyne's orchestral music is committed to disc.
Hubert Culot
