Anna Clyne, following the performance of The Years.

Photo, Chris Christodoulou

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Royal Albert Hall, London

Opening with Bent Sørensen’s Evening Land (2017) was a good idea, its fragile nostalgia immediately focussed the listening ears, continuing into greater animation and density, expressive of melodies heard in times past, sketchily remembered if actively pursued, with engaging incidents and subtly changing timbres, intriguingly sustained for nearly fifteen minutes. Anna Clyne’s The Years (2021), for chorus and orchestra, is a meditation on time, consonant, hymn-like, if disrupted – anxious, urgent – harmonies energetically changeable witnessing the seasons that come, go and return. This attention-holding just over twenty-minute setting, homogenously sung, seems to return full-circle to start the journey again, and recurring every twelve months.

In the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, Fabio Luisi – not only titled in Denmark but also Dallas and Tokyo (NHK) – propelled the first movement with purpose and direction, lean-textured, cleanly detailed, such momentum and articulacy carried into an effervescent, rhythmically jaunty Scherzo (both repeats observed), although timpani could have been more outspoken, and fleet Trio requiring very nimble playing to accommodate Luisi”s mercurial realisation. With the slow movement greater repose was needed, as well as more easeful transitions; it all sounded rather impatient, although the solo for the fourth horn was confidently dispatched. The Finale started promisingly, disruptively, but on its return, just prior to the bass singer entering (and he certainly made an impression), that introduction had been softened, and, in between, the “Ode to Joy” theme was curiously without ceremony, pushed along. However, from “Seid umschlungen, Millionen!” (part of Schiller’s text) to the end brought about a levitation that widened the musical communication until the majestic/exuberant conclusion.

“A childhood memory inspires Bent Sørensen’s Evening Land – a sonic view from a window onto the calm, silent landscape of rural Denmark. Inspired by the isolation of the Covid-19 lockdowns, Anna Clyne’s The Years explores ideas of solitude and the passing of time, setting a text by Stephanie Fleischmann.”

Clara Cecilie Thomsen, soprano
Jasmin White, contralto
Issachah Savage, tenor
Adam Pałka, bass
Danish National Concert Choir

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002h4w3

Fabio Luisi & Danish National Symphony Orchestra record Carl Nielsen’s Six Symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon.