2 mins
Basic instinct
A violin concerto exploring society’s response to drastic events
ART AND SOUL: Nicola Benedetti performs on her 1717 ‘Gariel’ Stradivari in Westminster Abbey, in a portrait marking the culmination of the UK’s annual Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year award. Artist Calum Stevenson, 23, received a £10,000 commission to paint his fellow Scot as his prize. The painting now hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. The 2021 competition aired on the digital channel from October to December last year. Image: courtesy Calum Stevenson
PREMIERE of the MONTH
COMPOSER Missy Mazzoli
WORK Violin Concerto ‘Procession’
ARTISTS Jennifer Koh (violin) National Symphony Orchestra/Gemma New
DATE 3 February 2022
PLACE Kennedy Center, Washington DC, US bit.ly/3m1TF7W
When confronted with disasters, humans have often resorted to rituals to cope. This simple and alarmingly pertinent notion forms the basis of American composer Missy Mazzoli’s new violin concerto.
The idea came to her while on the Swedish island of Fårö, once a hiding place for those escaping the plague. ‘Humans have always been trying to control things we have no control over,’ she says. The work evolved out of a decade-long collaboration with violinist Jennifer Koh, with whom she proposed the concerto to the work’s commissioners, the National Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra. ‘Jenny can play anything, so I felt free to stretch myself.’
With reference scores aplenty, Mazzoli delved deep into the concerto form’s ‘infinite possibilities for drama’. As the soloist, ‘Jenny is leading the orchestra through the rituals,’ she says. A customary cadenza sees the soloist guiding the orchestra over a large-scale summit. As for Mazzoli’s approach to virtuosity, she adds: ‘It’s not about playing faster and louder. There are moments with delicate arpeggios, where it’s about maintaining them while a storm swirls around the violin.’
Missy Mazzoli
Jennifer Koh
KOH PHOTO JURGEN FRANK. MAZZOLI PHOTO CAROLINE TOMPKINS
Mazzoli chose five rituals for the five movements. In the first, ‘Procession in a spiral’, she visualises a procession in winding formation. This leads into the ‘jumping’ movement two, ‘Saint Vitus’, based on historical accounts of a ‘dancing disorder’. The third movement, ‘Oh my soul’, recalls a hymn warding off bad spirits, while movement four ‘Bone to bone, blood to blood’, recasts a medieval spell used to heal wounds during perilous journeys. The final movement, ‘Procession ascending’, reuses the first’s material, this time ‘in a straight line going upwards’. ‘I want people to feel they’ve gone on a journey throughout the piece,’ Mazzoli says of the premiere.