2 1 The Air, Turning 9’02 EDMUND BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra • Ilan Volkov conductor 2 Elsewhere 7’55 FINNIS Eloisa-Fleur Thom violin Parallel Colour 3 I 1’57 4 II 1’49 5 III 1’50 6 IV 4’15 7 V 1’42 8 VI 2’42 9 VII 1’54 Birmingham Contemporary Music Group • Richard Baker conductor bl Between Rain 12’24 London Contemporary Orchestra • Robert Ames conductor Four Duets bm I 1’57 bn II 2’21 bo III 2’36 bp IV 2’20 Mark Simpson clarinet • Víkingur Ólafsson piano Shades Lengthen bq I 1’50 br II 4’43 bs III 5’04 bt IV 3’33 Benjamin Beilman violin • Britten Sinfonia • Andrew Gourlay conductor photo © Lisa Illean Total timing 70’39 3 At the beginning of The Air, Turning, a chord piece – and indeed so much of the music the distinguished Scottish poet, Robin detail, and in the process, more and more grows out of nothing. Sparsely voiced at on this album – seems to operate on the Robertson. Entitled “Finding the keys”, connections. As with Robertson’s image of fi rst, across divided violins, it fi lls into the borders of perception. For while the basic the poem explores an ambiguity in the the key, the motif seems to open out onto a cellos, basses and bass clarinet. In its midst materials of Finnis’ music are often easily word ‘key’ – the term refers to the seeds whole plethora of contrasting associations the violas and a percussionist, using soft grasped in outline – for the most part of the ash-tree as well as to a device which and processes. At times the momentum beaters on a sheet of aluminium, create simple harmonic, rhythmic or melodic unlocks another, setting a mechanism in grows to such an extent that it sounds minute oscillations. Almost imperceptible patterns – their surface features open up motion – to establish oscillations in the almost like Sibelius in full fl ow. But the in themselves, the glassy sheen and to the ear with extraordinary richness, as if metaphorical fabric of the poem. The symphonic instinct is always curbed: these shimmering movement of these wave it were the act of listening which brought image of air turning casts light on how the are moments which, when touched, always sounds act on the surrounding harmonies them to life. The patterns or melodic ideas atmosphere around us buzzes in constant yield to the ear’s touch. like a prism acts on a light source, are in this sense not developed from the motion, of the changing seasons being Many of the titles of Finnis’ pieces, as well refracting the material – which itself materials, but rather glimpsed within them, ‘unlocked’ by particular images, and of the as the performance directions, are drawn fl uctuates slowly between a major and so that the music’s movement feels less notion of something being crafted from from the sense of sight. But while it is minor sonority – so that the life teeming like an objective process taking place in raw material – turned, as it were, on the tempting to think of the visual reference within the simple harmonies is suddenly the score, and more like the perceptual lathe of nature. Robertson’s techniques as metaphors, as heuristic aids to help opened up fully to the ear. One hears not process by which our ears make slow sense of sonorous play and metaphorical listener and performer get a sense of so much chords and lines, or instruments of the signals which strike them. Like an undulation set a world in which craft and what kind of sound the composer has in in combination, but a world of sound aspect of something glimpsed through a nature, what is thought and what is seen, mind, there is something about Finnis’ gradually coming into view. mist, we piece the elements together until, turn in constant motion. music which means that spatial analogies always gradually, an aspect takes shape, ‘Like a faint haze in the air’ is the Finnis’ piece does not set Robertson’s penetrate deeper, as if they applied literally or dawns. Indeed, if Finnis’ music does one composer’s instruction to the poem. It does however draw on the implicit rather than metaphorically. Parallel Colour, thing, perhaps, it is this: it dawns. percussionist. The image is just as useful idea that music is also, in some basic Between Rain, and Shades Lengthen, for for the listener: a faint haze, shimmering, Composed in 2016 and fi rst performed sense, just air, turning, and on the way the example, all have explicitly visual titles always in the background but working its by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra central twisting motif, which develops which, as in The Air, Turning, offer the way through everything in the foreground. the following spring, the title of The Air, from the major/minor fl uctuations, listener a structure in which the music The idea captures precisely the way this Turning is taken from a line in a poem by gradually gathers to itself more and more opens up. The same is often true of Finnis’ 46 75 performance directions: the solo violinist both lightly applied oil on canvas – seek to engagements, guiding us – at times with the twisting, almost Rachmaninov-like in Elsewhere is instructed to navigate a create a kind of perceptual counterpoint overwhelming gentleness, at times hinting melody of the second, the pointilliste tremolo crescendo and diminuendo ‘like a so that the surface, while very simple in at something more disturbing in the formations of the third – to bridge a slow distant revolving beam of light moving over form, begins to shimmer. In one of her shadows – through the perceptual fallout. path to a kind of distant aural horizon. water at night’. Finnis, a singer and cellist, notebook entries, Martin suggested that A more literal kind of counterpoint is In a similar way, Four Duets, for clarinet and took up the violin for months in order to when looking at things we should not be at the heart of both Parallel Colour and piano, uses canons to explore different perfect the myriad bowing techniques concerned with setting the imagination Four Duets. The fi rst – written in 2015 kinds of symmetries between the two used in Elsewhere; and the image of the free, but with absorbing the eye into a kind and given its fi rst performance by the soloists. Commissioned by the clarinettist broken surface of water appearing and of communion with the world around it. Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and composer Mark Simpson, and fi rst vanishing under the rotating lighthouse “Don’t look at the stars”, she wrote. “Then under Richard Baker early the following performed in 2012 by Simpson and beam captures with almost synaesthesic your mind goes freely — way, way beyond. year – arranges its ensemble symmetrically Víkingur Ólafsson, the fi rst movement precision the way the bow eases and Look between the rain.” around a central double bass part. takes its opening melodic idea from counteracts the string’s vibrations. While the bass, rather like the viola in Josquin des Prez’s motet, Memor esto Between Rain is the title of Finnis’ The Air, Turning, creates an oscillating verbi tui, and gently unravels it, as it were The visual arts are also a particular 2014 piece for string orchestra, fi rst fi eld between an open string and a high extracting the rise-and-fall motion at its source of inspiration for Finnis. One of performed by the London Contemporary harmonic, the gestures performed by heart which, because of the canon between his earlier pieces, an electronic track Orchestra under Hugh Brunt. It opens one side of the ensemble are mirrored by the two instruments, creates intricately designed to be listened to on headphones with soft splashes distributed among the the other. While the sound ‘images’ are woven textures. Similar considerations while walking through Primrose Hill in instruments’ upper registers which act often extremely beautiful in themselves, occupy the other three movements – the London, is called Colour Field Painting, a like gentle brush strokes on the ear. A it is in the space between the image second working with different speeds, term which applies to the single-colour second, more defi ned stroke later disrupts and its refl ection, played upon by small the third a single unfolding melodic line in techniques of abstract expressionists the profusion, biting at it, stabbing it, distortions and refractions, that the life which the piano eventually fuses with the such as Rothko and Newman. But it is until the two motifs – or, rather, the two of the music is really generated. Each of clarinet, and the fourth a return to canons. Newman’s protégée, Agnes Martin, who worlds of hearing – go into a kind of dance the seven movements uses the mirror Like Elsewhere, Shades Lengthen, composed Finnis is drawn to most. Her paintings – together, resulting in something new. device in different ways, each exploring in 2015, explores the line and shadow such as This Rain, from 1960, in which two The piece works itself out in a series of different kinds of stimulus – such as the created by a solo violin. But while the fi rst equal size rectangles in grey and beige, these contrapuntal textural and motivic impressionist daubs of the fi rst movement, 86 97 piece has the violin playing in colloquy in performing it. This has partly to do with Edmund Finnis is a ‘hugely gifted numerous performances of his works with itself (with the help of electronic the fact that his music’s soundworlds are composer’ (Sunday Telegraph) whose music and several new commissions, including reverb, if necessary), Shades Lengthen in themselves often beautiful, but more to has been described as ‘magical’ (The Times), Across White Air for solo cello with reverb, uses the violin to spin out quite clearly do with the way in which the music draws ‘iridescent, compelling’ (The Guardian), Between Rain for string orchestra, and articulated melodic shapes, the shadows so carefully on the craft and potential ‘exquisite’ (BBC Radio 3) and ‘ethereally the electronic piece Colour Field Painting, and fragments of which are picked up by embodied in each of the instruments he beautiful’ (The Herald).