2 mins
Back to nature
An English composer explores the world of Vaughan Williams
FOR CHILDREN OF CHAOS: Anne-Sophie Mutter performs with the Munich Philharmonic in the second of two benefit concerts in aid of children displaced by the ongoing war in Ukraine. The concerts, organised with the German arm of Save the Children, also featured cellist Pablo Ferrández and pianist Lauma Skride as well as members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian State Orchestra. Mutter performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at the concert, which also included Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and the Ukrainian national anthem.
Photo: Tobias Hase/Munich Philharmonic
COMPOSER Natalie Klouda
WORK Piano Trio no.2
ARTISTS Sitkovetsky Trio
DATE 5 May 2022
PLACE Charterhouse School Hall, Godalming, UK bit.ly/3IEwHfM
‘My love for Vaughan Williams began when listening to his string music growing up. It transported me to another time,’ says British composer Natalie Klouda. Her new piano trio, inspired by nature, will be premiered by the Sitkovetsky Trio at the Investec International Music Festival to mark the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth. ‘I had his sound world in my mind,’ she continues, ‘but I wanted to take inspiration from his process by delving into various British literary sources specifically related to nature.’
The work’s first movement is inspired by Isabella Tree’s book Wilding. ‘It stuck in my mind how connected everything is,’ Klouda says. ‘You’ve got the jay that plants the acorn under the hawthorn plant, so that the oak tree can then grow without being eaten by animals.’ This connectivity was integrated into her writing for the three instruments. Along with David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet, the ‘Blue Marble’ photo of CEarth taken from the Apollo 17 craft in 1972 inspired Klouda’s second movement. ‘I had not fully appreciated just how recently it was that humans saw a photograph of Earth for the very first time. The movement is characterised by a sense of space and intimacy,’ she says. The final movement takes inspiration from Melissa Harrison’s Rain: Four Walks in English Weather. ‘With Vaughan Williams in mind, I wanted to embrace my Englishness,’ says Klouda, who grew up in the English countryside. ‘And I wanted to explore the potential fragility of the seasons that we rely on every day as a perceived certainty.’
Natalie Klouda
Sitkovetsky Trio
KLOUDA PHOTO SUSSIE AHLBURG. TRIO PHOTO VINCY NG
Writing for strings comes naturally to Klouda, a violinist herself. ‘This piece is constantly weaving and balancing the three roles. Will the violin soar over the others, will the cello shine through like a glass light?’ As a close friend to the trio’s pianist and violinist, she expresses the joy in writing for friends: ‘I know their sound and refer to it as I’m composing.’