Composers: Dobrinka Tabakova, Felix Mendelssohn, Michael Nyman and others
Conductor: Maxime Tortelier
Sinfonia Smith Square are staging concerts in pioneering new ways. As part of their aim to bring the “universal power of music” to the widest possible audience, hugely popular recent events let people lie on the floor or wander among the musicians. In The Orchestral Forest, an unseated hour-long concert, five tree-themed pieces of music are interspersed with soundscapes recorded inside Britain’s vanishing temperate rainforests.
Rainforests once covered 20% of Britain. Now, after centuries of clearance, grazing and logging, only scattered fragments survive. These precious areas, where mossy branches are bearded with lichens and polypody ferns, can help mitigate the climate and nature crises.
A symphony of birdsong. Green light dapples the ceiling like sunshine through spring leaves. Lighting designer George Andrews dims and brightens the orchestral space to match the shifting registers. The Orchestral Forest opens with Dobrinka Tabakova’s majestic concerto, The Patience of Trees. A haunting solo violin is gradually joined by a spacious melody of strings: wintry twigs becoming a leafy summer canopy.
Conductor Maxime Tortelier casts a mesmeric spell, weaving the music together in sweeping armfuls, then helping it evaporate at the end of Tabakova’s fourth elemental movement, gently waggling his fingers like falling rain. It sometimes feels as if he is conducting the audience, too, as they unconsciously speed up and slow down in time with the music.
Being allowed to move between the musicians, who are scattered on daises throughout the hall, is a powerful experience. Stand between the cellos and bases to feel low notes vibrate in your diaphragm, stop in the swelling strings for a goosebump moment, or walk under the percussion stage where drums reverberate.
Up next is the playful genius of Felix Mendelssohn’s Overture from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, first written 200 years ago when the composer was just 17. Shakespeare’s original play is set mostly in the woods outside Athens, and Mendelssohn’s evocative music is full of scampering pizzicato fairies, pulsing strings, braying donkeys, hunting horns and otherworldly woodwind chords.
The concert moves into a darker section, literally and metaphorically. The dappled light has gone, the soundscape – shockingly – becomes axes and chainsaws, and the music more discordant and unsettling.
The final sound recording comes from a young native wildwood, planted just 25 years ago and already full of birdsong. The last piece of music is Michael Nyman’s Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks, ending the evening on a more upbeat note. Sinfonia Smith Square explore timely fears and possibilities for our shared future. They create a memorable hour of flawless playing, innovative staging and redemptive emotional power.
Reviewed on 24 October 2024
