On 25 October Edward Gardner conducted the German premiere of Oliver Knussen’s Cleveland Pictures (2003-09) with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra as part of musica viva. The programme opened with Knussen’s Stravinsky-inspired 4-minute showpiece Flourish with Fireworks.
Each movement of Cleveland Pictures is dedicated to one of Knussen’s composer colleagues: George Benjamin, Alexander Goehr, Augusta Read Thomas, Colin Matthews, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Magnus Lindberg. Even incomplete, at 15 ½ minutes the work ranks as one of Knussen’s most extensive orchestral statements. Of seven projected movements, four exist complete, two exist as fully-orchestrated fragments, and one exists only as sketches:
I. Portail avec Penseur (Façades and lake with Rodin)
II. Calabazas (Velásquez)
III. Dans les vagues (Gauguin) [a fragment]
IV. Two Clocks (Tiffany/Fabergé)
V. St. Ambrose (Goya)
VI. Don Quixote (Masson) [sketches only – not performed]
VII. The Burning of the Houses of Parliament (Turner) [a fragment]
The Cleveland Orchestra originally commissioned the work from Knussen. Each movement translates a different item from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art into sound, following the pattern of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, whose orchestration by Stokowski Knussen recorded with the orchestra.
In January 2024 they gave the US premiere of the four complete movements with Franz Welser-Möst as part of their annual Florida residency; in February 2024 it received its Spanish premiere from Ludovic Morlot and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the work’s long-awaited first public performance at the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival, as part of a day of concerts dedicated to the composer.
In April that year Gardner led the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s celebration of Knussen’s music at the Southbank Centre, performing the Horn Concerto (with Annemarie Federle), Whitman Settings (with Sophie Bevan) and Flourish with Fireworks, as well as conducting the Royal Academy Manson Ensemble alongside LPO musicians in Two Organa and Songs and a Sea Interlude. He has given numerous performances of Flourish with Fireworks, including at the Aldeburgh Festival, at the BBC Proms, and the Bergen Philharmonic.