Mark Bowden Sudden Light Oliver Coates cello • Julian Warburton percussion • Hyeyoon Park violin Huw Watkins piano • BBC National Orchestra of Wales • Grant Llewellyn conductor Mark Bowden Sudden Light Introduction to Mark Bowden Lyra 22’42 By the turn of the millennium, Each of the four pieces on this disc – 1 Allegro molto — 7’07 when the young Mark Bowden three orchestral, one chamber – 2 Adagio e lontano — 9’11 was discovering his passion for reflects Bowden’s questing musical 3 Vivo con anima — 6’24 composition, the orchestra was mind and creative generosity. Oliver Coates cello thought by some to have had its day Together they trace a fruitful decade BBC National Orchestra of Wales Grant Llewellyn conductor as a vehicle for innovative new music. from 2005 to 2015, when Bowden Despite its continued importance completed a four-year residency Five Memos 16’33 for many composers, it seemed with the orchestra of his home 4 Lightness 2’23 a problematic beast: unwieldy, nation, the BBC National Orchestra 5 Quickness 3’01 expensive and, above all, freighted of Wales. It was the earliest work – 6 Exactitude 4’35 7 Visibility 2’51 with outmoded cultural traditions. the RPS award-winning Sudden 8 Multiplicity 3’43 Yet fast-forward to 2016 and the Light (2005) – which first brought Hyeyoon Park violin orchestra has done more than survive. him to BBC NOW’s attention; Huw Watkins piano New generations of composers are initially via the then newly-appointed Heartland 22’32 being drawn to the opportunity Principal Guest Conductor, Jac van 9 Allegro con brio — 9’13 it affords for creating large-scale Steen, who premiered the piece 10 Andante e oscuro — 8’33 structures which also satisfy at more with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. 11 Allegretto ritmico — 4’46 intimate levels; to its enormous range The most recent, Five Memos Julian Warburton percussion of timbral and acoustic possibilities; (2015), is for far smaller forces in BBC National Orchestra of Wales to its sheer presence and the physical violin and piano. It reveals Grant Llewellyn conductor excitement of its sound en masse. Bowden’s equal ability to imbue 12 Sudden Light 16’54 Bowden has explored all these once drawing-room ensembles with BBC National Orchestra of Wales aspects and more, defying received a drama writ large, embracing far- Grant Llewellyn conductor wisdom to make the orchestra the reaching literary and philosophical Total timing 78’56 nexus of his art to date. ideas. © Kate Benjamin & Rob Orchard 5 From the start, Bowden’s outlook concerto and a ballet score (for Complex but never arcane, his The rich play and tumble of these has been expansive and his National Dance Company Wales). music speaks to a continuing ideas finds its counterpart in music inspiration diverse. Not just poetry modernity rather than notions of a of enormous energy, with a solo All four pieces speak in some and literature but mathematics, supposed post-postmodern age. cello part that calls for a blistering way to Bowden’s central artistic science and geopolitics nourish his technique. A densely textured, concern with what he calls single-movement piece cast in three work, and he is intensely curious “collaboration and communication”. Lyra (2011) sections, with three main types of about big questions concerning the He believes passionately in social Bowden’s first commission at BBC origins of life and thought. But his and intellectual engagement; in a NOW was for a cello concerto. The material, both ‘dark’ and ‘light’ in music (including that for voices, continuum between art, science and title of the resulting Lyra contains nature. These are juxtaposed and not appearing here) resists overt history through which layers and multiple references which embrace interwoven throughout: fibrillating descriptiveness or programmes. networks of meaning saturate the entire worlds of cultural and historical high tessitura woodwind, strings Rather, he seizes upon images work in dynamic flux from surface association originating in Philip and metallic percussion “reflects which trigger musical connections. to depth. Idiomatically, Bowden’s Pullman’s trilogy of fantasy novels, the luminosity of stars” in Bowden’s All kinds of ideas and often lateral music owes much to modernist His Dark Materials. Foremost is what words, contrasting with fast and associations are used to forge traditions in its dissonant- Bowden describes as the series’ often low-pitched passages of abstract building blocks in pitch consonant, energetic drive and “wild protagonist”, Lyra Belacqua, great violence. Further song-like and rhythm, timbre and underlying rigorous detail; to the early ‘Russian’ or Lyra Silvertongue. The cosmic war material draws upon 17th century pulse. Dance – which Bowden first and late serialist Stravinsky in in which she becomes embroiled viol tunings, and a coda features fell in love with as a boy, and which particular, but also to Messiaen, traverses philosophy, physics and extreme scordatura for the soloist, might have claimed him in another Varèse, Saariaho and many others, theology: in his preface Bowden notes who is required to de-tune their life – is never far away. Indeed, including his teachers Richard that the name ‘Lyra’ is also shared by bottom C-string “as if crushed by the the two concertos featured here, Steinitz, Julian Anderson and Philip a constellation of stars and a class of force of the material that has gone composed for BBC NOW, are dance- Cashian. Like these latter in their Russian nuclear-powered submarines. before”. related by usage or commission. different ways, Bowden inhabits Coincidentally, ‘his dark materials’ is Lyra (2011) is a cello concerto, part a post-serial, spectral landscape itself a phrase from Milton’s Paradise of which was later choreographed revitalised by rhythmic impulses Lost; Bowden explores a musical link Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as part of the composer’s residency with the BBC National for Ballet Black, whilst Heartland that are physically felt as well as to the 17th century via the small Orchestra of Wales. Premiere solo cellist: (2012) is both a percussion sensed through formal processes. bass – or ‘lyra’ – viol. Oliver Coates. 6 7 Five Memos (2015) “could be applied to composing Heartland (2012) inspired by Escher’s ever-circling music or any art form”. staircases. The whole is underpinned The culmination of Bowden’s BBC Percussion is very important in by two, very long, simultaneous NOW residency was A Violence of In musical terms, the richness of Five Bowden’s orchestral music. He is cantus firmi: one starts with Gifts (2015): a secular cantata Memos lies in the discursive interplay sensitive to the manifold timbres of extremely slow notes which gradually inspired by Haydn’s Creation and between violin and piano, which percussion instruments, and often speed up, whilst its counterpart does conceived on a massive scale for explore often widely contrasting uses them as structural indicators; the opposite. One of the most striking chorus, orchestra and two solo material. In the opening ‘Lightness’, marking changes of section or timbres is that of the aluphone; a singers. Following this mammoth for example, the violin floats above tempo, for example, and steering the new instrument comprising hand- undertaking, he found composing a driving, semiquaver rhythms in the underlying temporal pulses at points moulded aluminium bells which piece for violin and piano “a tonic”. piano, whilst the ensuing ‘Quickness’ of acceleration or slowing down. broadly recall Tibetan and Indonesian Yet here, too, Bowden’s intense explores the seeming contradiction Heartland explores these functions engagement with deeper questions of gongs. The marimba is also featured of festina lente, or ‘hurrying slowly’. and more, delighting in the sheer art, culture and society shaped what ‘Exactitude’ is etched in the precision in a ferociously intricate, moto variety and subtlety of percussion is also, in its own way, a substantial of a smooth, flowing violin melody perpetuo display – and maracas and its rhythmic and melodic and ambitious piece. over a disparate vago – vague or which, in a trio of soloist and two possibilities – as well as its inherent wandering – piano. In ‘Visibility’, orchestral percussionists, seductively Five Memos attempts to articulate aural and visual drama. images and ideas are manifested through music, key concepts of open and close the piece. against a backdrop of infinite, Italo Calvino’s influential final The piece is both a percussion Commissioned by the BBC as part of unrealised possibilities, whilst the series of talks/essays, published concerto and a ballet score. Its title the composer’s residency at the BBC final ‘Multiplicity’ takes up a tiny posthumously – without the projected refers to a disquieting geopolitical National Orchestra of Wales. Premiere solo motif from the first movement percussionist: Julian Warburton. sixth essay – as Six Memos for the theory put forward by Halford to suggest an array of potentially Next Millennium. Bowden’s five John Mackinder in 1904: that any unlimited networks of relationships movements are titled after Calvino’s totalitarian regime which came to Sudden Light (2005) between the two instruments. surviving drafts, each advocating command a posited ‘Heartland’ The great thinker of the early German literary virtues which, in Calvino’s Commissioned by London Music Masters, linking Europe, Asia and Africa would Enlightenment, Gottfried Leibniz, view, embody values crucial to the supported by the National Lottery through dominate the world. Three sections is credited with saying that “music Arts Council England, The Idlewild Trust future of writing. For Bowden, these and Fidelio Charitable Trust. Premiered by are linked by two senza misura is the pleasure the human mind ideas excite precisely because they Hyeyoon Park and Huw Watkins. cadenzas in a single-movement form experiences from counting without 8 9 Julian Warburton at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff being aware that it is counting”.