Anna Clyne announces Autumn & Winter activity featuring world premiere performances of new clarinet and saxophone concertiHighlights include:

• World premiere of new clarinet concerto Weathered with Martin Fröst and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under conductor Jaap van Zweden
• World premiere of Glasslands, a saxophone Concerto, with Jess Gillam and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Han-Na Chang
• Global tour of DANCE as part of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship’s 20th anniversary
• DANCE will be choreographed with live orchestra for the first time – with Nicholas Blanc’s choreography performed by The San Francisco Ballet as part of the company’s 90th anniversary celebration
• Royal Opera House debut of Breathing Statues with The Royal Ballet performing choreography by Pam Tanowitz
• Masquerade opens the Philharmonia’s 2022-23 season at the Royal Festival Hall, plus Music of Today – a self-curated programme of chamber music
• 9-date US Tour of Stride as part of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s US Tour
• Austrian premiere of Stride at Stiftung Mozarteum, Salzburg
• German premiere of Shorthand with The Knights and cellist Karen Ouzounian at Tonhalle Düsseldof
• The Orchestra of St Luke’s give the first live performances of Strange Loops and Woman Holding a Balance at Merkin Hall and Carnegie Hall
• Further highlights include performances of This Midnight Hour by the BBC SSO and the Philharmonia, and the Canadian premiere of PIVOT

Acclaimed composer Anna Clyne continues to captivate the music world over the coming months with her creations and world-class, cross-genre collaborations. Boldly bringing a contemporary take to classical music, Clyne is one of the most sought-after composers today and in demand across the globe. Clyne’s Autumn and Winter season sees major instrumentalists and orchestras throughout the world presenting world premieres as well as exploring her well-known works. Clyne’s orchestral works will receive more than one hundred performances this season. For a complete list of performances of Anna Clyne’s work please click here.

Weathered – world premiere (Amsterdam, Netherlands)Clyne’s five-movement clarinet concerto, Weathered, explores five elements – Metal, Heart, Stone, Wood, and Earth – while touching on our collective experience of being weathered by the pandemic and, on a larger scale, the alarm of global warming. It will be given its world premiere with Martin Fröst under the baton of Jaap van Zweden with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Co-commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and Verbier Festival (5th – 8th January 2023).Glasslands – world premiere (Detroit, US)Clyne’s first concerto for saxophone, Glasslands, will receive its world premiere with Jess Gillam and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Han-Na Chang at Orchestra Hall, Detroit, MI. Co-commissioned by the Detroit Symphony and the BBC Philharmonic, Glasslands is set in three movements and conjures an imaginary world of three realms governed by the banshee – a female spirit who, in Irish folklore, heralds the death of a family member (usually by wailing, shrieking, or keening in the silence of the night) (18 and 19 February).

DANCE

This season Clyne continues to see performances of DANCE, a five-movement cello concerto based on a poem by the 13th-century Persian writer Rumi. DANCE, which has reached over 8 million streams on Spotify, will embark on a global tour celebrating the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship’s 20th-anniversary and the collective power of women in classical music. Nine conductors who have been assisted by awards from the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship will direct performances with cellist Inbal Segev and the Fundación Orquesta y Coro de la Comunidad de Madrid in Spain* (13-14 September), Symphony Nova Scotia in Nova Scotia, Canada* (11-17 October), Arch Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra in London, UK* (17-18 November) and the Grosses Orchester Graz in Graz, Austria* (18-22 November). In 2023, the tour will continue with visits to the United States and Poland. In a celebration of music and movement, DANCE will be choreographed with live orchestra for the first time, with the San Francisco Ballet (20 January – 11 February). The work will form part of the company’s 90th anniversary celebrations and will be choreographed by Nicolas Blanc, a former principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet and choreographer at The Joffery Ballet.

Breathing Statues – Royal Opera House debut

Further honouring the marriage of music and dance, Clyne collaborates with The Royal Ballet and critically acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz for the Royal Opera House debut of her composition Breathing Statues. Borrowing its title from a poem on music by Rainer Maria Rilke, the performances – inspired by Beethoven’s String Quartets No. 13 in B-flat major Op. 130, No. 16 in F major Op. 135, and the Grosse Fuge Op. 133 – will see the world premiere of Pam Tanowitz’ choreography (4–16 February). The Calidore String Quartet, who premiered Breathing Statues in 2020, will perform the Washington premiere of the work at the Kennedy Center in February (15 February).

Composer Residencies – Philharmonia Orchestra and Trondheim Symfoniorkester & Opera

Clyne continues to be highly sought-after by many of the world’s leading orchestras and this season serves as Composer-in-Residence with the Philharmonia Orchestra and as Contemporary Composer of the Season with the Trondheim Symfoniorkester & Opera. The Philharmonia will launch its new season under its principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali at the Royal Festival Hall, London, with Masquerade, a bold and dramatic work which draws inspiration from 18th-century promenade concerts and was premiered at the 2013 Last Night of the Proms (22 September). Clyne reunites with the orchestra for Music of Today, a programme of chamber music she has curated to celebrate some of the most engaging composers working today. This programme will include the UK premiere of clarinet quintet Strange Loops, co-commissioned by the Orchestra (3 November). The Philharmonia will return to the Royal Festival Hall for the UK premiere of Color Field. Inspired by Mark Rothko’s painting ‘Orange, Red, Yellow’, the work captures the fiery rhythms of Serbian folk music and the experience of synaesthesia, where certain colours are linked with particular pitches or keys (3 November). With the Trondheim Symfoniorkester Clyne recently served as a jury member for the Princess Astrid International Music Prize which showcased Masquerade as part of the finalist’s concert. The orchestra continue to feature her music throughout its 22-23 Season, including This Midnight Hour and Stride, part of a Beethoven trilogy written for the composer’s 250^th anniversary in 2020 (23 & 24 November).

This Midnight Hour – UK performances

This Midnight Hour, intended to ‘evoke a visual journey’, draws inspiration from two poems, one by Juan Ramón Jiménez, the other by Charles Baudelaire. Conductor Joana Carneiro will conduct this work with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at City Halls, Edinburgh (27 & 28 October), and will reunite with the Philharmonia for a performance at the Bedford Corn Exchange (30 Nov & 1 Dec).

US performances of Strange Loops and Woman Holding a Balance

The Orchestra of St Luke’s will visit Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center (18 October) and Carnegie Hall (19 October) with an Anna Clyne-inspired programme including the first live performances of two of Clyne’s recent works commissioned by the orchestra. Clarinettist Jon Manasse joins the orchestra for a performance of the Clarinet Quintet Strange Loops, an exploration of musical loops based on Douglas Hofstadter’s philosophical novel ‘I am a Strange Loop’. The programme will also explore Clyne’s string quartet, Woman Holding a Balance, written to accompany Jyll Bradley’s short film of the same name, based on Vermeer’s paintings (18 and 19 October).

Stride – US tour & Austrian premiere

Clyne’s Beethoven-inspired Stride for string orchestra continues to be widely performed after receiving its world premiere with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in 2020 to great acclaim. This season, Stride will receive its Austrian premiere at the Stiftung Mozarteum in Großer Saal, Salzburg, as well as embarking  on a 9-date US tour as part of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s visit to the US (12th – 22nd October). The tour will see visits to Amherst, MA (12 Oct), Troy, MI (13 Oct), Lewisburg, PA (14 Oct), Ithaca, NY (15 Oct), Brookville, PA (16 Oct), East Lansing, MI (18 Oct), Goshen, IN (19 Oct), Akron, OH (20 Oct) and Kansas City, MO (22 Oct).

Shorthand – German premiere

Shorthand will receive its German premiere with cellist Karen Ouzounian at Tonhalle Düsseldof as part of The Knights 11-date tour for ‘The Kreutzer Project’. Dedicated to Clyne’s husband Jody Elff, the work takes its title from a quote by Leo Tolstoy in which he writes “Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance”. The music references two themes from the work on which Tolstoy’s novella, ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ is based, Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano (24 October).

PIVOT – US performances and Canadian premiere

PIVOT is based on Clyne’s experiences at the Edinburgh Festival and quotes fragments of ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’, a traditional fiddle tune of eighteenth-century Scottish lineage prominent in American fiddle music. This season will see the work performed by the Charlotte Symphony conducted by Andrew Grams (7 & 8 October), the Richardson Symphony Orchestra (5 November), the Canadian premiere by the Oakville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Lorenzo Guggenheim (5 November) and the Pacific Symphony and conductor Karen Kamensekat (17 – 19 November).