Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Pianosong returns to Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw on 12 December, performed by Laura Sandee, Ensemble Insomnio and Ulrich Pohl. The 30-minute work is scored for piano, ensemble of 17 players and live electronics, with the soloist doubling a synthesizer programmed to emulate the calls of some forty colourful Californian bird calls. These samples revealed to Harvey level after level of detailed ornamentation - baroque curlicues and arabesques – that he sought to bring into dialogue with the instrumental ensemble, especially the piano.
Just as birds are drawn into a human musical language, so too does Harvey imagine the orchestra, like the birds, winging their way through the bright air. He adapted, too, the quasi-electronic frequency modulation found in birdsong to the electronic modulation of the orchestra. “If the songs and objects of the score can bring some inkling of how it might feel to be a human in the mind of a bird, or vice-versa, then I would be happy”, Harvey remarked.
It premiered in 2001 at the Cheltenham Festival with Joanna MacGregor, Martyn Brabbins, and Sinfonia 21; MacGregor would subsequently perform the piece with the London Sinfonietta, Schoenberg Ensemble, and International Contemporary Ensemble. Its other champions include Michael Wendeberg with Ensemble intercontemporain and Bertrand Chamayou, who performed it in 2019 with the Orchestre National de Metz and David Reiland. It was recorded in 2012 by Hideki Nagano with David Atheron and the London Sinfonietta.
The concerto is another expression of Harvey’s aerial imagination. Flight-Elegy (1983-89) for violin and piano was a tribute to RAF pilot and violinist Peter Gibbs, who showed great daring as both aviator and musician. His 1996 motet How could the soul not take flight for double choir turns to Rumi’s poetry to imagine a transcendent capacity for the love of creation. Cirrus Light for solo clarinet (2012), Harvey’s final published work, was channelled Harvey’s hours observing the high cloud formations of the summer sky from his wheelchair.