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I WORKED WITH OLIVER KNUSSEN by Claire Booth

“How’s it going, Smooth Booth?” is the greeting. Click, goes the can of Diet Coke. “So, this piece of Debussy… have you seen this ridiculous score I’m working from?” Cue, a scrap book produced, covered in erratically pasted sections of cut out music and scribbled text. “Boulez tinkered with the celeste part, it’s rather good actually.” Laughter about the hideous English translations, a joke about Feldman, the baton raised: “Hpp” …. it begins. The music that follows is suddenly beautiful, utterly nuanced, judged, paced, allowed to breathe. Nothing extraneous, details found and explored. A quiet comment to the first flute, a suggestion to the celeste. “It’s good Mu, isn’t it?” he offers. It is.

I worked with Oliver Knussen. For nearly two decades I was fortunate enough to be someone Oliver Knussen wanted to work with. Ultimately, you couldn’t work with Olly if he didn’t want to work with you. It was almost a badge of honor. After all, he was the musician’s musician. An agent couldn’t inveigle you into one of his projects. He either wanted you or he didn’t. And if you were one of his musicians, you were one of his friends.

We met in Aldeburgh in 2001. At the contemporary course, filled with composers and conductors, I stuck out: the singer. But I knew his music, and others’ too, and I wanted to show him what I could do. Show off probably. Concerts and masterclasses came and went, and still I hadn’t managed to sing him any of his own compositions. We’d asked. He’d avoided an answer. He was putting me off. On the last day he hustled my friend Ryan and I into a side room, and nervously listened as we performed his op. 25 Whitman Settings, a beautiful, punchy and lyrical setting of Walt Whitman’s mystical, nature- inspired poetry. He liked it. He liked me singing his music. An enormous smile dawned on my face.

Recently, I’ve thought a lot about what it was in his music that I found. What made his notes leap off the page? Why did it fit me? I’m not a composer, so I can’t talk knowledgeably about tone rows and compositional style, but right from the first sounds I listened to, there was something thrilling, and right from the first notes I sang, it just seemed it was for me. There’s a wonderful moment as a singer when you realise that a certain style or composer is right. It’s a perfect storm in many ways, we can’t be all things to all music - and depending on your own voice, your musicality, your previous life choices, your favourite music might not be the notes that fit you best, your favourite composer might not have written for your sort of voice. But they might. And if you find it, then everything feels easy.

I am tremendously lucky. Olly’s vocal music seemed to fit perfectly and his instrumental music was something I loved. To my mind the Whitman’s are glorious - lyrical and detailed, melodious and clever, space for the voice to bloom but never at the expense of the text. The music feeds off the accompaniment, the textures swooping and swopping so that it’s a complete double act. His choices of poetry are beautiful, illuminating. His word painting both sophisticated and exuberant, crafted without being careful. The texture of the orchestra is at once wild and diaphanous, massive sound worlds make way for delicate motifs which are both beautiful and inspiring.

In the intervening 2 decades I performed near on his entire vocal output, many times with him on the podium; Océan de Terre sung one year later at his 50th birthday celebrations with the vocal texture rumbling alongside the engulfing soundscape of the sea. The Whitman’s - my Proms debut in 2004, even as he listened from his hospital bed, and again with the Boston Symphony Orchestra when we finally performed it together on stage. A retrospective in Stockholm in 2016, which included both his massive

homage to Rilke, 4 Late Poems and an Epigram for unaccompanied soprano and his whimsical and wonderful Hums and songs of Winnie the Pooh. Twice he wrote pieces specifically for me to sing, both utterly different but incredibly beautiful, and for that I am so deeply touched. Requiem, Songs for Sue, premiered in Chicago in 2006 as a memorial to his late wife Sue Knussen brought out the composing side of Olly that can both terrify and inspire. On the plane to the US he handed me the manuscript for one of the four songs, ink still wet with three days to go until a highly anticipated and emotional world premiere. Olly and deadlines could be a common problem, if you saw it as one. I know that throughout his life there were commissions unfinished and deadlines infinitely stretched.. but this time it added to the challenge and almost the honour of working with him. The poem in question, Antonio Machado’s ‘los Ojos’ is set brilliantly by Olly, brimming with tension and emotion .. perhaps it wouldn’t have worked to have received the music any sooner. The cycle has rightly become a contemporary classic, and continues to astound and affect listeners whenever it is performed. O Hototogisu! a concerto of sorts for flute and voice has been a double edged sword for me – so delighted that he wanted to write for my voice once more, and so desperately sad that he never managed to complete more than the first movement. Sketches and email outlines are all that remain. It’s heartbreaking.

His fantasy operas Where the Wild Things are and Higglety Pigglety Pop! are also special. I was involved in the only staged production in the UK since their world premiere in 2012 with the highly talented director Netia Jones and conductor/composer Ryan Wigglesworth. A dream team - and Olly only sanctioned dream teams. A labour of love for all involved, the operas perfectly encapsulate the essence of Olly, his incredible musical ability, his whimsy, his sense of fun, his eye for detail, his utter sincerity. They are operas for children and adults alike, in their simultaneous detail and scope, their beauty and brilliance - even the orchestral popping of balloons is not done as a pastiche. My performances of Max, the wayward hero of Wild Things, both in that production and many orchestral concerts are up there with my career highlights. His music has quite literally shaped my world.

Rehearsing with Olly was invariably fantastic. Not only was the repertoire – or in Olly’s words ‘the Mu’ always exciting to sing, or simply to listen to back stage, but his way of working seemed to play to everyone’s strengths. He had enormous trust in the colleagues he performed with, and as such he gave people space to actually play. Never over-rehearsed but always, always precise - players wanted to rise to his level, so his exacting comments, sense of balance, perfect tuning meant that we all raised our game. It was exhilarating, it was hard work, the results were wonderful. Through such concerts I got to know his own instrumental works - pieces like Songs without Voices, Two Organa, Flourish with Fireworks, Ophelia’s Last Dance, his Violin Concerto - always the diaphanous and jewel-like textures that draw in the listener. But just as importantly, through him I was introduced to all kinds of Berg, Stravinsky, Benjamin, Dallapiccola, Birtwistle, Kondo, Schoenberg, Takemitsu and of course more. Concertos, chamber works, opera interludes, arias, song cycles: always with fabulous ensembles and hallowed orchestras in Europe, America and beyond. Whether I was singing or listening, it was a total musical education. His encyclopaedic knowledge of composers and their works fed into beautiful programs of perfectly judged performances. Indeed his and my last concert in June of this year at the Aldeburgh Festival brought together works by Debussy, Feldman and Birtwistle in a way which seemed so obvious once you listen, but would have been almost impossible to predict.

But over and above his music, his exacting standards, the rehearsals and the concerts was Olly himself. Utterly without artifice, he was recognised globally as a consummate musical genius. But at heart he is the dinners, the jokes, the taxi rides, the plane flights,

the conversations, the snacks, the diet cokes, the support, the sustenance, the phone calls, the friendship, the musical family.

Sentence 1. I work with Oliver Knussen. Sentence 2. I worked with Oliver Knussen. Sentence 1 sounds much better. It’s a statement of fact, but it has no beginning and no end. It’s exciting, it’s full of pride, it’s quite humble and definitely honoured. It asks its own questions. What work? What project? Last year, this year, next year? What next? This statement is looking back and looking forward. As a musician it’s always exciting to look forward. But sentence 1 isn’t true. Sentence 2 is true. Sentence 2 is still a statement of fact, but it’s only about looking back.