George Benjamin’s Interludes and Aria from ‘Lessons in Love and Violence’ for soprano and orchestra makes its German debut with Sakari Oramo, Anu Komsi, and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln on 7 December.
The 15-minute montage of excerpts from Lessons in Love and Violence, with Martin Crimp’s text from the 2017 opera’s ‘Pearl aria’ at its heart, is cast in seven unbroken movements. Purely instrumental highlights include a sombre nocturne, with antiphonal octaves in the brass and tolling gongs; a swift, energetic toccata; a stately chorale that erupts into a violent orchestral conflagration, leading to a restless, brief coda. The full score is now on sale here.
The 2017 opera, based on the life of Edward II, is the third of Benjamin’s four collaborations with playwright Martin Crimp. Its narrative follows the King’s obsessive devotion to his lover Gaveston and his scandalous - ultimately fatal - neglect of both his wife Isabel and his country. The featured aria sees the queen dissolve a priceless treasure in vinegar for an audience of her starving subjects.
Composed as a 70th birthday gift for Simon Rattle, Interludes and Aria premiered to critical acclaim in January 2025 with Simon Rattle, Barbara Hannigan, and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, with subsequent performances at the Philharmonie de Paris and the Philharmonie Luxembourg.
In the same programme Oramo conducts Jonathan Harvey’s Tranquil Abiding (1999). The 14-minute work for chamber orchestra finds its imaginative wellspring in Harvey’s Buddhist faith, the title referring to a term for a state of single-pointed concentration. It is based on a single, slow breathing rhythm: a simple oscillation between an ‘inhalation’ on an upper note and an ‘exhalation’ on a lower one. Overlaid with increasingly ornate melodic fragments, this simple unifying device creates an organic and coherent trajectory through the work’s wave-like form and towards its limpid conclusion. Oramo previously conducted the piece with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the 2024 BBC Proms.