United Kingdom ‘Cànan nan Eun’: Chihiro Ono (violin), Anna Bastow (viola), Colin Alexander (cello), Mischa Macpherson (voice), Sandy Leong (reside projection and animation). Jerwood Corridor, LSO St Luke’s, London 5.9.2026. (PC)
As a part of Lisa Robertson’s present participation on the London Symphony Orchestra’s Jerwood Composer+ scheme, she curated an atmospheric and interesting live performance that featured new and up to date repertoire, often accompanied by reside projection and animation. The items in her chosen programme had been impressed by our relationship with birds, an in depth affiliation that has sadly degraded as chook numbers diminish.
Chihiro Ono and Colin Alexander started the night’s occasions with the London premiere of Avian Mirrors, for violin and cello (2013) by Arlene Sierra, who was within the viewers. Within the vigorous, puckish first motion, ‘Greeting’, each gamers answered quickly one another’s tiny motifs, shifting briskly from plucked to bowed phrases. The shadowy central ‘Reflection’ featured inverted, tutti strains that contrasted cello in low register with hovering violin. Within the ultimate motion, ‘Show’, virtuosity was to the fore, from the violin’s opening tiny soliloquies to declamatory, extremely ornamented figurations for each devices. The performers loved the outer actions’ playfulness and the central motion’s muted meditations in an astute and spirited account.
Anna Bastow gave the London premiere of Ailie Robertson’s Skydance, for solo viola (2020). On this delicate, freely expressive evocation of a hen harrier swirling and swooping within the open sky, the music’s shimmering, ethereal gestures had been interpreted poetically and with nice heat.
Mischa Macpherson took to the stage for an unaccompanied rendition of the standard Gaelic assortment of rhymes, Cànan nan Eun (‘The Language of Birds’). Delivered in tune and speech with imitations of chook calls, this enchanting, mild solo served to attract the viewers even nearer to the topic of the night’s occasions.
Chihiro Ono carried out Carola Bauckholt’s Doppelbelichtung, for solo violin and recorded samples of birdsong (2016). Incorporating materials in extraordinarily excessive register and over-pressured bow strokes, the instrumental line was a tour de drive for the violinist, but essentially the most exceptional facet of the efficiency was her inventive interactivity with the unique sounds. With exceptional imitative talent and break up second timing, she appeared to, at numerous factors, anticipate, synchronise with and echo the transcribed samples. On this spontaneous-sounding dialogue, Chihiro Ono’s aptitude and musicianship was fully on the service of the rating.
Linda Buckley’s Fiach, for solo cello (2022) addressed using the raven in Celtic folklore to indicate loss of life and the underworld. Pushed by a brooding vitality, this piece had one thing of the evening about it. Colin Alexander savoured its idiomatically written strains, expansive within the sonorous chordal opening sequence and bringing an improvisatory freshness to the faster, extra rhapsodic episodes.
The three string gamers gathered for the UK premiere of Daniela Terranova’s Rainbow Mud within the Sky, for string trio (2018), a gently resonant piece that deconstructed the tune ‘Over the Rainbow’, in order that solely faint vestiges of the melodic line lingered on in imprecise recollection. Rising from and disappearing again into silence, the entire piece was distanced and unfolded with spaciously lengthy strains. This efficiency captured the music’s elegiac, fugitive attract.
After the interval, the musicians reconvened for the UK premiere of Emily Doolittle’s Discipline Information, for string trio (2017) in three actions, every primarily based on the tune or name of a chook. There was a classical magnificence to the opening ‘Horned lark’ and its plunging glissandos, a vigorous sense of marvel within the pizzicatos in ‘Sage Grouse’ and a poised vitality to ‘Western meadowlark’. Due weight was given to the pauses between the music’s halting gestures all through the work, lending the rating an inspiriting sense of expectancy and hope.
Bent Sørensen’s wistfully expressive The Wings of Spring, for solo cello (2010) featured birdsong-like figures and mixed pizzicatos and glissandos to poignant impact. Colin Alexander was assured and delicate in his intuitive strategy to this plaintive, lamenting rating.
Mischa Macpherson then carried out Capsule iù Capsule sick sick sick Eòghainn, a conventional Gaelic ‘keening’ tune thought to duplicate the decision of the redshank, a chook related to grieving. It acquired an affectingly heartfelt rendition, which was rewarded with a deservedly heat reception.
In Helen Grime’s To see the summer time sky, for violin and viola (2009), Chihiro Ono and Anna Bastow floated the preliminary excessive harmonics with a pure expressive freedom and located a dance-like spirit within the second motion earlier than embracing delicacy and, later, extra forthright gestures within the calm gradual motion. They tore into the transient, closing moto perpetuo with gusto, rounding off a fluent studying of appreciable depth.
All 4 of the night’s performers returned to the stage to present the world premiere of Lisa Robertson’s fèath nan eun (‘the calm of the birds’), for singer and string trio (2026). The work’s title is a reference to a gradual silencing of the surroundings as a result of fall in chook numbers. Slivers of Gaelic chook imitation songs and notated chook calls had been an intrinsic a part of the fragile however sturdy materials, which, at sure junctures, concerned the gamers whistling, in addition to blowing by way of tin whistles affixed to their music stands. The narrative progressed by way of woodland, moorland and seashore habitats because the chook sounds slowly light. Fragile and feathery, the closing textural strands had a wraithlike melancholy. Lisa Robertson’s eloquent rating carried a supplicatory fervour. It acquired an acutely responsive first efficiency that ended on a climactic word a thoughtfully collated programme, consummately carried out.
Paul Conway
Arlene Sierra – Avian Mirrors (London premiere)
Ailie Robertson – Skydance (London premiere)
Trad – Cànan nan Eun
Carola Bauckholt – Doppelbelichtung
Linda Buckley – Fiach
Daniela Terranova – Rainbow Mud within the Sky (UK premiere)
Emily Doolittle – Discipline Information (UK premiere)
Bent Sørensen – The Wings of Spring
Trad – Capsule iù Capsule sick sick sick Eòghainn
Helen Grime – To see the summer time sky
Lisa Robertson – fèath nan eun (world premiere)
