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1 Soave sia il vento –
2 Torna il tranquillo al mare –
3 Distant –
4 Placido e il mar … –
5 Tristansburg –
6 Chorale –
7 O sia tranquillo il mare

Timothy Ridout viola

Born in 1954, John Woolrich attracted wide attention in the 1990s with a series of orchestral commissions which included his exquisitely melancholic Viola Concerto. It was composed for Paul Silverthorne, who premiered it at the 1995 Cheltenham Festival with the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Philharmonic, conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier.

A critic described the piece at the time as ‘soft, pungent music, dense with thoughtful feeling but transparently scored … quite original’. This was no vehicle for bravura display as might traditionally be expected from a concerto. Rather, Woolrich has created a deftly subtle work in which soloist and orchestra explore the line between public and private expression.

The composer writes: ‘My concerto is really a cycle of seven bleak and brooding songs-without-words. The viola sings, and the orchestra echoes its song in predominantly soft and gentle colours.’

Those songs are also, in effect, songs about songs, in that the fabric of the piece is woven from a series of finely drawn allusions to vocal music by composers of the past, while remaining very much in Woolrich’s own, distinctive voice. Such allusions are typical in his music – and indeed the concerto in part recalls his 1989 Ulysses Awakes, a reworking of a Monteverdi aria for viola and strings.

Each song/section moves seamlessly from one to the next via a horn transcription of the ‘lebewohl’ (farewell) motif from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26, ‘Les adieux’. All share an impassioned yearning and a rapt, rocking quality. This last often evokes movements of wind and sea alongside the missing of loved ones via elusive drifts of Mozart, Wagner, Schumann (himself echoing Beethoven) and Monteverdi.

Crucially, the piece has a strong sense of personality which doesn’t rely on the listener recognising the quotations. More important is the way the composer’s love of the viola shines through, as a ‘dark, nocturnal’ purveyor of ‘acoustical mysteries’.

Programme note © Steph Power