On Record: Emily Howard: Torus (NMC Recordings)

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Emily Howard

Antisphere (BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Vimbayi Kaziboni)
Producer Matthew Bennett, Engineer Stephen Rinker
Recorded 29 November 2022, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

sphere (BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Mark Wigglesworth)
Producer Dean Craven, Engineer Stephen Rinker
Recorded at the Aldeburgh Festival, 23 June 2018, The Maltings, Snape

Compass (Julian Warburton (percussion), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group / Gabrielle Taychenné)
Producer & Engineer David Lefeber
Recorded 4 December 2022, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester

Torus (BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins)
Producer Ann McKay, Engineer Christopher Rouse
Recorded 11 November 2019, Barbican Hall, London

NMC Recordings D274 [68’58″]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

NMC releases a second collection of music by Emily Howard – now in her early forties and established among the most distinctive while forward-looking composers of her generation, heard in scrupulous performances by a notable line-up of British orchestras and ensembles.

What’s the music like?

Few world premieres from recent years have left an impression comparable to that of Taurus at the Proms in 2016. Its appearance, moreover, marked a further stage in an evolution which had commenced just over a decade earlier and has continued apace, with major commissions from British and European organizations. This has been paralleled by Howard’s commitment into researching the intrinsic properties of sound, most recently via the Centre for Practice & Research in Science and Music (PRiSM) at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music.

As it now stands, Torus is the first part in an informal trilogy of pieces collectively entitled Orchestral Geometries. It evolves along the perceived trajectory of a doughnut-shaped ball whose central void is crucial to music evoking absence as much as presence. Not that a work subtitled Concerto for Orchestra could be found lacking in either immediacy of content or virtuosity of gesture, which qualities come demonstrably to the fore as it unfolds and make for a composition involving in its expressive profile and fascinating in its formal process.

By contrast, Sphere is a succinct yet eventful journey through and around the global shape in question and which, in this context, might reasonably be thought an extra-terrestrial interlude – its ideas pithy while exuding enough potential for their development in subsequent pieces.

This is what happens in Antisphere which forms its conceptual opposite though also its aural continuation, the piece gradually encompassing the ‘sound-space’ through an engrossing and imaginative demonstration of orchestral prowess. Evident too is an increased focus upon the visceral nature of the musical content, likely reflecting a form which can precisely be defined in mathematical terms but remains all but intangible as regards human perception. Fortunate, then, that Howard has been able to render this concept as an emotional and affective whole.

Hardly less absorbing is Compass, the most recent of these pieces. This takes the spatial and nautical connotations of its title as the basis for music which unfolds as a cohesive dialogue between string septet and percussion that complements it and offers contrasts at every turn.

Does it all work?

It does, not least for providing an arresting take on that interplay of ‘heart and brain’ that has been a mainstay of Western music. The cerebral basis of all these pieces may be undeniable, though equally so is the precision of their forms and, above all, the allure of their expression judged intrinsically as sound. Much the same could be said of the music of Iannis Xenakis, the centenary of whose birth was commemorated last year, and whose thinking is continued by Howard from a vantage that is inherently personal while being decisively of the present.

Is it recommended?

It is, not least for its excellent performances by three of the BBC orchestras and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with booklet notes by Paul Griffiths and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. This impressive release reinforces Howard’s significance in no uncertain terms.

Listen & Buy

Torus is released on Friday 28 April. You can explore buying options at the NMC Recordings website, and listen to clips from the album at the Presto Music site. You can read Arcana’s interview with Emily Howard by clicking on the link, and click on the names for more on the composer Emily Howard, plus performers Vimbayi Kaziboni, Mark Wigglesworth, Julian Warburton, Gabrielle Teychenné and Martyn Brabbins

In Concert – BBC Singers @ St Giles’ Cripplegate & St Paul’s Knightsbridge

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by John Earls

It has been quite a time for the BBC Singers recently. As this world-renowned choir approaches its 100th anniversary, the past few weeks have seen the BBC announce their closure, and magnificent campaign against it in response (including more than 700 composers writing to the BBC director general in condemnation) Here on Arcana you can get a glimpse of their recorded worth, with an appreciation and a BBC Singers playlist.

Thankfully a temporary reprieve has since been issued, with the BBC issuing a statement on an “alternative funding solution”.

All of this was book-ended by two concerts of sacred music broadcast on BBC Radio 3 for Holy Week, both demonstrating what a unique and valuable choir they are.

On 17th March they gave their first concert following the BBC’s shameful axing announcement at St Giles’ Cripplegate in London. It was inevitably a special and emotional occasion. The programme of choral and cello music went under the bitterly ironic title of All Will Be Well (after Roxanna Panufnik’s piece of the same name which concluded the programme). “I’m still the producer of the BBC Singers” said Jonathan Manners in his introduction to much applause.

The concert was a fitting example of the range and depth of the choir’s repertoire in terms of time (it opened with Hildegard von Bingen’s O cruor sanguinis from the 12th Century) and style. It displayed impressively their ability to convey a sense of comfort and balm such as in Lesia Dychko’s short piece Blessed be the name (Emma Tring a beautiful solo soprano) as well something more unsettling like Fac me tecum pie flere by Sven-David Sandström.

But this was a programme of choral and cello music and cellist Benjamin Hughes was individually expressive as well as combining powerfully with the choir, both in evidence in Knut Nystedt’s Stabat Mater.

A magnificent encore of Maurice Duruflé’s motet Ubi Caritas was followed by a rapturous and moving ovation (below)

The concert was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Palm Sunday and is available online for a limited period.

Less than three weeks later, and following the BBC statement announcing a suspension of the closure, the group performed a Music for Maundy Thursday concert of sacred pieces on the theme of ‘contemplation, sorrow and reflection’ for live broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London (above).

Yet again the programme highlighted the sweep of their repertoire opening with a meditative motet from the 1590s, Vittoria Aleotti’s Miserere mei, Deus (from the first published book of sacred music by a woman) and also featuring sacred pieces from the 21st Century (Karin Rehnqvist’s I raise my hands and Judith Bingham’s Watch with Me), as well as William Byrd’s 14th Century The Lamentations of Jeremiah.

But there were two pieces where the group really shone to spectacular effect. Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater à 10, with Richard Pearce on chamber organ, was stunning and utterly compelling in its detailed delivery. Francis Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence made a glorious finale.

One must also acknowledge the key role of Chief Conductor, Sofi Jeannin, always assured yet empathetic. To watch her conduct is a mesmerising experience in itself.

The extent to which the BBC Singers and Jeannin develop and promote a diverse repertoire (they have a 50:50 gender policy for composers whose music they perform), engage in learning and community work, regularly perform commissions and broadcast on Radio 3 (making their phenomenal output available to such a wide audience) is all part of what makes them so unique.

I have seen them many times over many years and they never fail to move me. These two concerts only served to prove just why they are irreplaceable.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union and tweets at @john_earls

Click on this text to find out more about the Musicians’ Union campaign to protect the BBC Singers after September and action to stop job cuts at BBC Orchestras