United Kingdom Coleman, Osman, Ravel, Roustom, The Ayoub Sisters: Axelle Fanyo (soprano), Armand Djikoloum (oboe), Chineke! Orchestra / Fawzi Hamor (conductor). Queen Elizabeth Corridor, London, 11.10.2026. (CK)
Valerie Coleman – Umoja – anthem of unity
Ali Osman – The Shepherd’s Music
Ravel – Shéhérazade
Kareem Roustom – Ramal
The Ayoub Sisters – Arabic Symphony (London premiere)
After a niche of two years – virtually to the day – it was good to be again amongst Chineke’s loyal and energetic viewers within the Queen Elizabeth Corridor: and the orchestra obliged with music of many colors, mixing magnificence, pleasure and generosity of spirit in performances of conviction and pleasure. It was an additional pleasure to see Margaret Cookhorn, acquainted to me because the contrabassoon participant in Simon Rattle’s Metropolis of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, amongst their ranks.
Having heard Valerie Coleman’s outstanding Phenomenal Girls at that earlier live performance I used to be trying ahead to listening to Umoja. In impact her signature piece, composed initially for girls’s choir, it has appeared in lots of guises over twenty years: right here it was in full orchestral costume. It started delicately, magically, on a bowed vibraphone, the melody on solo violin, making its means across the orchestra in music of Copland-like open-heartedness and vast vistas. The strings have been beautiful; I significantly preferred a bit the place the piccolo took the tune supported by shimmering string tremolos. A faster tempo introduced some dissonant sounds, however calm was restored. The conductor Fawzi Haimor, transferring fluidly and virtually balletically on the rostrum, was clearly feeling the music, and inspired us to really feel it too.
Umoja is an inspiring piece, a principally light dance of pleasure. The identical phrases is likely to be used to explain Sudanese composer Ali Osman’s The Shepherd’s Music, scored for solo oboe and strings. Its lovely oboe theme, performed over plucked and gently syncopated strings, is instantly interesting; and although the music just isn’t with out spice it appears, at instances, not far distant from Finzi. Armand Djikoloum beguiled us all together with his pretty taking part in.
French soprano Axelle Fanyo held us in thrall too along with her clear and creamy voice and her mesmerising stage presence in a efficiency of Ravel’s Shéhérazade that I don’t anticipate ever to listen to bettered. She had no music; she inhabited every music, portray vivid sound photos for us (significantly in Asie), the creaminess of her voice maintained all through her vocal vary, all the way in which as much as her smooth prime notes. It was a vocal efficiency to set beside Idunnu Munch’s efficiency of Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre with Chineke! again in 2024. Sensuous and thrilling, alive to each element in Ravel’s ravishing rating, Fanyo’s singing impressed the orchestra to taking part in of matching gorgeousness. Her encore, Adieu by Louis Aubert, didn’t break the spell, however extended it.
Commissioned by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Japanese Divan Orchestra and devoted to the reminiscence of Edward Mentioned, Kareem Roustom’s Ramal is a piece – like Coleman’s – that has acquired fairly a efficiency historical past since its composition in 2014. Its kind is set by certainly one of sixteen pre-Islamic Arabic poetic meters utilized in classical Arabic poetry: however this needn’t hassle us as we hearken to its vivid, highly effective, typically visceral sounds. An ebullient opening shortly morphs into sounds of intensive exercise: a horn calls boldly, and the music builds to a temper of offended protest. Cellos introduce a calmer episode, however the undertow of sturdy feeling persists; limping, the music evokes sounds of the oppressed, with a keening sob of anguish within the violins. Defiance once more: the strings’ try and construct one thing fragile is swallowed entire by a bitter, eruptive march with sneering horns. After a strong climax the music ebbs once more, lowered to mutterings that shortly peter out.
Ramal is a piece of ardour and grit, with a notably resourceful use of percussion. Though it’s not programmatic, it comes as no shock to be taught that it displays the unsettled state of the world, particularly the devastating civil conflict and its aftermath in Syria: or that its dedication to Edward Mentioned is impressed by his steadfast willpower to talk reality to energy. It was given a vivid, edgy efficiency, and composer Kareem Roustom was given a heat reception on the finish.
Sarah and Laura Ayoub (from Cairo) describe their vastly entertaining Arabic Symphony (receiving its London premiere) as ‘a four-movement work impressed by the various areas, traditions and musical kinds throughout the Arab world… a ardour undertaking… a showcase of Arabic music, tradition and sound worlds offered by way of a western symphonic lens.’ A symphony, then, within the sense that Ives’s New England Holidays is a symphony; a piece, you may say, that does for the Arabic world what Respighi did for Rome and Revueltas did for the Mayan civilisation in La Noche de los Mayas. And none the more severe for that.
The primary motion parachutes us into Marrakesh for some gnawa music (‘sluggish, evolving trance music which steadily accelerates’): that includes, amongst different issues, the krakebs (Moroccan castanets) clapping away over pizzicatos within the decrease strings, and an imitation of the gimbri (bass guitar from North Africa). The strings construct powerfully to the primary of many (too many?) percussion cadenzas; an thrilling trombone solo, then trumpet; braying horns, out of the blue lower off.
That’s only a flavour. I’m not going to aim plodding evaluation of the remaining three actions. A number of the issues that caught my ear: percussion padding softly behind an prolonged passage for harp; ghostly harp glissandos behind excessive violins; properly blended taking part in for the horns. It’s honest to say that every motion builds excitingly, with driving rhythms from the percussion (within the third motion this turns into a grim, unmistakably Shostakovichian march – we might have been on the highway to Leningrad). The essential factor to say is that Chineke! and conductor Fawzi Hamor gave it their all in taking part in so vivid that it appeared, at instances, virtually overwhelming: the overtaxed percussion gamers required superhuman stamina, they usually offered it, after which some. Loud cheers and a standing ovation: a piece for the BBC Proms if ever I heard one.
There was extra to this live performance. The Ayoub sisters have been interviewed by Interim Deputy Inventive Director Linton Stephens earlier than the efficiency; earlier, he had given a transferring tribute to trombonist Harry Brown, who died – too younger – in September. Fittingly, the brass part bid him farewell with Charles Mingus’s Goodbye Pork Pie Hat earlier than swinging into one thing extra upbeat. Rambunctious and resplendent.
Chris Kettle
