Robin Holloway: Haydn framed and Clarissa Sequence

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(March 2010)

Robin Holloway’s current occupation with Haydn is exerting itself on a number of fronts. His new musical ‘framework’ for Haydn’s last unfinished quartet was premiered by the Endellion Quartet in January, summed up by The Independent as “a discreetly triumphant experiment”. As Haydn’s inspiration wavered, and he found it impossible to complete his quartet commission, he sent a card to his publisher with a song setting of the words “Gone is all my strength, old and weak as I am”. The Independent described how “Holloway decided to frame the work with a prelude – formed from two phrases in the quartet’s minuet – and with a postlude which opened with that song.”

A major strand of Holloway’s output over the past decade has focussed on chamber music, including string quartets written for the Endellion and Sacconi Quartets, a sequence of six short quartetinni premiered by the Endellion, Spring Music for the Nash Ensemble and Four Temperaments for a wind quintet drawn from the Britten Sinfonia. Holloway is also contributing to a major online project arranging Haydn’s quartets for piano duet, to be housed at www.fourhandsplus.com. Other Haydn novelties include Holloway’s Five Haydn Miniatures based on flute-clock originals, premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2000.

Holloway’s other main strand has remained orchestral music, including his Fourth Concerto for Orchestra premiered by the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas in 2007. The conductor continues to programme Holloway’s works widely, performing his popular arrangement of Debussy’s En Blanc et Noir with the New World Symphony in Miami on 1 May.

Tilson Thomas also gives a repeat performance of Clarissa Sequence with the San Francisco Symphony on 27 May. This acts as reparation for an earlier outing for the operatic suite in 2000, when it was beset by the sudden cancellation of an ill soprano soloist and a city-wide power failure, prompting Holloway to step in and swiftly rework the piece without soprano. The May performance returns to the original 40-minute version for soprano and orchestra.

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