Anna Clyne: Mythologies
AVIE Records

Mythologies is an apt title choice for this striking collection by London-born composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980). However ancient mythological tales might appear at the surface level, their archetypal themes resonate across the ages, as relevant today as when they were born, and they're fantastical in nature too, populated as they are with gods and mythical beasts. In similar manner, Clyne's music exudes an era-transcending quality in these phantasmagoric pieces, some of which stretch out for twenty minutes at a time. The Grammy-nominated composer is a tale-spinner whose creations transport the listener to dazzling realms.

Her background in electro-acoustic music pays rich dividends on Mythologies. Composed over the course of a decade, its five orchestral pieces are distinguished by expressive textures and colours brought vividly to life by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Jennifer Koh and Irene Buckley. The description of Clyne by Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (with whom she served as composer-in-residence from 2010-15), as “an artist who writes from the heart, who defies categorization, and who reaches across all barriers and boundaries,” dovetails nicely with the works on the recording: each unfolds like a highly personalized creation that blossoms organically rather than sounding like the outcome of an academic exercise. Labeling them classical works is in itself delimiting when they play like uncanny worlds distilled into sound form.

If Masquerade (2013) sounds especially exuberant, there's a good reason: it's a piece Clyne was commissioned to write by BBC Radio to open that year's 'Last Night of the Proms.' The material is emblematic of her style in its vibrant hues and celebratory spirit. As dizzying as a whirling dervish, the material unspools in a head-spinning rush with Clyne coupling rapid string swirls and woozy woodwinds into a five-minute cocktail of dance rhythms and pastoral lyricism. Whereas a Petrouchka-like episode suggests a harlequin connection, an overall impression of a wild dance ball is more generally evoked.

This Midnight Hour (2015) follows, its thirteens minutes paving the way for two twenty-minute opuses. Without wishing to treat the piece too programmatically, the insistent momentum of its opening bars certainly resembles a replication in music of an image from one of the work's two poetic inspirations, Juan Ramón Jiménez, of a woman running naked through empty night streets. The other poem, Charles Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir, also finds its analogue in passages that suggest a sickly-sensuous evocation of evening. Both elements conjoin in the work, music that hurtles forth with the greatest urgency on the one hand and a wistful if slightly inebriated waltz voiced by strings and woodwinds on the other.

The album's high point is violinist Jennifer Koh and the orchestra performing The Seamstress (2014-2015) live at The Barbican with a pre-recorded recitation by vocalist Irene Buckley of William Butler Yeats' poem A Coat woven into its elaborate design. The opening minutes are poignant, the mood in keeping with the fact that Clyne wrote the work in the wake of personal loss. Adding to the intrigue, the concerto is built on a twelve-tone row, an uncommon choice for the composer. Emblematic of her approach, however, the device is used in service to her style rather than dictating its form. Koh's virtuosic performance impresses, especially when she's called on to execute ruminative parts and high-velocity displays. The title's evocation of a seamstress stitching multiple fabrics into a cohesive whole finds its counterpart in music that likewise gathers abundant strands into a satisfying totality.

When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned Night Ferry (2012) to be performed alongside music by Schubert, Clyne, inspired by the violent mood swings he suffered alongside manic bouts of creativity, fashioned a work whose turbulence and agitation would suggest a storm-tossed voyage. One could just as easily imagine the furious upward and downward movements of the strings accompanying those scenes in The Wizard of Oz where the house is uprooted by the twister, but Clyne's visceral material as effectively conjures the image of a galleon rocked by waves and battered by elements. It's hardly one-dimensional, though: calmer sections suggest the storm's retreat and calmer waters allowing the ship's personnel to recover from the harrowing experience. Much like the album in general, Night Ferry speaks to her gift for scene-painting in sound.

December 2020