Catalogue

Summary:

five vibrant, exuberantly scored and appealing works … irresistible … another winner” - Gramophone Editor’s Choice

“dazzling … bursting with kaleidoscopic textures” ★★★★★ – BBC Music Magazine

“All five works here teem with vivid, near-cinematic imagination and atmosphere” – Presto Classical Editor’s Choice

“an absorbing compendium of her orchestral music, showcasing her exhilarating mix of multimedia, historical models and new dialects” – BBC Radio 3 Record Review

“bristles with full-on orchestral dynamism” – The Guardian

“the vivid colors in her works do much to tell the story” – AllMusic

“entertaining, ingenious and unpredictable. That’s Anna Clyne.” – BBC Radio 3 Record Review

Anna Clyne’s enormous palette of colours and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Anna’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi-media – including poetry, visual art and videography – combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal.

The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors. Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition. The title evokes an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers. This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramón Jiménez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work’s inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats. More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring. The album concludes with rewind, conducted by André de Ridder. It’s a wild romp imagining the backwards scroll of a video tape complete with glitches, skips and freezes.

Tracklist:

ANNA CLYNE (b. 1980)
1. Masquerade* (2013) (4.57)
2. This Midnight Hour (2015) (12.43)
3. The Seamstress (2014) (21.25)
4. Night Ferry (2012) (20.13)
5. <<rewind<< (2005) (7.58)

Total time: 67.24

*world-premiere recording

Jennifer Koh, solo violin (3)
Irene Buckley, voice (3)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop (1) – Sakari Oramo (2, 3) – Andrew Litton (4) – André de Ridder (5)

Produced in association with BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Radio 3 Recording Engineers: Philip Burwell (2, 4), Neil Pemberton (5) & Susan Thomas (1, 3) BBC Recording Producers: Ann McKay (1, 3, 4, 5) & Benedict Warren (2)

<<rewind<< by Anna Clyne was recorded by the BBC on 7 May 2011 at the Barbican Hall and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 19 March 2012.

Night Ferry by Anna Clyne was recorded by the BBC on 11 January 2013 at the Barbican Hall and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 11 January 2013.

Masquerade by Anna Clyne was recorded by the BBC on 7 September 2013 at the Royal Albert Hall and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 7 September 2013.

The Seamstress by Anna Clyne was recorded by the BBC on 15 January 2016 at the Barbican Hall and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 15 January 2016.

This Midnight Hour by Anna Clyne was recorded by the BBC on 21 March 2018 at the Barbican Hall and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 21 March 2018.

Producer: Anna Clyne
Engineered and Mastered by Jody Elff