Winter Wind-Down with the 大象传媒 Concert Orchestra
Winter may be the chilliest season of the year but it’s also the cosiest. It’s time for the warm slippers and woollies (no-one’s looking!) and for settling by the fire with a hot drink. As the light fades and nature sleeps, it’s also a chance to recharge ahead of the rebirth of spring.
Here are four reasons to beat the seasonal blues and kick back with the 大象传媒 Concert Orchestra’s Winter Wind-Down concert.
Birds
In his Cantus Arcticus ("Song of the Arctic") Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara created a "concerto for birds and orchestra". Echoing birdsong in music is nothing new – it goes back to the 14th century or earlier – but here Rautavaara broke new ground.
As well as reflecting bird songs and cries in the music, he also captured their soaring, circling flight. Not only that, but he recorded the real-life sounds of Subarctic birds – including the whooper swan, crane and shore lark (the last of these is manipulated to create a "ghost bird"). These sounds merge in and out of the orchestral fabric, bringing the vast northern landscape into your private headspace.
Bells
The Estonian Arvo Pärt is fêted as one of the high priests of "spiritual" Minimalism – the movement that calmed the frenetic, complex patterning of the original, Made-in-America variety and injected it with soul-searching space and warmth. And breathe. And relax.
Pärt’s "tintinnabuli" style – inspired by the harmonious resonances of small bells – is a hallmark of his piece Fratres (Brothers) for strings and percussion.
In classic fashion, two parallel voices – moving at a fixed number of notes apart – are joined by a middle voice that cycles through the notes of the familiar tonic triad (the notes that form the backbone of unadorned, "consonant" harmony).
A gentle drone (long, sustained notes) in the bass anchors this three-voice mobile and the gentle tapping of wood sticks gives a whiff of religious ritual. You can almost smell the incense.
Byrd
William Byrd, that is – a jewel in the crown of English Renaissance church music. At a time of tension between Catholics and Protestants, and despite being a Catholic himself, Byrd became a Gentleman at Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal in 1572.
Over 400 years later, in 2007, the American composer Nico Muhly transported two of Byrd’s finely wrought choral motets – "Miserere mei, Deus" and "Bow thine ear" – into the orchestral realm. "On the page [Byrd’s music] looks so little," says Muhly, "but then… an enormous emotional landscape unfolds."
The mesmerising vocal lines seem designed to bloom in the expansive acoustic spaces of churches and cathedrals, and Muhly has streaked them with a modern colouring.
Re-boot
In 2012 Max Richter produced his iTunes chart-topping album Recomposed by Max Richter, inspired by Vivaldi’s (even more chart-topping) cycle of violin concertos The Four Seasons. This resampling and reimagining overlays Vivaldi’s familiar sound-world with a sheen of ambient Minimalism. The Four Seasons, in a dream. Aptly, "Winter" is the concerto being performed in this concert, featuring Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen.
Daniel Hope, the violinist on the album, has described this piece as "really out of this world. It’s as if an alien has picked it up and pulled it through a time warp. It’s really eerie: Max has kept Vivaldi’s melody, but it’s pulled apart by the ethereal harmonics underneath it."
