#3 of our series of 2015 festival previews
Australian magpie: Wikimedia commons Over the last year NATURAL LIGHT has featured Australian birds and the music they have inspired several times. Glorious birdsong, the threat that it faces, the loss, “and the soulless noise that we’re left with when they’re all gone” are the inspiration for Australian composer Brett Dean’s Pastoral Symphony, which will be paired with Beethoven’s own homage to the countryside at the BBC Proms on 2 August.
Dean is following in the footsteps of Tate and Sculthorpe, as well as living composers such as John Rodgers and David Lumsdaine, who are among several Australians who appear to have created a modern tradition of celebrating birdsong in their works. With the dynamic young Aurora Orchestra, who specialise in playing from memory, expect a powerful sense of direct communication with the audience.
Dean is following in the footsteps of Tate and Sculthorpe, as well as living composers such as John Rodgers and David Lumsdaine, who are among several Australians who appear to have created a modern tradition of celebrating birdsong in their works. With the dynamic young Aurora Orchestra, who specialise in playing from memory, expect a powerful sense of direct communication with the audience.
Tui by Tony Wills creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 A few days later it is the turn of the best-known musico-ornithologists, Olivier Messiaen. Little over a year after Peter Hill premiered a newly discovered Messiaen bird-piece, La Fauvette Passerinette, Chris Dingle, Professor at Birmingham Conservatoire, repeats the feat with a new piece for orchestra. Messiaen’s Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (oiseau Tui) - A bird from the tree of Life (Tui bird) - will receive its world premiere on 7 August. It is an orchestral tour de force featuring a single species, the Tui of New Zealand. Tui are known for their noisy, unusual call, that varies for each individual, combining bell-like notes with clicks, cackles, creaks and groans. Ravel’s Oiseaux Tristes – Sad Birds – is also on the programme. Ravel is said to have been inspired by the “elegant melancholy Arabesque” of a blackbird singing in Fontainebleau forest.
Later this month Chris Dingle will describe how he brought the piece to life in a guest blog for NATURAL LIGHT. He will also be speaking at a pre-concert event at the Royal College of Music, which will be broadcast on Radio 3 during the interval.
Later this month Chris Dingle will describe how he brought the piece to life in a guest blog for NATURAL LIGHT. He will also be speaking at a pre-concert event at the Royal College of Music, which will be broadcast on Radio 3 during the interval.
Monarch migration map from Monarchwatch UK-based American composer Arlene Sierra has written many pieces inspired by insect, birds and other nature. Inspired by the migration patterns of butterflies, her Butterflies Remember a Mountain is featured in a chamber concert on 7 September. The title refers to monarch butterflies which are known to take a long detour on migration because their ancestors used that route to avoid a mountain that no longer exists.
Those whose southward route from Canada takes them across Lake Superior suddenly change direction halfway across the vast lake, lengthening their non-stop flight over water considerably, for no apparent reason. Biologists, and some geologists, believe that a mountain once blocked the monarchs' path. The most energy-efficient route had them veering east around it before turning south again. The mountain wore down over millions of years, but evolution has not caught up. The butterflies still make their detour.
Those whose southward route from Canada takes them across Lake Superior suddenly change direction halfway across the vast lake, lengthening their non-stop flight over water considerably, for no apparent reason. Biologists, and some geologists, believe that a mountain once blocked the monarchs' path. The most energy-efficient route had them veering east around it before turning south again. The mountain wore down over millions of years, but evolution has not caught up. The butterflies still make their detour.
The following evening two works remind us of spring. Mahler’s bitterly beautiful Ninth Symphony is also full of birdsong and, in Alban Berg’s view, “expresses an extraordinary love of the earth, for Nature”. The National Youth Orchestra’s annual concert opens with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s Re-greening, a celebration of spring written specially as a complement to Mahler’s Symphony.
Music and great nature broadcasting are two of the BBC’s biggest reasons to exist, and the Proms is the natural place to bring the two together, in a concert of music from the series Life Story, composed by Murray Gold. Sir David Attenborough and members of the production team present footage from the series in a Sunday afternoon family concert on 30 August.
Music and great nature broadcasting are two of the BBC’s biggest reasons to exist, and the Proms is the natural place to bring the two together, in a concert of music from the series Life Story, composed by Murray Gold. Sir David Attenborough and members of the production team present footage from the series in a Sunday afternoon family concert on 30 August.
And finally, a late night Prom on 10 September is in collaboration with six of the BBC national radio stations and BBC Music. The Radio 4 show Wireless Nights is brought to the concert hall, pairing music and spoken word inspired by the night. Jarvis Cocker presents an evening he describes as ‘a nocturnal investigation of the human condition’, with Maxime Tortelier conducting the BBC Philharmonic. The blurb says that badgers, stars, elves and lambs may or may not be involved.
You can read NATURAL LIGHT's feature series on the 2014 Proms here, and keep up with the nature featured in this year's festival in a forthcoming series of articles and reviews.
You can read NATURAL LIGHT's feature series on the 2014 Proms here, and keep up with the nature featured in this year's festival in a forthcoming series of articles and reviews.
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