Anna Meredith: Smatter Hauler (BBC commission: World Premiere)

With the Aurora Orchestra and the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble conducted by Nicholas Collon.
Smatter Hauler: literally, hauler of smatter. Anna Meredith borrowed the name for her new Proms commission from a Sherlock Holmes novel – it’s a Victorian term for a gang of handkerchief thieves. ‘Think less about the snotters,’ she suggests, ‘more about the skulduggery and the looting.’ Groups of musicians snatch material from each other across the stage. Performed from memory, the music provides hooks, glitches and patterns to keep its performers on track: there are melodic shapes to jog the memory but mostly the piece is rhythmic and chunky, with adjectives like ‘scrapy’ and ‘hard’ written into the parts. The unison beginning breaks apart into seven groups, each one teeming with distinct material – Meredith calls it an ‘instant ant farm’ effect. Later there are bold panning effects that whoosh across the stage like a high-stakes street chase…