Re-greening
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
"can you write us a piece that we don't need to use a conductor for?"
"can you write us a piece that we don't need to use a conductor for?"
With characteristic inventiveness, the NYO approached me with an unusual request; to write them a piece for very large orchestra, that could 1. be performed without a conductor 2. be played partly from memory, and 3. could be a companion piece for Mahler's Ninth Symphony...
It's unusual for me to take on commission which already has a concept behind it, but I loved the poetic ideas that the NYO came to me with: it had to be about the essence of Spring and youthfulness in the wider context of the cycle of life and death.
It's unusual for me to take on commission which already has a concept behind it, but I loved the poetic ideas that the NYO came to me with: it had to be about the essence of Spring and youthfulness in the wider context of the cycle of life and death.
I found inspiration in a shamanic wheel of the year; a system with an ancient, nature-based mythology.
This page of sketches encapsulates almost all of the material I used to make the piece.
From the programme note:
Endless refrains, woven out of intricate, inter-connecting segments combine to form a kind of musical forest. Much of the surface music is playful, yet punctuated by explosions of new growth, rising from below, in a celebration of Spring. Bursts of sound often announce new permutations of colour and texture; like a parade of windows, framing the cycles of forest life.
Endless refrains, woven out of intricate, inter-connecting segments combine to form a kind of musical forest. Much of the surface music is playful, yet punctuated by explosions of new growth, rising from below, in a celebration of Spring. Bursts of sound often announce new permutations of colour and texture; like a parade of windows, framing the cycles of forest life.
Some melodic fragments and bits of systems and harmony.
Re-greening was premiered at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh on 6 August 2015. Following that the NYO took the work on tour, to Symphony Hall, Birmingham, the Royal Albert Hall, London, and the Konzerthaus in Berlin.