Proms 2011: Stevie Wishart - Out of this World (World Première)

As on previous occasions, new music featured strongly in last Saturday's Proms Matinee from the Cadogan Hall, this time including the world première of a new work by Stevie Wishart: Out of this World, composed for the BBC Singers •

Earlier in the concert, music by Hildegard of Bingen had been heard, & it's to Hildegard that Wishart has turned for inspiration, setting four of her texts, texts for which no extant music by Hildegard herself survives • Thankfully, pastiche is not on Wishart's agenda, although various influences do make themselves felt at points through the piece • Opening song 'O word of the Father' is the most spare of them all, soft open vowels giving way to a cool & austere atmosphere in which the upper voices are silent • The male singers handle the chromaticism admirably, but the music could really do with the kind of acoustic Hildegard would have known; in the relatively echoless Cadogan Hall, some of the warmth is lost, & it sounds more severe than it actually is • The brief second song 'O God eternal' is much more engaging, with strong interaction between the upper & lower voices, the latter of which initially offer brief, strange sounds beneath, demarcating the pulse • It develops into a distinctly French kind of sonority, at times quite strongly redolent of Poulenc •

The two remaining songs are performed without a break, & are by far the most ambitious music heard in the piece • 'O creation of God' begins with rather gob-smackingly high & low clusters, a rare & distinctly unsettling sound • Somewhere within, there's a melodic line moving, & gradually the outlying clusters slide inward, forming rich new chords • For a time the music becomes quasi-tonal (once again with a slight French accent), but at its conclusion, sends out assorted melodic tendrils that jar & interweave, searching out the final song, 'O most beloved Son' • This begins in a rather ecstatic harmonic place, but swiftly moves into something entirely harder to describe; stylistically, it's strange indeed, seeming to combine hints of earlier musics, elements from folk traditions, together with non-Western mannerisms—the whole has a passionate but raw quality that's spellbinding • Wishart softens the intensity ever so slightly towards the end, fixing the singers above a distant drone-like foundation, & ends with an uncanny chorus of sibilance •

Stevie Wishart - Out of This World (World Première) [30:00]
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