Boosey & Hawkes

Mark-Anthony Turnage: orchestral premieres in Glasgow

(March 2009)

New orchestral music by Mark-Anthony Turnage is profiled in a free concert by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on 18 April conducted by Ilan Volkov. The composer portrait at The Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow includes two recent works: Five Views of a Mouth for flute and orchestra receives its world premiere and From All Sides, first staged as a dance collaboration in Chicago, receives its European premiere.

Five Views of a Mouth (2007) is a set of five etudes for amplified solo flute and orchestra commissioned by the BBC for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Dietmar Wiesner. Turnage has worked closely with the German flautist on a number of projects with Ensemble Modern, including Greek and Blood on the Floor, and has long wanted to write a concerto for him. As well as alluding to the flute’s mode of playing, the title refers to the central character in Samuel Beckett’s melodrama Not I, in which a disembodied mouth, spotlit in the darkness, delivers a high velocity verbal stream of consciousness hinting at memories of past traumas.

In Turnage’s concerto, the movement titles refer to the Beckett play and the flute part can often be viewed as a non-verbal setting of the texts. The opening etude Out… into this world is a set of lyrical fragments, though Turnage’s ‘explosive’ marking suggests the shock of sudden birth. The animated series of multiple canons in the second etude symbolises how the protagonist Found herself in the dark… In the expressive central Passacaglia the soloist changes to alto flute as language is acquired in Realised… words were coming, while in the fourth movement the soloist moves to piccolo for Something she had to… with its insistent ostinati. The themes of birth and claustrophobia combine in the final etude, Out before it’s time…, with the flute restored for a sequence of four chorales.

From All Sides (2005-06) was Turnage’s first work created specifically for dance and was premiered in 2007 in choreography by Jorma Elo for Hubbard Street Dance company with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The opening Fanfare for wind and brass consists of three paeans, then Snapshots, in lighter vein, introduces the strings. Slow Dance is the most intense movement, based on a Bachian descending phrase and highlighting chamber groupings. Tango picks up the tempo, emphasising pizzicato strings. Collage combines many of the earlier ideas, leading straight into the continuously energetic Moto Perpetuo finale.

Recent Turnage works include Out of the Black Dust for brass ensemble and percussion, to be performed by members of the Berliner Philharmoniker on 25 May, the brass of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 8 June, and at the Barbican in London in a future season. Grazioso! for small chamber ensemble, commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for eighth blackbird, receives its first performance on 21 August. Turnage is currently composing an opera commissioned by The Royal Opera in London, to a libretto by Richard Thomas on the theme of Anna Nicole Smith, due for premiere in the 2010/11 season.

> Weitere Informationen zum Werk: Five Views of a Mouth

Photo: Philip Gatward

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