The Night Sky – St John’s Smith Square, London

Conductor: Olivia Clarke

Creative Director: Matt Belcher

Night Sky is simply glorious. Created by Southbank Sinfonia’s #ConcertLab, under the creative directorship of Matt Belcher, it offers a unique experience to concertgoers. We’re given large cushions and invited to sit or lie down on the floor around the orchestra. Above us, the central square of vaulting becomes the night sky itself: onto it are projected imaginatively curated images of stars and constellations from NASA’s International Space Station and the James Webb Space Telescope. At one extraordinary moment, the gilded ceiling boss at the centre is transformed into the sun.

It is dark and quiet when the music begins. What could be more appropriate than Haydn’s The Representation of Chaos from the opening of The Creation? It’s thrilling to hear it while looking at projected images that suggest the dawning of light itself. The rest of the hour-long orchestral programme is chosen to develop the theme of the night sky and to mix the familiar with the strange and new. It takes us from Alan Hovhaness’s Symphony No. 6 Celestial Gate through Prokofiev’s Spheres, Einaudi’s Day 3: Full Moon from Seven Days Walking, to an arrangement of Uranus The Magician from Holst’s The Planets and Henri Duparc’s Aux Étoiles and includes two notable pieces by women: Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst and Carol J Jones’ The Light Thief.

Between the musical items are a series of thought-provoking recorded readings by Henry Goodman and Adjoa Andoh which take us through a brief history of astronomy. The stars here are Plato, Copernicus, Galileo, Herschel and Sagan. At the end, former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino talks lyrically of his first experience of spacewalking.

The audience remains rapt throughout: there’s none of the usual throat-clearing and programme-turning of a conventional concert. All lie or sit in companionable silence gazing up at the stars. We don’t hear conductor Olivia Clarke arrive and as one piece blends into the next, there is no time – or need – for applause. But when we are brought back to earth, the applause is fervent.

Reviewed on 23 November 2023