Beyond
Thomas Adès (b 1971)
Three-piece Suite from Powder Her Face (1995/2007)
Jonathan Dove (b 1959)
Stargazer (2001)
Matthew Aucoin (b 1990)
Eurydice Suite (2022)
Heath (2023)
Nico Muhly (b 1981)
Liar Suite from Marnie
Peter Moore (trombone)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Timothy Redmond
rec. 2024, City Halls, Glasgow, UK
Reviewed as download
Orchid Classics ORC100368 [82]
Timothy Redmond has devised a programme inspired by opera for this new Orchid Classics release. There are no voices though. In his words, the music here ‘is a distillation of the theatrical experience’. His choices are inspired, and he draws fabulous playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to make this a riveting and highly enjoyable recital, one of the best albums of contemporary orchestral music I’ve heard in ages.
The Three-Piece Suite by Thomas Adès from his hugely successful opera Powder Her Face is the curtain raiser. As well as the many productions worldwide of the complete opera, Adès has continued to return to it to rework the music into selections for orchestral performance. From the original Dances from Powder Her Face he developed the Three-Piece Suite and has since followed it with the Hotel Suite and Luxury Suite (no doubt planning a culmination called the Suites Suite). Premiered by the Philharmonia at the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival, it’s a truly entertaining journey traversing key moments of the opera. Surprisingly, this is the first recording. I think it’s safe to say that Redmond and the BBC SSO make the most of it. It’s a veritable romp at times with nods to some not unrelated operas – ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ and ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ are certainly there, and I don’t think I am being fanciful in hearing echoes of ‘Lulu’ also – sublimated into popular forms and idioms. We have an upbeat and sleazy overture, what feels like a celebratory waltz slowly disintegrating as it proceeds and an increasingly fragile tango: a narrative which feels like it’s being told as much by a Big Band and Orquesta típica as by a symphony orchestra. It’s brilliantly realised here.
After the excitement of that opener, I was concerned that the rest of the album might feel bathetic, but far from it. Jonathan Dove’s Stargazer from 2001 is next. This is a beautiful, typically inventive piece, which Dove describes as a ‘miniature opera’ for trombone. Its premise is simple: the trombone is the ‘Stargazer’ and the orchestra the constellations observed. Played in a continuous movement of six sections, each representing a different constellation or formation it’s a mesmerising experience. From what I have already described, it may be obvious to you that this is not a conventionally extrovert concerto, indeed it’s devoid of anything one could describe as pyrotechnics. I suspect though that from the trombonist’s perspective what Dove has written is more difficult to pull off than a typical barnstorming display. It’s a demanding exploration of the trombone’s lyrical qualities and requires playing of the upmost sensitivity and skill, often at the extreme higher registers of the instrument. Peter Moore delivers a bewitching performance, against an orchestral accompaniment redolent with atmosphere.
Another operatic suite follows, this time from Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice. I was very impressed indeed by the opera when I heard the radio broadcast from the Met in 2021 and this suite (commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and first performed in 2022) strikes me as a wholly successful attempt to translate and condense the thrilling experience of the larger work. Its four movements alternate between the world of the living and the dead, starting with what Aucoin describes as a ‘ping of oblivion’ and a vividly imagined tour of the underworld, making inventive use of percussion in particular to portray something that is simultaneously eerie and also curiously banal. His musical language throughout is a skilful synthesis of influences (modern film scores and minimalism figure highly) and his own distinctive vision. I love the way he uses the orchestra early on to portray Eurydice’s desolation as she hears the sound of a departing subway train, thinking she has found herself in some unknown empty station, waiting for someone she is unable to remember. The final section, depicting the failed walk out of the underworld and the agony of missed chances is simultaneously gripping and heartbreaking.
In another age, the next piece, Heath, also by Aucoin might be called a tone poem. It uses King Lear as its basis and although not a conventional narrative reconstruction of the heath scenes from Act III of the play in music, he has used the heath as a sort of metaphorical backdrop for the growing harshness and brutality experienced as the play progresses. For the most part the music is intensely dramatic, profoundly foreboding and incredibly evocative of that curious legendary old Britain Shakespeare invented. It’s not difficult music – as in the Eurydice Suite Aucoin is accessible and upfront about what he is doing – but it has a cumulative power that, like the play, is overwhelming.
Nico Muhly’s Liar is the final composition, another operatic suite. His opera Marnie was seen at English National Opera in 2017 and then the Met in 2018. It’s a tour de force of a different kind to the Aucoin works. Although for his opera Muhly and his librettist Nicholas Wright went back to Winston Graham’s novel, rather than Hitchcock’s film, the music is strongly reminiscent of Hollywood films of an earlier era to Marnie and also to my ears, to that of Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock’s composer. Muhly’s music is incredibly clever and he’s especially adept at the creation of original textures and weaving them together. So, for example, as well as the aforesaid film inspired music, we have a Miles Davis inspired trumpet passage and historically informed string playing competing for our attention at various points. This results in a heightened sense of phycological complexity but at the same time he’s careful to ensure the main characters are clearly delineated, so the narrative is never lost. Here BBCSSO principals shine as Marnie (oboe), her husband Mark (trombone) and Mother (viola). It’s a memorable and extremely striking depiction of a traumatic story and a really powerful way to end the programme.
Producer Andrew Keener and the Orchid engineering team have captured all of this superbly. The sleeve notes by Timothy Redmond are excellent and it’s great to also have Jonathan Dove and Matthew Aucoin writing so informatively about their compositions. Orchid is also apparently planning a series of podcasts in support of the album which should be fascinating. This whole project, from the choice of pieces, the commitment of composers and performers and the supporting material is exemplary, and it deserves to be widely heard.
Dominic Hartley
Previous review: Ken Talbot (March 2025)
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free.
