Turnage meets Beckett: Five Views of a Mouth premiere

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Turnage meets Beckett: Five Views of a Mouth premiere

(May 2009)

The world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new flute concerto, Five Views of a Mouth, took on an unexpected theatrical dimension in Glasgow in April. This set of five etudes for amplified solo flute and orchestra was inspired by Samuel Beckett’s melodrama Not I, and leading exponent Fiona Shaw happened to be in town and agreed to perform the melodrama as a prelude to Turnage’s work. The movement titles of the concerto refer to the play, and the amplified flute part is largely a non-verbal setting of the texts, which in Not I are delivered by the spotlit mouth as a high velocity stream of consciousness hinting at past traumas.

The Scotsman described how the Turnage flowed “invitingly in the direct wake of Shaw’s dazzling verbal showpiece”, turning “a potentially fascinating evening into an unmissable one”. The concerto was commissioned by the BBC for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov and the premiere was part of a Turnage focus at the unorthodox Old Fruitmarket venue. The work was written for German flautist Dietmar Wiesner, who has collaborated closely with the composer on Ensemble Modern projects including Greek and Blood on the Floor.

Five Views of a Mouth opens with the etude Out… into this world, 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 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.

“…a work shot through with menace… while the fluttering lines of the flute suggest mental instability, Turnage uses the orchestra to project the emotional undercurrents… The heart of the work is the shadowy passacaglia, whose minatory power comes from its scoring for throbbing bass wind and piano.”
The Guardian

“It’s a work that reveals a wealth of introspective sensitivity as well as Turnage’s typically head-on brutalism, ranging from the languid alto flute movement to the piercing eruptions of the piccolo cadenza…Soloist Dietmar Wiesner coloured its restive moods with all-embracing character and verve.”
The Scotsman

Turnage’s recent violin concerto Mambo, Blues and Tarantella has been performed by Christian Tetzlaff this season in London, Stockholm and Toronto. A new song-cycle A Constant Obsession, setting English texts on the theme of love, was commissioned by the Wigmore Hall for Mark Padmore and the Nash Ensemble and premiered in March. Turnage is currently composing an opera commissioned by The Royal Opera in London, to a libretto by Richard Thomas about the life of Anna Nicole Smith. It is due for premiere in the 2010/11 season.

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