On 23 July Oliver Knussen’s Requiem – Songs for Sue (2006) opens the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, in a programme curated by its 2026 Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Performed by the Fellows of the centre, it is complemented by Salonen’s own Arabesques for Olly, his tribute to the composer for cello and electronics, as well as works by Kaija Saariaho and Steven Stucky.
The 13-minute Requiem is scored for soprano and ensemble of fifteen players. It was composed as an elegy for Sue Knussen and grew from the inclusion of a fragment of Rilke’s ‘Requiem for a Friend’, chosen by Alexander Goehr, in her memorial booklet. It is predominantly autumnal in its instrumental colouring, with darker and more mellow timbres emerging from its combination of flute, alto flute, a pair of clarinets with bass clarinet, two horns, violas, and cellos, as well as double bass and marimba.
When searching for texts Knussen read 1700 poems by Emily Dickinson, alighting on those addressed to her sister Sue. The first song in the set emerged as a composite of lines from Dickinson, beginning ‘Is it true, dear Sue?’ The second movement sets Antonio Machado (in Spanish), and the last W.H. Auden (a special favourite of Knussen and his late wife); a brief postscript, setting the aforementioned fragment of Rilke, concludes the piece. “It's not a huge work”, said Knussen in an interview, “but it's a big piece emotionally…it's very much a piece written for family, and for people who knew Sue."
It was premiered by Claire Booth and members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Knussen in 2006. Singer and conductor subsequently performed it with ensembles including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Booth has also performed it with Ensemble intercontemporain and the London Sinfonietta, conducted by George Benjamin.
Knussen was Head of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood between 1986 and 1993, and, as a student, found his compositional voice there in 70s studying with Gunther Schuller, as well as meeting Olivier Messiaen, Bruno Maderna, and numerous other leading composers; it was also where he met his wife Sue. He wrote Fanfares for Tanglewood – an arresting 2-minute work for three dispersed groups of brass and percussion – in 1986.