Vale of Glamorgan Festival

David John Roche   
Waves of Love  world premiere (c10’) 

John Metcalf, orch. David john Roche  
Calm  world premiere (c4’) 

Huw Watkins 
Spring (15’) 

INTERVAL  (20’) 

Sarah Lianne Lewis   
Tourmaline  world premiere (c7’) 

Grace Williams 
Sinfonia concertante (24’) 

Jac van Steen Conductor
Clare Hammond Piano

This concert is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast in Afternoon Concert and the New Music Show. It will be available to stream or download for 30 days via BBC Sounds, where you can also find podcasts and music mixes. Visit bbc.co.uk/now for more information on future performances.

Waves of Love is fast, loud and uplifting. As a rock and metal musician at my core, big noise, insistent riffs and the desire to feel exhilarated sit at the centre of everything I write. This piece is testament to that.

The initial draft of Waves of Love was finished the day before my 30th birthday (in the middle of the first lockdown) – at the time, I had no idea how far away the finished piece was! The composition was finally finished two years later at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, taking it all the way from the lush greens of the Welsh valleys to the rolling greens of the Berkshire Hills. 

Programme note © David John Roche

John Metcalf writes:A few years ago I was intrigued by the remit to composers participating in ‘Composition Wales’ to compose a short work either as an overture or an encore to a concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Although I didn’t at that time go any further with the idea, I did get as far as identifying ‘Calm’ (2005), the second of Three Miniatures for flute and harp, as a possible candidate for that brief. During the course of an online work session with David Roche I mentioned the idea. He immediately suggested that we both prepare a version and compare notes, as it were. In the event his progress was far swifter than mine and we ended up working on his version together.

David John Roche writes:I wanted to create an orchestral arrangement of John Metcalf’s ‘Calm’ as a thank you for the enormous help, guidance and generosity he has shown me. I was able to collaborate closely with John, affording me the opportunity to work through a composition with one of Wales’s most important composers – an incredible experience, something for which I am enormously grateful!

Spring does not set out to be a pictorial depiction of the passage of the season; instead it was the cold, fragile, rapid opening, scored for active flutes and quietly shadowing strings, that clearly suggested that time of year to me. The shape of the piece is broadly palindromic. After the chilly opening, there is a short, static section with icy sustained strings accompanying muted brass and wind chorales. The central section is the longest, the full orchestra finally being deployed in a sequence of climaxes. After this, the music eventually finds its way back to where it started.

Programme note © Huw Watkins

INTERVAL: 20 minutes

For many years I’ve been interested in the boundaries between acoustic and electronic sound. I’ve written works that use digital processing to manipulate and interact with live musicians, and created purely instrumental music that feels electronic, through playing with texture and extended techniques.

This new commission is a highly energetic piece that takes inspiration from the mainstream genre of electronic dance music. I don’t quote directly from any existing piece, instead exploring the rhythms, harmonies and textures of electronic music in an authentically instrumental setting.

There’s an underlying unease throughout. The strings range from gritty loud stabs to uncomfortable swaying glissandos and from gentle mechanical pizzicatos to soaring melodies that glitch with disjointed rhythms. We move through different textures as themes build and grow, then tumble apart, before pounding drums draw them back together. Altogether this work is a joyous sprint through an off-kilter landscape, delighting in the versatility of acoustic strings, while maintaining the loud visceral impact of the genre that inspired it. 

Programme note © Sarah Lianne Lewis

1 Allegro con brio
2 Poco lento
3 Alla marcia

Clare Hammond piano

Grace Williams was in her twenties when she first had the idea to write a big piece for piano and orchestra. She was working as a professional musician in London at this time and, in 1934, wrote to the BBC telling them that she planned to compose ‘a Sinfonia concertante for Piano and Orchestra’, and that she would like to perform the solo part herself.  Work commitments prevented Williams from being able to start on her new piece until 1940, but she completed the full score in June 1941. 

As the title implies, Williams’s Sinfonia concertante takes the form of a dramatic argument or conversation between soloist and orchestra rather than a traditional concerto. While the piano always remains first among equals, the balance achieved between soloist and orchestra seems intimately connected to the piece’s Romantic impetus and a desire on Williams’s part to explore a variety of different moods and techniques. 

The turbulent opening theme of the Allegro con brio is soon followed by a more contemplative melody, and these contrasts are developed in a sequence of quick-fire, often surprising, exchanges between piano and orchestra. The hushed piano melody that opens the Poco lento gives rise to increasingly ardent debate with the orchestra, although the tranquil mood returns at the end of the movement with an echo of the opening melody. In contrast, the insistent pulse heard at the opening of the Alla marcia finale leads to the work’s most fiery musical pyrotechnics, and also features some of the more spectacular bravura writing for the piano.

The Sinfonia concertante was to be Williams’s only major work for piano and orchestra, and it was premiered by pianist Margaret Good and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Clarence Raybould, on the BBC Home Service in January 1943. The Welsh premiere was given in September 1947 by Eiluned Davies (piano) and the BBC Welsh Orchestra, conducted by Mansel Thomas. To mark the centenary of Williams’s birth, a special BBC recording of the work, featuring Huw Watkins as soloist and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Baldur Brönnimann, was broadcast in Radio 3’s Composer of the Week programme in 2006.

Programme note © Rhiannon Mathias

Further Reading: Lutyens, Maconchy, Williams and Twentieth-Century British Music: A Blest Trio of Sirens Rhiannon Mathias (Routledge)

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Biographies

Jac van Steen conductor

Jac van Steen was born in the Netherlands and studied orchestra and choir conducting at the Brabant Conservatory of Music.

Since participating in the BBC Conductors Seminar in 1985, he has enjoyed a busy career, conducting the finest orchestras in Europe and holding the posts of Music Director and Chief Conductor of the National Ballet of the Netherlands, the orchestras of Bochum and Nuremberg, the Weimar Staatskapelle, Dortmund Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra and Musikkollegium Winterthur, as well as Principal Guest Conductor of BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra and Prague Symphony Orchestra.

He made debuts with Opera North and the Vienna Volksoper in 2013 and Garsington Opera in 2015. He has returned to Opera North for several productions and appears regularly with the Vienna Volksoper and Garsington Opera, conducting works including Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande and Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. In the 2018–19 season he made his debut with Oslo Opera with two Puccini productions. 

He visits the UK regularly, working with orchestras such as the Philharmonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic and Ulster Orchestra. He made his debut in Tokyo with the New Japan Philharmonic and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. 

He has made many commercial recordings, and many of his concerts have been broadcast on the BBC.

Besides his activities as a conductor, he is Professor of Conducting at the Hague Royal Conservatory of Music. He also regularly works in the UK with Chetham’s School of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, Royal Academy and Royal College of Music. In 2018 he led the Jette Parker Young Artists showcase at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Clare Hammond piano

Clare Hammond is recognised for the virtuosity and authority of her performances. In 2016 she won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award and in 2020 was engaged to perform at the International Piano Series at London’s Southbank Centre. Current and recent highlights include concerts with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and at the Aldeburgh and Husum festivals, as well as broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 and Danish Radio with violinist Henning Kraggerud.

Performances during the pandemic included recitals at the Wigmore Hall and Aldeburgh, a live broadcast from St David’s Hall, Cardiff, and broadcast recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra.

During the 2020–21 season she was engaged to perform with the Britten Sinfonia under Ryan Wigglesworth, Sinfonia Varsovia under Jacek Kaspszyk, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Christoph Altstaedt and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska. 

Her discography includes over 20 world premieres, and her latest release, Variations, has received extensive critical approval.

Contemporary music is at the core of her work and she has given over 50 world premieres. 

An active chamber musician, she works regularly with the Carducci Quartet and Henning Kraggerud, and has started a new collaboration presenting lyric dramas with actor Tama Matheson. In 2018, she developed Ghosts & Whispers, a performance piece for piano and film, in collaboration with composer John Woolrich and animators the Quay Brothers.

Community engagement forms an increasingly important part of her work. Since 2017 she has performed to over 6,500 schoolchildren in partnership with Gloucestershire Music and Wye Valley Music in Schools.