Marc Harris & Jo Reeves: Symphony No. 2 —Aurora Nova
Marc Harris

It's difficult to decide which is more interesting, Marc Harris's background or the music he creates. A University of Cambridge graduate and family man with a wife and two children, he manages a successful travel agency specializing in far-flung locations; having played piano from a very young age, he's also performed in bars and restaurants since his university days. When the pandemic hit and Harris was no longer able to play keyboards in bands around his Southwest London home base (including his own band Patchwork), he hunkered down and aided by input from his mentor and collaborator, music teacher and director Jo Reeves, developed a modest score into his first classical composition, Symphony No.1 - Shifting Sands, an ambitious work scored for a full orchestra and two dozen singers. As might be expected, the piece, drawing for inspiration from his travels around the globe, transported the listener to the titular sands of Arabia, the rainforests of Central and South America, and other exotic locales.

After Reeves assembled musicians from the Guildhall and Royal College of Music to present the work in London in June 2021, it was formally recorded with the Northern Film Orchestra later that year. Among other awards, the symphony received the grand prize at the Vivaldi International music competition and second at the Petrichor International Music Competition. Two years after that work's premiere, Symphony No.2—Aurora Nova received a positive reception when it premiered in London in July 2023. Attractively presented in a fold-out case, the symphony, co-written with Reeves and the performance by the Aurora Ensemble conducted by her, is now available in a physical form for those not present at its live unveiling. Whereas different places on earth were reference points for the first symphony, the subject matter of the second is epic in scope, taking as its cosmological theme the very creation of the planet.

Structured in three movements, Aurora Nova is a tonal work harmonically grounded in symphonic music of the Romantic era and packing the visceral punch of a dramatic film score. Latin texts are sung by a choir in all three movements, with the trajectory of the material advancing from a world mired in darkness and silence to one bathed in light, with nature awakening and humanity giving praise to God for the new dawn. After the first movement is introduced by tremulous strings and an alternately elegiac and brooding tone established, the choir enters to resonantly usher the narrative component into being. With the music lilting gracefully, a four-bar motive emerges, voiced initially by strings and then voices, brass, and woodwinds. When the onset of cataclysmic creation is intimated in ruptures that ensue, one is reminded of another work even more epic in scale, Holst's The Planets. As grandiose as the first movement sometimes is, the symphony's opening part includes passages of lyrical delicacy too.

Also set in B-flat minor, the gentler second movement opens (and closes) with a solo violinist gesturing rhapsodically over an enveloping base of muted strings. As the tapestry organically unfolds, a longer, eight-bar theme imparts a rapturous character to the music in keeping with words that describe light emanating out of darkness. Consistent with the trajectory of the work's content, the third movement, set in the brighter key of E-flat major, exudes optimism as the choir's declamations describe the spectacle of brilliant light irradiating the earth. The orchestral sweep of the material is powerful, especially when it includes moving reprises of melodic content from the first movement.

August 2024