Sally
BEAMISH (b. 1956)
The Caledonian Road
The Day Dawn
No I'm Not Afraid (Six poems by Irina Ratushinskaya)
The Imagined Sound of Sun on
Stone
Swedish Chamber Orchestra
conducted by Ola Rudner
John Harle, saxophone
Sally Beamish, narrator
BIS BIS-CD-1161 [DDD
67:21]
Crotchet
£12.50 Amazon
UK £11.99
Amazon
US
$17.97
Sally Beamish has matured into one of our most talented and original composers
within a remarkably short period of time. It is amazing to think that until
around 1990 she devoted most of her time to a career as a freelance violist,
although she had in fact been composing since the age of four. The turning
point was the birth of her first child, the theft of her viola and her husband,
the cellist Robert Irvine, returning from a spell of work in Scotland with
the news that there were opportunities north of the border and that they
should consider making a move. The move was subsequently made and it turned
out to be crucial to both Beamish's career and her compositional language,
which has undergone transformation and development into a truly individual
voice, increasingly influenced and inspired, I feel, by her new surroundings.
What stands out in her music is a natural gift for melody combined with a
true sense of line and development. Her formal and structural thinking is
always clear and logical, whilst the orchestration demonstrates an impressive
palette, both imaginative and texturally transparent and luminous.
The four works here presented span a period of around eleven years, No
I'm Not Afraid being a relatively early piece, first performed in 1989,
the latest being the soprano saxophone concerto, evocatively titled The
Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, premiered at the 1999 St. Magnus Festival.
(The Day Dawn, although premiered last year, is a reworking of an
earlier piece of the same name for amateur forces). All four works show a
different facet of the composer's musical nature and, listened to in the
order presented on the disc, form a very satisfying sixty seven minutes
listening.
The Caledonian Road has a double meaning for the composer, signifying
both the road north to Scotland as well as the Caledonian Road in Islington,
the area of London in which Beamish grew up. The Scottish influence is clearly
discernible in what is essentially a set of variations exploring the open
intervals of plain chant and horn calls, woven into a twelve minute piece
which develops a long melody heard on the oboe at the outset. The Day
Dawn was written in response to a close friend of the composer losing
her daughter and is a beautifully atmospheric lament for strings based on
an old fiddle tune of the same name from Shetland. This is a touchingly moving
work, played with great sensitivity by the orchestra, and in total contrast
to No, I'm Not Afraid which follows. Although referred to as songs,
the poems are narrated by the composer, who delivers them in a highly natural
way. The poems are interspersed with five instrumental interludes which serve
to bind the work together, the poignant opening music returning very clearly
at the end as the accompaniment to the final "song". For me, The
Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, is the most impressive work on
the disc (and in many ways the most challenging). The imagination and invention
is highly characteristic, as is the composer's ability to draw on a variety
of influences, including references to jazz, and mould them into something
which is uniquely her own. John Harle is a superb advocate of the work, the
solo part being played with both panache and intensity.
As always with BIS the production and engineering is exemplary, with crystal
clear sound in a natural acoustic. The composer must be grateful to both
the performers and BIS for recordings which are quite simply first class
in every way. So am I. This is a disc which I will return to regularly and
the prospect of a major new oratorio by Beamish for the Proms this summer
is an exciting one indeed.
Christopher Thomas
Performance and sound
