Anna Clyne Mythologies

Press Book

Digital and CD release October 16, 2020

Mythologies promotional video ​ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT1f6CWsS8M&ab_channel=AnnaClyne%2CComposer

Limited Edition Vinyl release February 5, 2021

Anna Clyne at her local record shop, Rhino Records, New York

Mythologies at Rhino Records, New York ​

Press Coverage

Press Quotes

Gramophone Magazine Best of 2020 ​

"All five works here teem with vivid, near-cinematic imagination and atmosphere" – Presto Music ​

"full-throated, turbo-charged orchestral energy" – The Telegraph ​

"Recorded live by the BBCSO under four different conductors, they bristle with full-on orchestral dynamism." – The Guardian ​

“Anna Clyne’s imaginative musical language, rich in melodic flights and enticing details, shines through in these five works spanning 15 years of creativity.” – Gramophone ​ Magazine Best of 2020 ​

“Five vibrant, exuberantly scored and appealing works. Composed over the past 15 years, the pieces are arranged not in chronological order but in an engrossingly musical sequence not unlike that of a concert.” – Gramophone Magazine ​

"Clyne is adept at masking complexity with hummable sonorities" – Norman Lebrecht

"Anna Clyne’s zappy handling of the symphony orchestra, full of electro-acoustic elasticity as the beautiful booklet note spells out, has made her a safe bet in the delivery of orchestral showpieces." – The Strad ​

“Clyne is one the most creative orchestrators working today, with a knack for drawing spell-binding textures and vivid sonorities from unexpected sources... The BBC Symphony Orchestra interprets these works with valiant spirit and brilliant follow-through, led by a rotating cast of internationally renowned conductors including Marin Alsop, Andrew Litton, Sakari Oramo, and André de Ritter.” – WQXR ​

"Entertaining, ingenious and unpredictable. That’s Anna Clyne.” – BBC Record Review ​

"An absorbing compendium of her orchestral music showcasing her exhilarating mix of multimedia, historical models and new dialects" – BBC Record Review ​

“A compendium of her colorful, ravishingly-orchestrated tone poems from the last decade” – San Francisco Classical Voice ​

“Both accessible and deeply original, the music of London-born composer Anna Clyne is a convergence of tradition and invention, sometimes set against each other to provide a fascinating contrast, other times wrapped up into one enchanting package — familiar sound and fresh sensibility. Her latest album, Mythologies, makes clear that she is an essential voice in the field today, and a supremely enjoyable one at that.” – Cleveland Classical

“Clyne’s maturity as a composer and brilliance as an orchestrator is capably demonstrated... What’s more, her language – at once contemporary and expressive – is both satisfying and emotionally direct.” – ArtsFuse ​

“Mythologies is an excellent survey of her orchestral music, and its embrace of both filmic pizzazz and contemporary edge.” – The Arts Desk ​

"folk-like touches and spectacular orchestration aided by lush electronic manipulation" – American Record Guide ​

"Clyne’s debut record is a validation of the continuing relevance of classical form in the twenty-first century" – The Critic ​

“Clyne's music exudes an era-transcending quality in these phantasmagoric pieces, some of which stretch out for twenty minutes at a time. The Grammy-nominated composer is a tale-spinner whose creations transport the listener to dazzling realms.” – Textura ​

"A real winning performance that jumpstarts the blood flow." – Midwest Record ​

"Vivid programmatic orchestral scores provide an ideal introduction to this increasingly popular composer." – AllMusic ​

"I found her music colourful, full of energy and overflowing with ideas which grip you from first to last...I hope that many will derive as much musical pleasure from this very fine release as I have, and that it will not take too long before more of Clyne's orchestral music is committed to disc." – MusicWeb International ​

"A thrilling collection of powerful orchestral works by a composer rapidly emerging as one of the most remarkable and original voices of the current generation of British talent." – Records International ​

"Anna Clyne usually succeeds in what few modern composers master: embroidering contemporary classical sounds that you really want to listen to again." – Dagens ​ Nyheter

"Anna Clyne, one of our most inventive and original composers, writes music that’s accessible but adventurous, forcefully dramatic yet delicate." – Film Festival Traveler ​

"a passionate, exhilarating live album... This is hands-down one of the half-dozen best classical albums of 2020." – New York Music Daily ​

Playlist Highlights

Mythologies on iTunes ​

Recordings of the Year

https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/91342/spread/31

Recordings of the Year 2020 - Our Top 100 Katherine Cooper November 19, 2020

After many hours of listening and discussion (chiefly conducted via Zoom this year), the Presto editorial team have finally decided on our top 100 Recordings of the Year: you can browse through the finalists below, and until 25th January 2021 we're offering special discounts on almost all of the featured titles. Our top 10 recordings will be announced on Thursday 10th December.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/3623--awards-recordings-of-the-year-2020-our-top-100?utm_so urce=News-2020-11-20&utm_medium=email

The Best Classical Albums of 2020

Zev Kane December 21, 2020

Even though it was quite an unusual year, we were treated to lots of wonderful, not-to-be-missed recordings.

2020. It’s been … a year. With concert halls shuttered, musicians struggling to find work, and performing arts institutions reeling, we’ve been comforted, inspired, and reinvigorated by the thousands of new classical recordings that, against all odds, were released this year. With profound gratitude for the musicians, engineers, producers, record label professionals, and publicists who brought them into existence, here are 30 of our favorites.

Anna Clyne: Mythologies Jennifer Koh, violin Irene Buckley, vocals BBC Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, and André de Ritter, conductors

Anna Clyne is one the most creative orchestrators working today. Her knack for drawing spell-binding sonorities from unexpected sources is on full display in this collection of works she wrote between 2005 and 2015, intrepidly premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. https://www.wqxr.org/story/best-classical-albums-2020/

Magazines

CLYNE Mythologies Guy Rickards

Mark Pullinger wrote movingly of Anna Clyne’s cello concerto DANCE (2019) in the August issue, concluding that it ​ ​ ‘should make many friends’. So, too, will this all-Clyne release from Avie, featuring five vibrant, exuberantly scored and appealing works. Composed over the past 15 years, the pieces are arranged not in chronological order but in an engrossingly musical sequence not unlike that of a concert. At its heart is another concerto, for violin, The Seamstress ​ (2014). On her website, the composer describes this not so much as a concerto but as ‘an imaginary one-act ballet’ where the title character’s mind wanders into a series of tales ranging ‘from love to despair, and that combine memory with fantasy’. It is beautifully played by Jennifer Koh (for whom it was written) and given an extra dimension by the incursion of Irene Buckley’s whispered declamation of the Yeats verse that inspired it.

The ‘overture’ is the bracing Masquerade, written for the 2013 Last Night of the Proms. This would seem to be that terrific ​ ​ performance, directed by Marin Alsop (a shame the applause is omitted). At a snip under five minutes in length, Masquerade is the shortest composition here, briefer even than the concluding, irresistible toccata <

To my mind the most impressive piece here is This Midnight Hour (2015), inspired by poems by Baudelaire and Juan ​ ​ Ramón Jiménez, compact, compelling and tautly directed by Oramo. Irrespective of the conductors, it is the BBC Symphony Orchestra who shine throughout, with superbly mastered sound (by Jody Elff). Another winner from Avie.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/clyne-mythologies

Photo: Christina Kernohan

Composer Anna Clyne on her new orchestral collection 'Mythologies' October 30, 2020

As Avie releases an album of five of her orchestral works, the US-based composer talks to Gramophone

'Mythologies', just out on Avie, contains five orchestral works by Anna Clyne covering a period of 10 years. James Jolly caught up with the New York-based composer to talk about the collection, her various roles as composer-in-residence, and where she looks for inspiration when responding to a commission.

You can listen to the Podcast below. To hear other Gramophone podcasts, or to subscribe for free to new ​ ​ editions, search for 'Gramophone Magazine' in your Podcast application of choice, or visit Gramophone's page on Apple Podcasts.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/podcasts/article/composer-anna-clyne-on-her-new-orchestral-collection-mythologies

Classical Vinyl Makes a Comeback: Old-school Recaptures Its Cool Laurence Vittes November 24, 2020

From the November-December 2020 issue of Strings magazine ​ ​

“Vinyl is the coolest thing and will outpace sales of CDs soon,” says cellist Jan Vogler, whose 2017 hit recording New Worlds: Bill Murray, Jan Vogler, and Friends was released in a limited edition two-LP set. “CDs ​ ​ are transitional—the old word now is digital. Streaming is winning the battle for the masses, but vinyl sounds ​ ​ beautiful, is collectible, and it’s fun to take LPs out of their sleeves and put them on the turntable.”

The LP (long playing) record was introduced in 1948 by Columbia, and over four decades served as the perfect medium for the immediacy of analog sound—along with new artistic possibilities represented by the 12-inch square it came packaged in. Vinyl became a key currency along cultural trade routes, both written about and discussed. And now it’s happening all over again.

For John Chen, sales manager at Brooklyn-based Grado Labs, the reason is clear: Analog vinyl is essential because it’s “the polar opposite of digital. Why look at a digital photo of a Klimt when you can go to the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue? The same is true for music: Analog gets you closer.”

Vinyl has recaptured its cool to the point that, according to RIAA data, it accounts for half of physical recording sales in the United States. And ten percent of that is classical, which, incidentally, is what is was in the heyday of the LP. Vinyl outlets range from media giants Amazon and Barnes & Noble to the thousands of independent record and book stores that celebrate vinyl in particular twice each year on Record Store Day.

Industry giant Warner Classics is heavily invested in vinyl, especially analog. “Reissuing the crown jewels of our back catalog, from analog sources of the highest possible quality, is what mainly drives our vinyl sales,” explains Markus Petersen, senior vice president of global operations and business development at Warner Classics & Erato. “Great soloists like Jacqueline du Pré and Itzhak Perlman, whose iconic Paganini and Bach are scheduled for upcoming vinyl release, are in especially high demand.”

In addition, Petersen points out that many Warner artists, like the Ébène Quartet and pianist Alexandre Tharaud, who are “very precise about how they want their recordings to sound, actually demand that we release their new recordings on vinyl because they like the sound.”

While Universal and Sony are also investing big in vinyl, indies are also active in this space. Avie Records, for example, will release a limited-edition vinyl version of violinist Jennifer Koh playing Anna Clyne’s The ​ Seamstress, recorded live with the BBC Symphony. ​ ​

Clyne tells me, “I love the manual process of playing vinyl—taking the time to really stop, listen, and enjoy a complete album—as opposed to streaming. I enjoy the ritual of loading the record player and turning it for both sides. I have quite an extensive vinyl collection myself and this is the first time that I will have a chance to hear my own music on my record player.”

Violinist and violist Liz Knowles says that “things are getting decidedly more analog and that is what vinyl is for me. I crave that sound—the popping, the actual moving of the needle—and the fact that it is finite: it will end when it reaches the end. iTunes does my head in with its constant play, the sheer overwhelm of what is in my library, and the fact that it is always modifying what it thinks I should hear.”

Cellist Joshua Gindele of the Miró Quartet recounts that the “fabric” of his family was rooted in vinyl. “We listened to Isaac Stern’s Four Seasons, Mountain, Led Zeppelin, the Band. And I’ve continued the tradition. We ​ ​ have a weekly Sunday event at the house. The kids put a record on the turntable, put the needle down, and we listen together—to both sides. My wife subscribed me to a club that sends hard-to-find releases. I got a Marvin Gaye album a few months ago. The last classical I got was Mr. Stern playing the Brahms with Ormandy.”

For L.A. violinist Eric Gorfain, leader of the Section Quartet, vinyl is an indispensable tool of the trade. “I listen to vinyl almost every day. I have three turntables: one in my studio, one in the living room, and one in my den. I have often recorded to analog tape and there are old-school producers who still only record to analog.” Gorfain has mixed to tape on many occasions and wishes tape were more readily available and economical so he could use it more often. “It’s completely different from digital sound.”

Curious to explore the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings on vinyl, I compared the Ébène Quartet’s digital LPs of live performances from its globetrotting Beethoven cycle to the Quartetto Italiano’s recording of the same quartets made in the mid-1970s by Philips. I used a U-Turn Orbit Basic turntable with a Grado cartridge and Klipsch R-51PM powered Bluetooth speakers.

Both recordings had similar moments of sheer beauty and physical impact, but the Ébène’s stunningly intense playing was captured with more dynamic range and more purity of tone. However, the Quartetto Italiano’s analog sound was more visceral and dimensional. While software is busy processing digital musical pixels, filling in any it missed, analog remains unwaveringly in contact with the physical sound. It results in a kind of authenticity that makes it feel like you’re there. ​ ​

Perhaps it’s because of the physical contact between the stylus and the groove, which comes as close as a mechanical device can to the physical interactions of instruments. Perhaps it’s because our brains are analog. Perhaps, as a noted Parisian audiophile and mathematician explained, “When you integrate a curve in the digital process you lose micro information. And music, like all the other arts, is a world of nuances that generates more micro information than you can ever imagine. Add the world of nano information from the unconscious and you know why digital is not enough.”

If you’re ready to dive in yourself, you’ll find new and a ton of used classical vinyl online and on the ground. For a listing of independent stores stocking vinyl, check out the Record Store Day site.

https://stringsmagazine.com/classical-vinyl-makes-a-comeback-old-school-recaptures-its-cool/

Jennifer Koh: Mythologies

Andrew Mellor February 24, 2021

Contemporary composer symphonic showcase that’s full of electric energy

The Strad Issue: March 2021 ​

Description: Contemporary composer symphonic showcase that’s full of electric energy ​

Musicians: Jennifer Koh (violin) Irene Buckley (voice) BBC Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, ​ Andrew Litton, André de Ridder

Works: Clyne: Masquerade; This Midnight Hour; The Seamstress; Night Ferry; <

Catalogue number: AVIE AV2434 ​

Anna Clyne’s zappy handling of the symphony orchestra, full of electro-acoustic elasticity as the beautiful booklet note spells out, has made her a safe bet in the delivery of orchestral showpieces. For example, Masquerade – the work that opened the Last Night of the Proms in 2013, in the recording heard here. It’s good to hear this restless orchestral firework right next to The Midnight Hour, which has the same urgent drive but tempers it.

The two other orchestra-only works here, Night Ferry and <

Of primary interest to readers of The Strad is The Seamstress, a concerto for violin and speaker reciting Yeats’s poem. It is best described, as the booklet does, as a series of visions – a Scheherazade-like piece with an equivalent narrative weave. There’s the hint of passacaglia that feels underexploited but a strikingly beautiful harmonic sequence in the second half under the line ‘I made my coat a song’ that gets right under the skin. Koh approaches the solo violin part with the element of shamanism it needs. Quibbles and reservations elsewhere, but The Seamstress is a resonant piece that hits upon something. Sound differs across these five BBC recordings but is consistently present and clear.

https://www.thestrad.com/reviews/jennifer-koh-mythologies/11724.article

In the Press

JS Bach: Goldberg Variations review – softly spoken and immensely powerful

Erica Jeal October 29, 2020

This week’s other pick This is at the other end of the scale: Mythologies, five works by Anna Clyne including her 2014 violin concerto The Seamstress and the premiere recording of the overture Masquerade. Recorded live by the BBCSO under four different conductors, they bristle with full-on orchestral dynamism.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/29/js-bach-goldberg-variations-review-pavel-kolesnikov

Anna Clyne’s Brilliant Decade on Display in Mythologies ​ Richard S. Ginell December 7, 2020

Credit Jennifer Taylor

There is something to be said for working extensively in electronic or electro-acoustic music before confronting a symphony orchestra with your compositions for the first time. It gives you low-cost access to a nearly unlimited supply of sound colors, and you begin to have an idea of what is possible and what is transferrable.

It certainly seems to be working for Britain’s Anna Clyne, now 40, who, following the release of her enticing new cello concerto DANCE (reviewed in SFCV in June) has issued a compendium of her colorful, ​ ​ ​ ​ ravishingly-orchestrated tone poems from the last decade (Avie). The whole package is called Mythologies, ​ ​ consisting of five pieces recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under four different conductors and broadcast by the BBC from 2011 to 2018.

The leadoff piece, Masquerade, is an attractive curtain-raiser that sounds custom tailored to the Last Night of ​ ​ the Proms for which it was commissioned, in 2013. Marin Alsop leads an orchestra that swirls vigorously and seductively in continuous scales and glissandos before suddenly breaking out into suggestions of English folk songs (Clyne knew her audience).

This Midnight Hour, with Sakari Oramo on the podium, alternates between morbid visions suggested by by ​ Juan Ramón Jiménez’s poem about a demented woman running naked through the streets and an evening poem by Charles Baudelaire. The music often scampers about, as the woman might, finally giving way to a darkly lyrical, subdued folk melody for the last three minutes or so, punctuated at the close by a single, loud, startling timpanum stroke. The sweep of the melodic line sometimes reminds me of gestures used in certain films and miniseries.

A mournful, folk-based Irish fiddle tune in the lowest range of the violin launches The Seamstress, with Oramo ​ ​ again wielding the baton and Jennifer Koh as the star soloist in a de facto violin concerto. Irene Buckley’s whispers and sighs emanating from a laptop equipped with Pro Tools music software accompany the instruments in spots; she is supposed to be quoting William Butler Yeats’s poem “A Coat,” but the Irish-accented words aren’t intelligible until the last third of the piece. When not immersed in the fiddle tune, Koh gets plenty of opportunities to flaunt some technical razzle-dazzle.

Andrew Litton takes command in Night Ferry as drum strokes, muted brass, and swirling strings and winds ​ ​ suggest a storm at sea (as a metaphor for manic depressive states, Clyne’s starting point for the piece), while raindrops from harp and strings offer some calm in between the eruptions. A piccolo keeps re-quoting a theme that sounds like a paraphrase of one that runs through the first movement of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. Eventually the low, dark brasses guide the ferry gently into port, by which time this listener is deliciously wrung out from this scintillating addition to the gallery of storm-at-sea sound pictures by Mendelssohn, Wagner, Sibelius, Britten, et al.

Finally comes the earliest (2011) piece, <

https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/none/anna-clynes-brilliant-decade-on-display-in-mythologies

Classical CDs: Elephants, pestilence and lockdown fiddling

Graham Rickson February 13, 2021

Six more zingers, including strong British contemporary music and the complete Ravel

Always moving: composer Anna Clyne (Jennifer Taylor) ​ ​

Anna Clyne: Mythologies BBC Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, André ​ ​ de Ridder (Avie Records)

The musical content is impressive enough, but this disc is almost an unofficial tribute to the BBC as a supporter of new music. These are pin-sharp performances of works which require a virtuoso response, the BBC Symphony under four different conductors playing as if their lives were at stake. The five Anna Clyne works collected here were written between 2012 and 2014, neatly sequenced in an order that makes musical sense. 2013’s Masquerade, written ​ ​ as an opener for the Last Night of the Proms, is a stunner, an engrossing five-minute explosion. Unabashedly tonal but thrillingly contemporary, Clyne instinctively knows what to do with her material, the melodies careering around the orchestra as if someone's fiddling with the balance settings, hinting at her background in electro-acoustic music. I love the lack of padding: the feeling of movement, of development is always present. 2015’s The Midnight Hour is a noirish nocturne, its 13 poetry-inspired minutes as packed with ​ ​ ideas as a Strauss or Sibelius tone poem.

Violinist Jennifer Koh is the soloist in The Seamstress, an arresting extended single movement concerto. ​ ​ Listen carefully halfway through and you’ll just make out Clyne’s fellow composer Irene Buckley softly reciting a snatch of Yeats. Night Ferry’s stormy seascape is brilliantly sustained, the disc ending with eight minutes of ​ ​ frenzied activity in the shape of <

https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/classical-cds-elephants-pestilence-and-lockdown-fiddling

Presto Editor's Choices, Presto Editor's Choices - October 2020 Katherine Cooper October 31, 2020

Personal favourites from October include five evocative orchestral works from British composer Anna Clyne, Reynaldo Hahn’s enchanting teenage opera L’île du rêve, an intimate recital of French mélodies with guitar ​ ​ from Laurent Naouri and Frédéric Loiseau, and a mesmerising sequence of riddles and rune-songs from Stef Conner and friends.

Anna Clyne: Mythologies

Irene Buckley (speaker), Jennifer Koh (violin) BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, André de Ridder

All five works here teem with vivid, near-cinematic imagination and atmosphere, from the swaggering, carnivalesque Masquerade (the curtain-opener at the ​ ​ Last Night of the Proms 2013) to the turbulent fever-dream of Night Ferry, composed in 2012 for the ​ ​ Chicago Symphony. The highlight for me, though, is the hypnotic The Seamstress, in which Irene ​ ​ Buckley’s whispered fragments of a poem by WB Yeats intertwine with Jennifer Koh’s solo violin to weave a tapestry of strange, frayed beauty.

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/3583--presto-editors-choices-presto-editors-choices-october-20 20?utm_source=News-2020-11-06&utm_medium=email

Classical CD Reviews: Anna Clyne’s “Mythologies,” Simone Dinnerstein’s “A Character of Quiet,” and Hélène Grimaud’s “The Messenger” Jonathan Blumhofer November 24, 2020

Composer Anna Clyne’s new disc displays her maturity as a composer and brilliance as an orchestrator; pianist Simone Dinnerstein builds a number of bridges between Philip Glass and Franz Schubert; pianist Hélène Grimaud’s interesting program is marred by some uneven Mozart.

Anna Clyne’s Mythologies marks the composer’s second big release of 2020 (her cello concerto, Dance, was ​ ​ ​ ​ the first). And, on the whole, it’s a timely celebration of one of her generation’s most agreeable composers.

The opening track, Masquerade, written for the 2013 Last Night of the Proms, comes over as a dazzling, ​ ​ woozy curtain-raiser. The piece does exactly what it’s supposed to, offering spades of color and brilliantly showcasing the orchestra all in the course of about four minutes. Marin Alsop and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCSO) have the whole thing perfectly (and ingratiatingly) in hand.

The remainder of the disc’s programming, though, is rather darker.

This Midnight Hour juxtaposes haunting imagery from a pair of poems, one by Juan Ramón Jiménez and the ​ other by Charles Baudelaire. Its aggressive moments and episodes work best – like the driving, opening rhythmic figure, and the surprise ending – while the quarter-tone waltz gets a bit static on its repetitions. Even so, Sakari Oramo and the BBCSO ably draw out Clyne’s alluring sense of orchestral color and strong dramatic sensibilities.

A similarly mysterious atmosphere pervades The Seamstress, a violin concerto that doubles as a ballet. ​ ​ Clyne’s writing alternates folklike gestures and Coplandesque textures with episodes of fiery dissonance and an eerie recitation of Yeats’s eponymous poem whispered by Irene Buckley. The writing for orchestra is, again, deft and subtle, but even more striking is the solo line – impeccably dispatched by Jennifer Koh – which uses space and register craftily and doesn’t waste a note.

Clyne’s Night Ferry, originally written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, gets a performance from the ​ ​ BBCSO (led by Andrew Litton) that’s definitive: there’s a confidence to the lyrical writing that’s absent in the CSO’s recording, as well as livelier tempos and an overall stronger sense of space and color.

The album’s earliest work, 2005’s <

Even so, Clyne’s maturity as a composer and brilliance as an orchestrator is capably demonstrated in each of the previous pieces. What’s more, her language – at once contemporary and expressive – is both satisfying and emotionally direct.

https://artsfuse.org/216468/classical-cd-reviews-anna-clynes-mythologies-simone-dinnersteins-a-character-of- quiet-and-helene-grimauds-the-messenger/

CD Review— Anna Clyne: Mythologies ​ Jarrett Hoffman December 15, 2020

Both accessible and deeply original, the music of London-born composer Anna Clyne is a convergence of tradition and invention, sometimes set against each other to provide a fascinating contrast, other times wrapped up into one enchanting package — familiar sound and fresh sensibility. Her latest album, Mythologies, makes clear that she is an essential voice in the field today, and a supremely enjoyable one at ​ that.

Released in October on Avie Records, Mythologies includes five works brought to life brilliantly by the BBC ​ ​ Symphony Orchestra in live performances recorded over the past decade. Their music-making, and that of the four different conductors who lead them, is top-notch: full of energy and commitment, remarkably polished, and compellingly shaped.

The playlist begins with the five-minute Masquerade, a perfectly bite-sized introduction to this composer’s ​ ​ music, heard here in its world premiere recording. Marin Alsop wraps all of Clyne’s alluring gestures into one fantastic sweep, not unlike magic, which of course also happens with a short stick and a wave of the arm.

Clyne trades in some of the smooth, chromatic runs and soaring high notes from that work for intense articulations and a fascination with the depths of the orchestra in This Midnight Hour. It also shows her ​ ​ all-important instincts of rhetoric. She knows just how to use stasis — or better yet, silence — to break up the flow of energy. BBCSO chief conductor Sakari Oramo is right on the same page, stretching out those long notes and long gaps in sound like he’s daring you to blink.

Oramo remains on the podium for The Seamstress, a violin concerto that shows Clyne’s versatility, ambition, ​ ​ and skill rising to yet another level. The violin part is wide-ranging, its folk-like melodies leading to visceral passages of atonality, long chains of notes spiced with accents, and deeply felt lyricism.

All of that comes together in a tour-de-force performance by soloist Jennifer Koh, who draws you in with her ​ ​ rich tone, undeniable expressivity, and total ownership of this piece — a combination of her technique, her pacing, and the sense she gives you that this music pours out genuinely from her own being.

On top of the musical diversity already present in the violin part, Clyne uses a pre-recorded tape to incorporate voice (that of Irish composer Irene Buckley) and poetry (William Butler Yeats), creating a multimedia work that’s impressively organic and totally unique.

What makes it work so well is that Buckley’s voice often takes the form of another instrument in the orchestra. First, her role consists of soft hisses and breathy whooshes of air, entering fittingly by joining the flutes. Then she grows to a whisper, with bits of Yeats’ A Coat coming through, barely intelligible. Near the end, we finally ​ ​ hear the poem clearly in Buckley’s gentle, understated tone as the piece hits its climax. Only here, and briefly, does the text take the spotlight from the music, and it feels deserved, the natural completion of a satisfying arc.

Cohesive, varied, inevitable, and full of surprises, those first three works will knock you out. And while the final two, Night Ferry and <

https://clevelandclassical.com/cd-review-anna-clyne-mythologies/

For the Record, Op. 135: Midori; Jennifer Koh; Ligeti Quartet Laurie Niles October 15, 2020

Welcome to "For the Record," Violinist.com's weekly roundup of new releases of recordings by violinists, violists, cellists and other classical musicians. We hope it helps you keep track of your favorite artists, as well as find some new ones to add to your listening!

Anna Clyne: Mythologies Jennifer Koh, violin Anna Clyne, composer BBC Symphony Orchestra

This album includes five orchestral works recorded live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, including: "The Seamstress" (2014-2015), led by Sakari Oramo, featuring violinist Jennifer Koh performing live with a recorded recitation by vocalist Irene Buckley; "Masquerade" (2013) led by Marin Alsop; "This Midnight Hour" (2015) led by Oramo; "Night Ferry" (2012) led by Andrew Litton; and "rewind" (2005-2006) led by André de Ridder. "The Seamstress" is one of a number of works Clyne wrote for violin in the wake of personal loss. It was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and pairs an acrobatic violin solo part with a whispered voice that recites William Butler Yeats’ poem, "A Coat." The imaginary, one-act ballet alludes to folk fiddle traditions and is built on a twelve-tone row, a rare device for Clyne. BELOW: a short clip from "The Seamstress":

https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/202010/28505/

(Image: Christina Kernohan)

A New Release from Avie: MYTHOLOGIES FROM ANNA CLYNE Daniel Krenz October 25, 2020

On October 16th, 2020 AVIE Records released Mythologies, a feature on the composer Anna Clyne. This ​ ​ album includes five orchestral compositions, composed over a decade, recorded live by the BBC Concert Orchestra and led by four various conductors.

Anna Clyne is a British composer and artistic collaborator who has had a career that has brought her music before premiere ensembles and to audiences across the globe. Previously, from 2010-2015, she served as the Composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony under Riccardo Muti and she now serves as the Associate Composer with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Before I was asked to write this review, I was not intimately familiar with Clyne’s music. I was excited to hear new music with fresh ears and I was not disappointed. First off, I was happy to see that the album artwork actually featured art. Recently it seems as if every album has a company logo bordering a stiff looking performer staring noncommittally off in the distance. The Mythologies album artwork features fairy-tale like ​ ​ drawings of allusions to the various works included on the album. Josh Dorman, the artist responsible, shows a seamstress sewing on craggy rocks while a ferry traverses the seas, among other images.

The first track featured is the premiere recording of Masquerade, a five-minute orchestral firework. Composed ​ ​ in 2013, this piece was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for the Last Night of the Proms. The piece, bursting with energy, reflects its title well. The piece makes it easy to imagine walking through the streets of a Masquerade ball seeing Jesters juggling, acrobats flying, and many people walking by in colored masks. The BBC Symphony Orchestra delivers and aural whirlwind. Occasionally sweet or rollicking vignettes poke through the flurry of vigorous string scales like glimpsing the eye of a cyclone.

The next track is This Midnight Hour, another storm, but instead of being exhilarating, this storm is dark and ​ ​ menacing. This work was commissioned by the Orchestra national d’Île-de-France and the Seattle Symphony in 2015. Clyne drew inspiration for this work from two poetic sources. The first poem, by Juan Ramón Jiménez (translated by Robert Bly) sets the opening mood:

Music – a naked woman running mad through the pure night!

Heavy strings set up a dark ostinato-like rhythm while woodwind flurries spin above. The woman’s mad screams erupt in the night as brass punctuations. A shrieking piccolo solo and haunting pizzicato show this demented cavalcade. The second poetic inspiration is Harmonie du soir, by Charles Baudelaire. This poem is ​ ​ an elicitation of the night and is Clyne depicts the “Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!” with an oboe waltz starting halfway through the piece. The other woodwinds join into this lilting waltz, but it is overcome by the shrieking woman again. The piece gradually decrescendos into a hint of the dawn, but a blast from the bass drum reminds us that night will come again. This was easily my favorite piece on the album.

The Seamstress serves as the centerpiece of this CD, and as previously mentioned, features prominently on ​ the album artwork. It was commissioned and written in 2014, while she was Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony. It features Jennifer Koh as the dazzling violin soloist for the piece. Although listed underneath the ‘Concerto’ heading on Clyne’s website, this is more of an orchestral piece that has a solo violin foreground. The piece opens with Koh playing a simple, sad, folksy melody. Five minutes into the piece we hear stereophonic gasping inhales of Irene Buckley who serves as a narrator who later interjects snippets of William Butler Yeats’ poem A Coat. This piece serves as the slower contrast to the first two, although it is not a ​ ​ sweet serenade, the work is still heavy and deeply troubled. It is a real testament to Clyne’s talent for orchestration. Clyne summarized the piece the best herself by saying: “The Seamstress is an imaginary ​ ​ one-act ballet. Alone on the stage, the seamstress is seated, unraveling threads from an antique cloth laid gently over her lap. Lost in her thoughts, her mind begins to meander and her imagination spirals into a series of five tales that range from love to despair, and that combine memory with fantasy.”

Next on the album, Night Ferry, immediately propels us back into the energetic sound world of Masquerade ​ ​ ​ and This Midnight Hour. Written in 2012 for the Chicago Symphony this piece was my least favorite of the ​ ​ album. It was not bad by any means, but I felt as if the piece lost its way throughout the twenty-minute work. Waves of strings crash over a frequent and prominent rhythmic syncopation produced by muted trumpets and bass drums. This piece is again explosive and terrifying, the BBC Concert Orchestra does an immaculate job of bringing the score to life. Also inspired by poetry, this piece illustrates Seamus Heaney’s Elegy for Robert ​ Lowell: ​

You were our Night Ferry thudding in a big sea the whole craft ringing with an armourer’s music the course set wilfully across the ungovernable and dangerous.

Last on the album is “<

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this album. I thought it was a great introduction to Anna Clyne and her music with the five fantastic pieces that were chosen. I look forward to seeking out more music from her.

http://www.musiccityreview.com/2020/10/25/mythologies-from-anna-clyne/?fbclid=IwAR0RNu9jcgj7OnGXLVT PlSP1o4HyfnPv86C-QUeZUClKEdW9V4NAOHyyrVQ

Anna Clyne: Mythologies

James Manheim

Composer Anna Clyne has gained considerable popularity both in her native Britain and in the U.S., where she was composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her large, motoric scores owe something to John Adams, but the vivid colors in her works do much to tell the story and owe something to her background in electro-acoustic music, although all the music here is for traditional instruments. The pieces here cover a ten-year period; the oldest, rewind, is from 2005 and may require some explanation for younger listeners who have never seen a VCR: it evokes the feeling of a videotape being rewound, with hiccups and stops and starts along the way. One of the attractive features of Clyne's music is that it may take up lighter or more serious themes and may use a variety of tonal procedures without losing its essential brightness. Consider The Seamstress (2014), for violin and orchestra (featuring contemporary music specialist Jennifer Koh on violin), which features elements of both folk fiddling and 12-tone organization. The performances here are all by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under various conductors, including Sakari Oramo, and were recorded under different producers and engineers, yet here, too, Clyne's personality remains consistent. Expect to be hearing a lot more of this composer on concert programs in the future, and get in on the ground floor now.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/anna-clyne-mythologies-mw0003423319

11/09/20 November 9, 2020

ANNA CLYNE/Mythologies: Clyne started out heavily relying on electronics for budgetary reasons and has grown into a leading traditionalist in modern classical music. A collection of world premiere recordings and specially commissioned works, the composer knocks it out of the park with a set that has an old school feeling (in terms of budget and presentation) combined with the forward thinking impulses of the masters. This is the kind of recording that used to make your grand pa stand up and conduct in front of the mirror. A real wining performance that jump starts the blood flow. (Avie 2434)

http://midwestrecord.com/MWR1716.html

(English translation)

Anna Clyne is one of the most interesting composers of her generation. Born in London, but living in New York, she moves equally freely between musical continents and different styles, often with Celtic color. Earlier this autumn, she even managed to get The Guardian's most grumpy critic Andrew Clements to fall with her superb cello concerto “Dance”. The work draws inspiration from the Persian 13th century poet Rumi and the tonal language - both caressing and rough - for the thoughts of Irish and Jewish folk music as well as dancing dervishes. Were it not for the soloist Inbal Segev’s grumpy humming tone and a slightly pale interpretation of Edward Elgar's accompanying cello concerto, that record would undoubtedly have been one of the best of the year.

If you search on Spotify, you may happen to find a soul-healing sentence from "Dance" in playlists with names like "Calming classical". But Clyne primarily composes music with a strong dramatic nerve. This will be particularly clear on the new album “Mythologies”, which brings together five orchestral works from the ten-year period 2005-2015. It's about music that often unfolds like great adventures. About a sound that grabs the listener and likes to play with the collective memory in a way that feels both imaginative and fresh. Early in her career, Clyne devoted herself to electro-acoustic music. Now she works with similar techniques in orchestral contexts. Among other things, by zooming in and out between different layers or creating a spatial dimension with the help of the instruments' physical location.

In the selection of “Mythologies”, a clear line of development is noticeable, but also a certain tendency towards repetition. The opening piece “Masquerade” was written for the “Last night of the proms” concert in 2013 and haunts itself in many different guises. It is mainly a party vignette, but also sums up Clyne in just under five minutes.

The heavy riffs in “This midnight hour” are transformed into something hymn-like, while the oldest contribution “<< rewind <<” is a thrilling fast-forward with dark undercurrents that is repeated in later works. For example, in the cool “Night ferry” that was added during Clyne's time as Composer in Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The piece is a visually tickling emotional storm with wild seas and swirling string motifs that the composer first sketched out in a graphic score with bright colors.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra performs under the direction of four different conductors, including Marin Alsop and Sakari Oramo. Most absorbing is “The Seamstress”, the violin concerto that Clyne herself likened to an “imaginary one-act ballet”. Soloist Jennifer Koh sews fragile string stitches, haunted by both folk violin and twelve tones. Irene Buckley whispers a poem by William Butler Yeats and reinforces the suggestive mood with well-thought-out lines such as "I made my song a coat". Anna Clyne usually succeeds in what few modern composers master: embroidering contemporary classical sounds that you really want to listen to again.

Best track: "Night ferry"

https://www.dn.se/kultur/anna-clyne-en-modern-tonsattare-man-vill-lyssna-pa-om-och-om-igen/

Anna Clyne jatkaa orkesterimusiikissaan elektroakustisten teostensa äänimaailmaa (In her orchestral music, Anna Clyne continues the sound world of her electroacoustic works) Aki Yli-Salomäki

Isobritannialainen säveltäjä Anna Clyne tuli ensin tutuksi etenkin elektroakustisen musiikin tekijänä, mutta on sittemmin päässyt näyttämään kyntensä myös orkesterimusiikin alueella. Uusin julkaisu tehnyt tuloaan jo kauan. Käytännössä se on kooste Clynen teosten orkesteritaltioinneista vajaan kymmenen vuoden ajanjaksolta neljän eri kapellimestarin johtamana. Mikäpäs siinä, kun BBC:n sinfoniaorkesterin taltioinnit ovat tuttuun tapaan korkeatasoisia.

Äänitteen viisi orkesteriteosta ovat pääosin sähäkkää ja ulospäinsuuntautunutta musiikkia. Clynen sävelkieli heijastelee kansanmusiikkia raikkaassa ja nykyaikaisessa olomuodossa kuin yhteisestä perimästä ja muistista ammentaen. Orkesteria hän myllää resonanssihakuisesti värikkäästi ja taidolla hyödyntäen kokemustaan elektronisen musiikin alueelta. Näin akustisten soittimiston käsittely tai sen tilaan asettelu on lähtökohdiltaan harkitun soundihakuista ja perusteltua.

Tasaisen varmasti ja energisesti olevaistettujen teosten joukosta nousee etenkin laajin viululle ja orkesterille kirjoitettu The Seamstress. Siinä viulisti Jennifer Koh makustelee usein ylärekisterissä liihottelevia melodialinjastoja. Uuden tason tuo mukanaan säveltäjä Irenen Buckleyn lausumat John Keats -katkelmat. Ihmisäänen, arkisesti soljuvan puheen ja henkäysten, läsnäolo tuo mukaan menetyksen tuntua ja koskettavaa haurautta. Teos soi monin paikoin samoin kuin vaikkapa kymmenisen vuotta aiemmin valmistunut elektroakustinen teos Paint Box. Sakari Oramo loihii BBC:n sinfoniaorkesterin kanssa teoksesta salaperäisen kutsuvan sointimaailman.

Orkesterimusiikki tuntuu luontevasti jatkavan Clynen elektroakustisissa teoksissa ilmenneitä musiikillisia pyrkimyksiä, silti orkesterin perusolemusta kunnioittaen ja sitä samalla tarvittaessa laajentaen. Ei ihme, että Clynen musiikkia kuullaan yhä enemmän myös konserteissa ympäri maailmaa.

Anna Clyne: Mythologies. Masquerade; This Midnight Hour; The Seamstress; Night Ferry; rewind. Jennifer Koh, viulu, Irene Buckley, ääni, BBC:n sinfoniaorkesteri/Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton ja André de Ridder. (Avie, AV2434)

(English translation) The British composer Anna Clyne first became known especially as a composer of electroacoustic music, but has since been able to show her nails in the field of orchestral music as well. The latest release made its arrival a long time ago. In practice, it is a compilation of orchestral recordings of Clyne’s works over a period of less than ten years, conducted by four different conductors. What if the recordings of the BBC Symphony Orchestra are, as usual, of a high standard.

The recording’s five orchestral works are mainly electric and outward-looking music. Clyne’s melodic language reflects folk music in a fresh and contemporary form, drawing on a common heritage and memory. He resonates with the orchestra in a colorful and skillful way, utilizing his experience in the field of electronic music. Thus, the handling of the acoustic instrument or its layout is based on a sound sound search and is justified.

Among the works that have been steadily and energetically reproduced, especially the most extensive is The Seamstress written for violin and orchestra. In it, violinist Jennifer Koh often tastes lively lines of melody in the upper register. The John Keats excerpts by composer Irene Buckley bring a new level. The presence of a human voice, of everyday speech and breathing, brings with it a sense of loss and a touching fragility. The work sounds in many places, as does the electroacoustic work Paint Box, which was completed ten years earlier. Sakari Oramo, together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conjures up a mysterious inviting world of sound from the work.

Orchestral music seems to naturally continue the musical aspirations expressed in Clyne’s electroacoustic works, while still respecting the basic essence of the orchestra and at the same time expanding it if necessary. No wonder Cllyn's music is increasingly heard in concerts around the world.

Anna Clyne: Mythologies. Masquerade; This Midnight Hour; The Seamstress; Night Ferry; rewind. Jennifer Koh, viulu, Irene Buckley, ääni, BBC:n sinfoniaorkesteri/Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton ja André de Ridder. (Avie, AV2434)

https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2020/11/24/anna-clyne-jatkaa-orkesterimusiikissaan-elektroakustisten-teostensa

Anna Clyne: Mythologies AVIE Records

December 2020

Mythologies is an apt title choice for this striking collection by London-born composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980). However ancient mythological tales might appear at the surface level, their archetypal themes resonate across the ages, as relevant today as when they were born, and they're fantastical in nature too, populated as they are with gods and mythical beasts. In similar manner, Clyne's music exudes an era-transcending quality in these phantasmagoric pieces, some of which stretch out for twenty minutes at a time. The Grammy-nominated composer is a tale-spinner whose creations transport the listener to dazzling realms.

Her background in electro-acoustic music pays rich dividends on Mythologies. Composed over the course of a ​ ​ decade, its five orchestral pieces are distinguished by expressive textures and colours brought vividly to life by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Jennifer Koh and Irene Buckley. The description of Clyne by Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (with whom she served as composer-in-residence from 2010-15), as “an artist who writes from the heart, who defies categorization, and who reaches across all barriers and boundaries,” dovetails nicely with the works on the recording: each unfolds like a highly personalized creation that blossoms organically rather than sounding like the outcome of an academic exercise. Labeling them classical works is in itself delimiting when they play like uncanny worlds distilled into sound form.

If Masquerade (2013) sounds especially exuberant, there's a good reason: it's a piece Clyne was ​ ​ commissioned to write by BBC Radio to open that year's 'Last Night of the Proms.' The material is emblematic of her style in its vibrant hues and celebratory spirit. As dizzying as a whirling dervish, the material unspools in a head-spinning rush with Clyne coupling rapid string swirls and woozy woodwinds into a five-minute cocktail of dance rhythms and pastoral lyricism. Whereas a Petrouchka-like episode suggests a harlequin connection, an overall impression of a wild dance ball is more generally evoked.

This Midnight Hour (2015) follows, its thirteens minutes paving the way for two twenty-minute opuses. Without ​ wishing to treat the piece too programmatically, the insistent momentum of its opening bars certainly resembles a replication in music of an image from one of the work's two poetic inspirations, Juan Ramón Jiménez, of a woman running naked through empty night streets. The other poem, Charles Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir, also finds its analogue in passages that suggest a sickly-sensuous evocation of evening. ​ Both elements conjoin in the work, music that hurtles forth with the greatest urgency on the one hand and a wistful if slightly inebriated waltz voiced by strings and woodwinds on the other.

The album's high point is violinist Jennifer Koh and the orchestra performing The Seamstress (2014-2015) live ​ ​ at The Barbican with a pre-recorded recitation by vocalist Irene Buckley of William Butler Yeats' poem A Coat ​ woven into its elaborate design. The opening minutes are poignant, the mood in keeping with the fact that Clyne wrote the work in the wake of personal loss. Adding to the intrigue, the concerto is built on a twelve-tone row, an uncommon choice for the composer. Emblematic of her approach, however, the device is used in service to her style rather than dictating its form. Koh's virtuosic performance impresses, especially when she's called on to execute ruminative parts and high-velocity displays. The title's evocation of a seamstress stitching multiple fabrics into a cohesive whole finds its counterpart in music that likewise gathers abundant strands into a satisfying totality.

When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned Night Ferry (2012) to be performed alongside music by ​ ​ Schubert, Clyne, inspired by the violent mood swings he suffered alongside manic bouts of creativity, fashioned a work whose turbulence and agitation would suggest a storm-tossed voyage. One could just as easily imagine the furious upward and downward movements of the strings accompanying those scenes in The ​ Wizard of Oz where the house is uprooted by the twister, but Clyne's visceral material as effectively conjures ​ the image of a galleon rocked by waves and battered by elements. It's hardly one-dimensional, though: calmer sections suggest the storm's retreat and calmer waters allowing the ship's personnel to recover from the harrowing experience. Much like the album in general, Night Ferry speaks to her gift for scene-painting in ​ ​ sound.

A natural bookend to Masquerade, <

https://www.textura.org/archives/c/clyne_mythologies.htm

An Exhilarating Live Album of Anna Clyne Symphonic Works delarue November 13, 2020

It’s criminal how the BBC – until this past spring a fairly reliable source of information that American corporate media would never dare go near – was transformed overnight into just another sycophantic lockdowner fake-news channel. But the BBC Symphony Orchestra are not to blame – in fact, they can’t play right now because of the lockdown, and if Boris Johnson gets his way, they never will again.

Assuming the British wake up and overthrow his fascist regime, we will be able to look forward to more concerts and recordings by this colorful, diverse ensemble. Until then, we have a passionate, exhilarating live album of Anna Clyne works, titled Mythologies and performed under the baton of four separate conductors – and streaming at Spotify – to tide us over.

Marin Alsop leads the group in a concert performance of a swooping, suspenseful, electrifyingly crescendoing short work, Masquerade. Those massed glissandos are best appreciated at loud volume!

Sakari Oramo conducts the similarly brisk and colorful This Midnight Hour. Clyne cites two poems – a Juan Ramón Jiménez depiction of a naked woman running madly through the darkness, along with Baudelaire’s creepy Harmonie du soir. A lithely leaping waltz with echoes of Saint-Saens’ Bacchanal from Samson and Deiliah ends cold; distant boomy bass drums signal a series of tense, mysterious swells. With its brooding, chromatic trumpet solo, the lush neoromantic waltz afterward could be Dvorak.

The Seamstress, an imaginary one-act ballet on themes of loss and absence with vivid Appalachian tinges, is a concerto for violinist Jennifer Koh and also includes Irene Buckley’s voiceover of William Butler Yeats’ poem A Coat. Stark, folksy, leaping figures give way to steady, pizzicato-fueled starriness and then a fleeting Balkan-toned crescendo. Raga-like variations on a twelve-tone row are a clever touch for Koh’s steady hand. She reaches to the heights over the orchestra’s muted cavatina in the concluding movement, which is where Buckley comes in.

Andrew Litton conducts For Night Ferry, for which Clyne also painted a lurid mural. She takes the title from Seamus Heaney’s Elegy for Robert Lowell, the American poet who like Schubert was manic-depressive. Through a long series of gusts, swirls and cascades, the orchestra hit a series of insistent, brassy peaks that alternate with warmly sparkling, nocturnal passages. The cynical dance of death and rollercoaster ride afterward are spine-tingling; the ending is hardly what you would expect.

André de Ridder takes the podium for the album’s final piece, <

November '20 Digital Week I Kevin Filipski November 5, 2020

CD Releases of the Week

Anna Clyne—Mythologies (Avie)

Anna Clyne, one of our most inventive and original composers, writes music that’s accessible but adventurous, forcefully dramatic yet delicate. The five works on this disc show off her versatility and facility with varying styles.

The opening Masquerade and closing <> ​ ​ ​ provide orchestral fireworks, while The Midnight Hour has ​ ​ a welcome Prokofiev-like drollness. The two major works are The Seamstress, a fiery violin concerto (the terrific ​ ​ soloist is Jennifer Koh) marred only by unnecessary electronics and mumbling; and Night Ferry, a brilliantly ​ ​ orchestrated journey through darkness. The BBC Symphony Orchestra plays incisively under a quartet of superb conductors.

http://filmfestivaltraveler.com/film-arts/21-reviews/4198-november-20-digital-week-i

Mythologies

Darren Rea

Mythologies Composer: Anna Clyne Conductors: Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton and André de Ridder Performed by: BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jennifer Koh (violin) and Irene Buckley (vocals) Label: AVIE Records avie-records.com RRP: £13.99 Release Date: 16 October 2020

Composer Anna Clyne releases Mythologies, a portrait album of five orchestral works recorded live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, via AVIE Records. Works included on the album include 'Masquerade' (2013) led by Marin Alsop; 'This Midnight Hour' (2015) conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo; 'The Seamstress' (2014-2015), led by Oramo, featuring violinist Jennifer Koh performing live with a recorded recitation by vocalist Irene Buckley, 'Night Ferry' (2012) conducted by Andrew Litton, and '<

Anna Clyne's Mythologies consists of five very different orchestral works and it's this diversity that for me was ​ ​ one of the main highlights.

Describing the album in his liner notes, classical music journalist Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes: "Just as all mythologies draw water from the same well of archetypes, her compositions mine folk traditions in order to construct sound worlds in which the familiar and the surreal come together as in a dream. Clyne’s popular appeal comes from a listener’s dual sense of recognition. Her melodies seem distilled out of collective memory, yet delivered with the high-voltage energy of our over stimulated time."

'Masquerade' (2013) was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open that year’s Last Night of the Proms at Royal ​ ​ Albert Hall and captures the exuberant spirit of that quintessentially English ritual. Conductor Marin Alsop led the performance on this live, world premiere recording. The title refers to the 18th-century promenade concert, an outdoor festivity that was spiced with acrobats, fireworks and street entertainers.

'This Midnight Hour' (2015) , conducted on this recording in a live performance at The Barbican by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, was commissioned by the Orchestre National d’Île de

France and Seattle Symphony. It takes its inspiration from two poems – one by Juan Ramón Jiménez, who describes music as a naked woman running mad through the pure night, and Charles Baudelaire’s 'Harmonie du soir', a sickly-sensuous evocation of evening, in which a trembling violin leads the poet in a waltz that teeters between melancholy and vertigo.

'The Seamstress' (2014) is one of a number of works Clyne wrote for violin in the wake of personal loss. It was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and pairs an acrobatic violin solo part with a whispered voice that recites William Butler Yeats’ poem 'A Coat'. The imaginary, one-act ballet alludes to folk fiddle traditions and is built on a twelve-tone row, a rare device for Clyne. This recording, conducted by Oramo, features violinist Jennifer Koh performing live at The Barbican alongside the orchestra with a pre-recorded recitation of the poem by vocalist Irene Buckley.

The sharp intakes of breath that start to appear about a third of the way through are cleverly introduced. At first it sounds like a poor mix; that the production has accidentally left in the breathing of one of the musicians, but as it moves forward it soon becomes part of the performance. This track also reminded me of Danny Elfman's wonderfully gothic score for Tim Burton's Batman Returns. ​ ​

For 'Night Ferry' (2012) , Clyne painted a seven-panel mural showing a churned up expanse of water with black-tentacled waves, blood-red eddies and a ship silhouetted before a fiery sky. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned this work to be performed alongside music by Schubert. Inspired by the violent mood swings Schubert suffered alongside bouts of manic creativity (a condition called cyclothymia), Clyne wrote a piece about stormy voyages in space and of the mind. The title is taken from Seamus Heaney’s 'Elegy for Robert Lowell', a poet who similarly suffered from manic depression. The performance on this album was led by conductor Andrew Litton at The Barbican.

It's bizarre, because I'm lucky enough to have never suffered from depression yet this piece really took me from a high point to an incredibly low and dark place. The music conjures up images of a rough sea, without leaning on the many cliches that have come before.

Speed as an elemental force is the subject of '<

A beautifully presented collection of intricate and subtly layered pieces.

9

http://www.reviewgraveyard.com/00_revs/r2020/music/20-10-16_annaclyne-mythologies.html

ANNA CLYNE (b.1980): Masquerade, This Midnight Hour, The Seamstress for Violin, Voice and Orchestra, Night Ferry, rewind.

Catalogue Number: 12W058 Label: Avie Reference: AV2434 Format: CD Price: $17.98

Description: A thrilling collection of powerful orchestral works by a composer rapidly emerging as one of the most remarkable and original voices of the current generation of British talent. We offered her splendid cello concerto, DANCE in June: "... full of aching lyricism, vigorous action and profundity. [...] it certainly isn’t embarrassed in the company of [the Elgar concerto, with] their shared "romanticism, warmth and humanity". This disc reinforces and amplifies those impressions. In her full-blooded, neo-romantic idiom, Clyne never fails to grab the listener's attention and sustain it throughout her vivid, technicolor musical tableaux; these are the contemporary equivalent of the tone poems and musical legends of earlier generations, Strauss, Liszt, Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Nielsen, and Sibelius, and like them, she doesn’t shy away from richly programmatic, narrative content, often with a literary inspiration. The Seamstress, an extraordinarily evocative and powerful violin concerto, takes as its point of departure W.B.Yeats' poem "A Coat": "I made my song a coat / Covered with embroideries / Out of old mythologies ..." and proceeds to weave a vivid dream-world that delves deeply into the occult, strange faerie world of Yeats' best poetry. Beginning with thread of an Irish-sounding melody, as though heard against the backdrop of an ancient, glowering landscape, the work presents five fantastical dream-tales that range from the ethereal and mysterious to the climactic ostinato (the ground a variant of the main theme) - a dream of towering battlements and mountains perhaps - and the propulsive, passionate variation that follows. The piece finally unravels as the final thread of the "folk song" tune is pulled loose. This Midnight Hour is also based on poetry; that of Juan Ramón Jiménez's vision of music as a mad woman running naked through the night, and of Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir from Les fleurs de mal, with its intoxicating imagery redolent of suffocating shrouds of velvet draperies, crepuscular shadows, the smoke of hashish and opium. Again, this is robust, muscular, viscerally stirring music, the composer unafraid of churning emotion and explicit programmatic narrative - Baudelaire's wailing souls and melancholy waltz are vividly depicted. The stunning symphonic poem Night Ferry stands alongside any, and exceeds most, musical depictions of storms, literal, metaphorical and psychological. Its poetic impetus comes from Seamus Heaney's "Elegy" for Robert Lowell, a great poet and manic-depressive: "You were our Night Ferry / thudding in a big sea, / the whole craft ringing / with an armourer's music / the course set willfully across / the ungovernable and dangerous". The immense orchestra is unleashed in titanic tides, finally becalmed in the depths "where everything is music…". Masquerade was a curtain-raiser for the last night of the London Proms, and evokes a raucous and rather uncouth street festival with fireworks, jugglers, clowns and acrobats, while the hectic orchestral toccata <

https://www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=12W058

LEBRECHT LISTENS | Anna Clyne’s ‘Mythologies’ Checks Off All the Boxes

Norman Lebrecht January 29, 2021

Anna Clyne: Mythologies (Avie) ★★★★☆

The late Michael Kennedy, an honest critic if ever there was, told me that on reaching the age of 60 his ears gave up on contemporary music. We then had a stand-up row about the recent works of Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies and parted, as always, good friends. Now, having long passed Michael’s age threshold for new music, I find myself still curious about living composers.

I first heard Anna Clyne’s violin concerto at the Chicago Symphony and loved it on the spot. That is unusual for a modern premiere, but Clyne is adept at masking complexity with hummable sonorities and I marked her down on the spot as one to watch. She’s 40 now, and this may be her record debut, but there is much within the album to give instant pleasure or, at the very least, a validation of the continuing relevance of classical form in the third decade of the 21st century.

Her violin concerto, titled The Seamstress, is at the heart of the album. Based on folk-fiddle airs and a ​ ​ Schoenbergian 12-tone row, it has resonances of the Alban Berg concerto crossed with English tea-and-cakes on the lawn. Jennifer Koh, who played the Chicago premiere I attended, gives a much more fervent performance here, working with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sakari Oramo. It has everything I look for in a violin concerto — novelty, virtuosity and optimism.

The album’s title piece Mythologies was a BBC commission for the opening of the 2013 Proms, a tough call in ​ ​ a season that celebrated centenaries of Verdi, Wagner and Britten. Clyne soared high to the challenge. Unabashedly collagist, the work condenses in five minutes a kaleidoscope of musical hints and influences. Night Ferry, the earliest and longest piece in the pack, is a mood-swing voyage in an out of darkness. I want to ​ hear more of Anna Clyne. She is currently working with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

https://www.ludwig-van.com/toronto/2021/01/29/lebrecht-listens-anna-clynes-mythologies-checks-off-boxes/

Anna CLYNE (b. 1980) Mythologies

Hubert Culot

Anna CLYNE (b. 1980) Mythologies Masquerade (2013) [4:57] This Midnight Hour (2015) [12:43] The Seamstress, for viol, voice and orchestra (2014) [21:25] Night Ferry (2012) [20:13] <

I must confess that I had already read about Anna Clyne's music but had never heard any of it before receiving the release under review. I was thus quite interested to hear these pieces and make up my mind about the music. I do not want to spoil anything, but I may now tell you that I found her music colourful, full of energy and overflowing with ideas which grip you from first to last. The present release of her compositions spanning the decade from 2005 up to 2015 thus offers a fine survey of her recent orchestral music and there is no better place to begin with than the first work recorded here, the short Masquerade, a brilliant concert-opener if ever ​ ​ there was one. The music skips along with high spirits until it concludes with a quotation from John Playford's The English Dancing Master which comes as a surprise - although I for one would not be surprised to learn ​ that that very tune had already been there since the very beginning but cleverly and subtly disguised. Anyway, this short and brilliant work presents Anna Clyne's music-making in a nutshell, as it were.

This Midnight Hour was inspired by “an aphoristic definition, by Juan Ramón Jiménez, of music as a naked ​ woman running mad through the pure night” and by Charles Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir, a “sickly-sensuous ​ ​ evocation of evening”; the latter poem is clearly echoed in the music: “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir/Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!” The piece opens with ostinato scales and some angular writing suggesting Jiménez's naked woman, then, some instruments (a flute, then a tuba) sketch the outlines of a waltz. All these elements proceed until a folk-like melody played by the clarinets appears to disappear almost instantly. Thus, everything remains undecided until a brass chorale ushers in what appears to be a radiant ending – but that is not to be, as the piece ends with a “violent thunderclap”.

By sheer coincidence, while preparing this review I received my January 2021 Gramophone in which Anna ​ ​ Clyne is the contemporary composer of the month introduced by Richard Whitehouse who obviously knows and appreciates Clyne's music. One of his remarks made its mark on me, i.e. that “folk-like elements are a constant though reticent presence”. This most clearly applies to the substantial violin concerto The ​ Seamstress, in which she seems to me to draw on her Celtic roots, something one may also hear in her ​ marvellous cello concerto Dance (AVIE AV2419) which I heard after going through the present release under ​ ​ review. The subliminal program behind the music is both a pencil drawing by William Butler Yeats and his poem A Coat printed in the insert notes and spoken (on tape I suppose) in the course of the work. (Incidentally ​ ​ the otherwise excellent notes do mention the recitation of Keats' poem, which is clearly a typing mistake.) Once again, the music alludes to some folk-like elements, although no folk song is quoted, but the very opening of the piece played by the violin harks back to some folk fiddle traditions. (Incidentally, the notes also tell us that that tune is built on a 12-tone row.) Although not overtly programmatic, the music nevertheless briefly hints at graphic allusions such as small motifs repeated to suggest needlework and the like, but this should not be carried too far for the work as a whole is a beautiful piece of musical poetry and finesse which I for one find most moving in its own way. All in all, The Seamstress is a magnificent work and I hope that it will soon enter ​ ​ the repertoire of enterprising violinists. One may also add that the violin part is quite exacting in technical dexterity and in terms of pure musicality, which Jennifer Koh possesses aplenty.

Written during Clyne's tenure as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Night Ferry ​ was her first large-scale work for full orchestra. It received the endorsement of music director Riccardo Muti whose performance was subsequently issued on the orchestra's in-house label. As Richard Whitehouse comments in Gramophone, “Muti was doubtless attracted to music whose virtuosity tests even an outfit of the ​ ​ CSO's abilities yet whose intricacies are never at the expense of sonic allure or visceral immediacy”. As far as I am concerned, I think that “sonic allure” and “visceral immediacy” aptly describe Anna Clyne's music. Again, the background of the work is to be found in some extra-musical stimuli. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to be performed alongside music by Schubert. It is well known that Schubert suffered from cyclothymia characterised by violent mood swings and bouts of manic creativity. Reflecting this, “Clyne wrote a piece about stormy voyages in space and of the mind” (Corinna Fonseca-Wohlheim in her insert notes). The piece opens as an agitated stormy seascape forcefully swelling up and down punctuated by often strident brass and percussive assaults momentarily pausing in a section of insistent basses and pounding drums. Eventually, as in This Midnight Hour, the music seems willing to settle into a peaceful - ​ ​ though ambiguous - chorale. The title of the piece comes from Seamus Heaney's Elegy for Robert Lowell who ​ ​ also suffered from manic depression:

“You were our Night Ferry/thudding in a big sea...” Night Ferry is yet another powerful score and a splendid ​ ​ example of Anne Clyne's imaginative and ear-catching music. In <

These superb works receive committed readings from all concerned and, besides singling out the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing at its customary best, I would like to draw attention to Jennifer Koh's impressive take on the violin part in The Seamstress, one of the gems in this collection. I hope that many will derive as ​ ​ much musical pleasure from this very fine release as I have, and that it will not take too long before more of Clyne's orchestral music is committed to disc. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Feb/Clyne-mythologies-AV2434.htm

Clyne: Mythologies (CD Review)

Jennifer Koh, violin; Irene Buckley, voice; Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, and André de Ridder conductors; BBC Symphony Orchestra. Avie AV2434.

Karl W. Nehring January 2021

One of the many exciting and rewarding aspects of the classical music hobby is discovering recordings by composers with whom you are not familiar. Over the past year or so this has been my experience with the remarkable music of the British-born composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980), who now resides in upstate New York. Having discovered some performances of her music on YouTube, I had hoped to find more of her music on CD and was pleased to be able to review her cello concerto, titled “Dance,” which was paired on a previous Avie release with a fine performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto ​ (https://classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2020/08/clyne-dance-cd-review.html). The good folks at Avie have subsequently followed up that fine release with Mythologies, an all-Clyne program featuring five orchestral works that she composed between 2005 and 2015. ​

All of the performances are by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and all were recorded in live concert. The program opens with a brief (4:57) but rousing curtain-raiser conducted by Marin Alsop. Masquerade opens with ​ ​ a bang and a flourish, the whole orchestra joining in the fun with swirling strings, pounding percussion, and swirling brass. Then comes a big theme, sounding like the main title theme from a grand Hollywood western. There are brief dance-like sequences, the piece feeling like a mad, feverish dream culminating in a big finish with brass, strings, and percussion -- a lot of excitement packed into just under five minutes.

Next up is This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s ​ ​ Chief Conductor, Sakari Oramo. It opens with a churning motif in the lower strings, soon overlaid with contributions from the woodwinds and brass while the percussion section adds drama to the sound. On her website, Clyne writes that “the opening to This Midnight Hour is inspired by the character and power of the lower strings of L'Orchestre national d'Île de France [who gave the premier performance]. From here, it draws inspiration from two poems. Whilst it is not intended to depict a specific narrative, my intention is that it will evoke a visual journey for the listener.” Given the title, it seems appropriate that as the performance unfolds we hear a spooky melody from the clarinet followed by ominous-sounding contributions from brass and tympani. As the music continues to develop, we hear some more movie-music sounds, a waltz rhythm, and more churning in the lower strings. Finally, as we get closer to the finish line, the music becomes quieter for a minute or so before erupting once again at the very end, punctuated by the sound of the bass drum.

Oramo also conducts the next piece, titled The Seamstress, which features the violin of Jennifer Koh. ​ ​ Something of a non-virtuosic violin concerto, the piece also features the voice of Irene Buckley whispering lines from a poem by Yeats. The way the voice is blended in is rather spooky, especially as it first enters with little breaths and sighs that suddenly appear of out sonic nowhere, jumping at times from channel to channel. To be honest, the inclusion of the voice strikes me as one of those ideas that may have been effective in an actual live concert, but can be distracting on a recording, especially upon repeated listening. In any event, Buckley’s voice is recorded as a whisper, which helps keep it from overly distracting from the music itself, which often features folk-sounding melodies and is really quite appealing overall, squarely in the English tradition of composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, but with a 21st-century sensibility.

Another poem, Night Ferry by the Irish poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, ​ ​ provides the inspiration and title for the next work on the program, in a performance conducted by Andrew Litton. From the program notes on her website, Clyne explains that “Night Ferry is music of voyages, from stormy ​ ​ darkness to enchanted worlds. It is music of the conjurer and setter of tides, the guide through the ‘ungovernable and dangerous.’ Exploring a winding path between explosive turbulent chaoticism and chamber lyricism, this piece weaves many threads of ideas and imagery. These stem from Riccardo Muti’s suggestion that I look to Schubert for inspiration as Night Ferry will be premiered with ​ ​ Entr'acte No. 3 from Rosamunde and his Symphony No. 9 (Great). The title, Night ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Ferry, came from a passage in Seamus Heaney’s “Elegy for Robert Lowell,” an ​ American poet who, like Schubert, suffered from manic depression:

‘You were our Night Ferry thudding in a big sea, the whole craft ringing with an armourer's music the course set wilfully across the ungovernable and dangerous.'"

After the quiet ending of the previous cut, the drum bang that opens Night Ferry heralds a different mood. This ​ ​ ferry ride is no quiet, romantic cruise on a moonlit night, but rather a perilous journey through storm-swept waters, the blackness of the sky above and waters below illuminated only intermittently by flashes of lightning. Clyne illustrates the scene vividly with swirling strings above and pounding drums below. There are some brief interludes where the storm loses its ferocity, but the music then again rises in intensity as the storm begins to rage again as the mysterious voyage late at night continues. At about 15 minutes into the musical voyage, we encounter the terrific pounding of the bass drum, recalling for some of us the audiophile passages of Telarc recordings of days past. But then there is some calm, with soft melodies in the woodwinds. As we near the end of our night voyage and stare to see the harbor lights, the music takes on a more ominous tone, with the tempo slowing. We begin to feel that the storm may be ready to rage again before we can safely dock, but the music fades peacefully as we reach the end of our perilous journey.

The album concludes with <

Considering that the recording sessions for the music took place in two different venues (Barbican Hall for all but Masquerade, which was recorded in the Royal Albert Hall) in different years ranging from 2011 (<

Overall, this is a wonderful recording of music by a composer who deserves wider recognition. I fervently hope that more recordings of music by Ms. Clyne will be forthcoming, as she has a vivid imagination and a wondrous talent for orchestration. Brava!

KWN

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

https://classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2021/01/clyne-mythologies-cd-review.html

Music Reviews: Jeremy Beck – ‘By Moonlight’ and Anna Clyne – ‘Mythologies’

Jon Sobel January 2021

Anna Clyne, Mythologies ​

Keep your volume moderate for the opening strike of Anna Clyne‘s “Masquerade.” This short piece launches the Mythologies album with a bang. Then be sure to crank it back up as whirlwinds of sound support snatches of dances and cinematic melodies in a concise epitomization of Clyne’s method: “to disentangle older styles in order to spin new stories out of their raw materials,” as the liner notes describe it.

The album collects orchestral works composed over the past decade and recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with four different conductors. “This Midnight Hour” gallops by in separate dramatic chunks that leave little time for contemplation – this music is all about grabbing you and twisting you this way and that. Moods and styles follow hard one upon the next. Romantic melody and harmony emerge from chaos. At the end, a gentle chorale and a trumpet theme resolve with an unexpected full-stop bang like the one at the start of “Masquerade.” Anna Clyne has no fear of punctuation.

“The Seamstress,” a kind of one-movement violin concerto featuring soloist Jennifer Koh, threads needlework imagery through textures that evolve from a mournful folk-like fiddle theme. The composer’s roots in electro-acoustic music show in the delicate sheen of a quiet section defined by sustained high notes and speckled with plucked strings. A dramatic eight-note theme (which sounds borrowed but I couldn’t place it) develops through a section punctuated by what sound like tense human breaths, followed by another fast, wriggling theme.

A recording is quietly heard of Irene Buckley reciting a poem (“The Coat”) by Yeats (not Keats as misprinted in the liner notes). This is a lovely touch, and in tune with the “Seamstress” theme. But the power in this recording belongs to Koh’s intrepidity (Clyne has written a great deal for the violin) and to the orchestra, conducted with assurance by Sakari Oramo.

Skittering scales and hawkish accents churn through “Night Ferry,” whose title comes from a Seamus Heaney poem about Robert Lowell. The poem references the extreme mood swings that used to be called manic depression, and the music indeed suggests unpredictably changeable weather. A quizzical five-note theme dances through deep undulations amid slow looming bass gestures and sharp stings from the brass. Even in the becalmed stretches the dangers of a sea voyage feel everpresent.

A second theme based on a skewed descending scale echoes the whirling scales that provide an atmospheric base not just for this piece but for the album. In the last five minutes the mood finally turns pastoral as Clyne returns to the first theme while somehow making chromatic scales sound intriguing and new.

A jolting rhythmic irregularity defines the final piece, “<

Mythologies is out now on Avie Records.

https://blogcritics.org/music-reviews-jeremy-beck-by-moonlight-anna-clyne-mythologies/

Anna Clyne, Mythologies. BBC Symphony Orchestra

Grego Applegate Edwards December 17, 2020

What, if there was an ideal example, would today's Modern Orchestral Mainstream be like? Does it make sense to try and pin such a thing down? There are so many shades of possibility these days that it may be nearly arbitrary to freeze the burgeoning creative tumlt, to boil it all down to just one thing. There are those composers who look way back and try to make it a part of now, those who look to the edge of the Modern, those joining onto what was once Avant Garde, those who try to keep creating some future specific utterances, etc.

Ideally one should listen to every unfamiliar new work with an open mind, without some attempt to pigeonhole it. I had friends, mostly now gone, who liked to try and tag a work as being "like" another work. But of course that does not mean that having drawn a line from the work to another that one can stop thinking about it. After all we are all in our musical lives the accumulation of every music we have ever heard and some we have not but that influenced some other music. So what, then?

All this is a prelude for a new orchestral offering I have been enjoying--Mythologies (Avie M2434) by Anna ​ ​ Clyne, a living composer (b. 1980) very much proceeding under her own original steam, judging from this one. It is music that is dramatic, tonal yet at times with a determined audacity and brash insistence. On the cover of the CD the style is described effectively. It reads "Clyne's music seems to disentangle older styles to spin new stories from their raw materials, her melodies distilled out of collective memory, yet distilled with the high-voltage energy of our overstimulated time." That certainly r9ngs true to me as I listen.

Five works grace the program, and each has something to say, depictive, expansive, perhaps in a mainstream of one at present? The twenty-minute Violin Concerto "the Seamstress" is a definite high point, with Jennifer Koh sympathetically taking on the solo part and the whole making for a very dramatic and memorable totality. The four other works--"Masquerade" (in its world premiere), "This Midnight Hour," "Night Ferry" and "<

Most certainly this grouping of works and their spirited readings by the BBC Philharmonic goes a long way to affirm Anna Clyne as a major voice of her generation. Anglophiles take note, or anyone seeking the new orchestral sensibilities out there.

This is a definite must for a nice slab of what is new and good. Do not miss it. https://classicalmodernmusic.blogspot.com/2020/12/anna-clyne-mythologies-bbc-symphony.html

On the Radio

Dvorak's Symphony No 7 in Building a Library with Jan Smaczny and Andrew McGregor Record Review

Andrew McGregor October 17, 2020

Quotes: "a brilliant orchestra showpiece" (on Masquerade) ​ ​

"an excellent introduction to what follows in a sheer variety of Clyne's inspiration and orchestral imagination" (on Masquerade) ​ ​

"entertaining, ingenious and unpredictable - that's Anna Clyne"

9.30 Building a Library Jan Smaczny chooses his favourite recording of Dvorak's Seventh Symphony

Possibly Dvořák's greatest symphony, he started work on the piece in 1884. After hearing Brahms's new Third Symphony, he was inspired to write a new symphony himself. He said that during his regular stroll to Prague railway station, "the first subject of my new symphony flashed in to my mind on the arrival of the festive train bringing our countrymen from Pest". The Czechs were in fact arriving for a musical celebration of the Czech nation. He decided that his new work would celebrate his patriotism and desire to see the Czech nation flourish.

10.20 Alexandra Coghlan on new releases of choral music by Britten and Bruckner.

11.30 Record of the Week Andrew recommends an outstanding new release.

Music Played

Anna Clyne Masquerade Orchestra: BBC Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Marin Alsop. AVIE.

Record Review

Anna Clyne: Mythologies Irene Buckley (voice) Jennifer Koh (violin) BBC Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop (conductor) Sakari Oramo (conductor) Andrew Litton (conductor) André de Ridder (conductor) Avie AV2434 http://www.avie-records.com/releases/anna-clyne-mythologies/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nm1r

The Best New Recordings of November

Zev Kane November 16, 2020

From unorthodox takes on Bach’s Goldberg Variations to a revelatory Villa-Lobos recital, here are our favorite new releases from last month.

Anna Clyne: Mythologies

Jennifer Koh, violin Irene Buckley, vocals BBC Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, and André de Ritter, conductors

2020 has been a banner year for the British composer Anna Clyne. In June, the premiere recording of her cello concerto DANCE by cellist Inbal Segev and the BBC Symphony Orchestra was released on Avie; it was ​ ​ followed last month by Mythologies, which contains five more premiere recordings performed by the same ​ ​ ensemble. Clyne is one the most creative orchestrators working today, with a knack for drawing spell-binding textures and vivid sonorities from unexpected sources. Her prowess is especially clear in The Seamstress, the ​ ​ album’s climactic work, in which a solo violinist is put through an increasingly cacophonous series of obstacles and in its final track, <

Anna Clyne: Mythologies

November 2, 2020

Anna Clyne’s enormous palette of colors and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally, there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Clyne’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination with a variety of multi-media – including poetry, visual art, and videography – combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal. The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between ​ ​ 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors.

https://www.wfmt.com/2020/11/02/anna-clyne-mythologies/

#4415: Anna Clyne, Irene Buckley, Linda Buckley John Schaefer October 1, 2020

Hear two unconventional violin concertos, music for film, and a sound installation for this New Sounds by London-born Anna Clyne, and Irish sibling composers Irene and Linda Buckley.

Listen to a recent work called The Seamstress by London-born, American-based Grammy-nominated ​ ​ composer Anna Clyne, which calls for violin and electronics and a full orchestra. Built on folk fiddling, it has the feel of a dance/film score and uses a 12-tone row. The recording features violin acrobatics by Jennifer Koh, and the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reading WB Yeats' poem A Coat. ​ ​

Irene Buckley is herself a composer who creates works at the intersection of composition and music technology. Listen to her score for the old silent film The Fall of the House of Usher. Then, hear an ​ ​ unconventional violin concerto by her sister, Linda Buckley, who merges her classical training with the worlds of post punk, folk and ambient electronica. Linda's work, called “Exploding Stars,” alludes to folk fiddling, and is for violinist Darragh Morgan, electronics, and no orchestra. Finally, listen to a co-composition by Irene and Linda Buckley, "Passages," written for an installation in Cork and part of the 2015 “Sounds for a Harbor Festival,” meant to evoke the sea and the sounds of the water. - Caryn Havlik ​

Program #4415: Anna Clyne, Irene Buckley, Linda Buckley (First aired 10/01/2020)

ARTIST: Darragh Morgan | Linda Buckley WORK: Linda Buckley: Exploding Stars [1:00] RECORDING: From Ocean's Floor SOURCE: NMC Recordings INFO: nmcrec.co.uk/recording/oceans-floor

ARTIST: Jennifer Koh, violin; Irene Buckley, recitation | BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakami Oramo, cond. WORK: Anna Clyne: The Seamstress [21:24] RECORDING: Mythologies SOURCE: AVIE Records AV2434 | Due out Oct. 24, 2020 INFO: avie-records.com | https://orcd.co/av8ajxo

ARTIST: Irene Buckley; James McVinnie, organ WORK: Irene Buckley: Waiting [5:36] RECORDING: From “The Fall of the House of Usher” score SOURCE: Vimeo

ARTIST: Darragh Morgan | Linda Buckley WORK: Linda Buckley: Exploding Stars [8:15] RECORDING: From Ocean's Floor SOURCE: NMC Recordings INFO: nmcrec.co.uk/recording/oceans-floor

ARTIST: Irene and Linda Buckley WORK: Passages [14:41] RECORDING: soundcloud.com/irishcomposers SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. INFO: soundcloud.com/irishcomposers

Photo credit: Javier Oddo

https://www.newsounds.org/story/4415-anna-clyne-irene-buckley-linda-buckley/

Modern Notebook for October 25, 2020

Tyler Kline October 22, 2020

(Photo credit: Jennifer Taylor)

On this week’s Modern Notebook, Tyler Kline will share a string quartet by George Lewis titled “Experiments in Living;” also, the Four Corners Ensemble performs music by Shuying Li from their latest release, and an orchestral work that traverses stormy darkness to enchanted worlds: Anna Clyne’s Night Ferry.

Plus, music by Chaya Czernowin, Niki Harlafti, Leila Adu-Gilmore, David Lang, and others; and performances by pianist Liza Stepanova, ~Nois, cellist Amanda Gookin, violinist Benjamin Sung with pianist Jihye Chang, and more.

That’s on the next Modern Notebook, Sunday night from 8 to 10 on Classical WSMR 89.1 and 103.9.

Hour 1

● fardanceCLOSE by Chaya Czernowin. ​ ● Shuying Li’s American Variations. ​ ​ ● The String Quartet 1.5 by George Lewis: Experiments in Living. ​ ​ ● Night Ferry by Anna Clyne. ​

Hour 2

● Joy from David Lang’s Mystery Sonatas. ​ ​ ​ ● Butterfly Within by Mara Helmuth. ​ ● Niki Harlafti’s Vaisseau Fantome. ​ ​ ● Insult to Injury by Curtis K. Hughes. ​ ● A work for cello and voice by Leila Adu-Gilmore’s titled For Edna. ​ ​

https://www.wsmr.org/modern-notebook-for-october-25-2020/?fbclid=IwAR3rljGjBCXiBPssg8liED8AdRicP1s9r TWgkUQTDO7grPi-3ysJH7cU0IY

photo credit: Jennifer Taylor

Classical Conversations Anna Clyne: Mythologies

Born in London and now residing mainly in the US, Grammy-nominated composer Anna Clyne has been championed by many prominent conductors and orchestras around the world. The most recent album to feature Anna’s music is called Mythologies – five different orchestral works, all performed by the BBC ​ ​ Symphony Orchestra. As Anna relates in this conversation, each of these remarkable pieces has a story to tell. http://www.annaclyne.com/ www.avie-records.com/releases/anna-clyne-mythologies/

https://www.wgte.org/radio/podcasts/classical-conversations/anna-clyne-mythologies

Creative CD news: Henri Dutilleux, Giovanni Sollima, Anna Clyne, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Tigran Mansurian

December 27, 2020

[Translated from the French]

On the program this week: In his new album, cellist Christian-Pierre Lamarca leads us through genres and eras; immersed in the symphonic work of the British composer Anna Clyne; an album to celebrate the 80th birthday of composer Tigran Mansurian ...

En Pistes playlist of December 27, 2020

Musical programming

Anna Clyne Night Ferry BBC Philharmonic orchestra, Andrew Litton (direction) Album : Anna Clyne : Mythologies Label : AVIE Records (2020)