Atlas, Anna Clyne’s new piano concerto, co-commissioned by the Metropolis of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, takes its title and its inspiration from a four-volume compendium of images and drawings assembled by the German visible artist Gerhard Richter. The concerto was written for Jeremy Denk, who gave the primary efficiency in Dallas in March, and he was additionally the soloist for the UK premiere, with the CBSO and its chief conductor, Kazuki Yamada.
Following Richter’s instance, Clyne describes Atlas as a “musical montage and a lucid narrative”. It’s definitely discursive; every of the 4 actions within the half-hour-long work has a descriptive title, however the moods of all of them change so quickly, that the labels appear irrelevant. The quicksilver adjustments of temper and route are largely prompted by the extrovert piano writing, projected with actual wit by Denk, and allusions abound: there’s a touch of the Dies Irae plainchant within the opening motion, and later references to pentatonic orientalism, a churchy chorale, and distinctly Bachian counterpoint; the general impression is of a brilliantly colored musical scrapbook, artfully assembled.
Originally of subsequent season Yamada turns into the CBSO’s music director, and the rapport he has with the orchestra after his first 12 months in Birmingham was clear from the swaggering manner wherein they launched the live performance with Gershwin’s An American in Paris, giving simply the correct amount of louche to its bluesy tropes, and fantastically controlling its climaxes. Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante Défunte did endure from Yamada’s fairly funereal tempo, however Photos at an Exhibition ended the live performance on an actual excessive. This was not the acquainted Ravel 1922 orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piano authentic, and even a kind of like Stokowski’s or Ashkenazy’s that’s typically heard, however a model that predates all of them, made by Henry Wooden in 1915.
Wooden’s scoring is extra interventionist than Ravel’s. He omits all however the opening Promenade; his textures are usually heavier, their degree of dissonance greater. Not all his concepts are convincing, however some are placing – camel bells off-stage in Bydlo, an organ so as to add weight to the textures within the last Nice Gate of Kiev. It could lack the finesse of the Ravel model, however it’s an actual orchestral showpiece that Yamada and his band clearly appreciated.
