On 22 October Ilan Volkov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Erik Bosgraaf in Anna Meredith’s virtuoso work for recorder and chamber orchestra Origami Songs at London’s Barbican Centre. The 15-minute work is a tour de force for the recorder family: its five 3-minute movements call respectively for sopranino, treble, bass, and Ganassi treble (an early Renaissance-era recorder model); the second movement calls for the soloist to play two (treble) instruments at once.
The title evokes the miniatures that make up the piece, each movement evoking a different fragile shape created through the deft art of folding paper: ‘Bird’, ‘(Two) Fish’, ‘Pinwheel’, ‘Kite’, and ‘Blintz’. This lightness of touch is reflected in brilliant, quicksilver writing for both soloist and ensemble of nine players: clarinet, trombone, percussion, harpsichord, and string quintet with double bass. In the final movement the ensemble scrunch, tear, and rip pieces of paper behind a swooping, sinuous solo line on Ganassi treble.
Origami Songs was co-commissioned by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and the Nederlands Kamerorkest; it received its world premiere at Kings Place from Bosgraaf and Aurora Orchestra in October 2013. Bosgraaf has since performed the piece in Amsterdam at the Muziekgebouw with the Nederlands Kamerorkest and with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at Metropolis New Music Festival. In 2014 Meredith created a version of the work for two clarinets and chamber ensemble.
Imaginative and light-filled, this collection of miniatures manages, like the origami shapes it describes, to replicate reality with utmost economy. So a drawn-out glissando conjures up a gliding fish; a bouncing violin bow becomes a fluttering bird’s wing, with an underlying sense of propulsion and rhythmic sophistication that recalls Steve Reich or John Adams.
It’s a demonstration of what experimental music, at its most unpretentious, can evoke, particularly when played, as it was here by the Aurora, with meticulous attention to detail. And it explains why Meredith is often viewed as the boldest, most refreshing young composer working in Britain today.
Financial Times (Hannah Nepil), 4 February 2019
On 22 September Aurora Orchestra performed Meredith’s Anno at Kings Place, directed by Alexandra Wood. In November Scottish Ensemble, who performed Anno at the Cheltenham Music Festival this summer, tour Meredith’s Tull (2014) for string orchestra alongside Jonny Greenwood’s Proven Lands (from There Will Be Blood). November also sees George Jackson and the Amarillo Symphony give the US premiere of Meredith’s Fringeflower, a 5-minute work for chamber orchestra inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.