It was whilst working on the opera Flight that I first fell in love with Jonathan Dove’s extraordinary music. Along with the effortless word-setting that comes only from a life dedicated to composing for the theatre, it was the soaring and heartfelt beauty of his orchestral writing that really struck a chord. The works on this disc span nearly two decades, fromThe Ringing Isle written in 1997, to Gaia Theory, which was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2014. Together they offer a snapshot of the orchestral output of this most prolific and celebrated composer in his 60th birthday year.

Run to the Edge begins with a sudden burst of energy and a single pitch, ‘E’. As the sound ricochets around the wind and brass, and gradually morphs into the pithy motif on which the work is based, it is left to the violas to drive the piece forward with a chattering repetition of the opening note. It is perhaps no coincidence that Dove places the viola so centrally, for it was this instrument that he played as a teenager in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra under the direction of a young Simon Rattle. When he was commissioned by the LSSO to write a piece for their 2003 tour to Japan, it was a chance to acknowledge the formative experience that playing in a youth orchestra has on the life of any musician. The resulting showpiece is a thrilling musical journey with the tempo marking that all self-assured, virtuosic youth orchestras love the best: fast. The frenetic and urgent pulse that the violas instigate is quickly taken up by all sections of the orchestra and restlessly alternating bars of 6/8 and 2/2 offer the opportunity for snappy cross rhythms and quick flashes of orchestral colour.

The Ringing Isle was commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Association of British Orchestras. Its title is one coined by the composer Handel: so struck was he by the sound of bells when he arrived to live in Britain, that he described his adopted homeland as ‘the ringing isle’. As Dove writes, ’The sound of people ringing the changes is a peculiarly British sound of celebration, and it is the sound of communal music-making, so it seemed a good starting point for a piece celebrating British musical life.’ A series of bell-ringing changes informs the musical material – in particular ‘Grandshire Doubles’, ‘Oxford Treble Bob Minor’ and ‘Plain Bob Major’ – but there is literary inspiration at play too: as the busy chimes of the opening section give way to the luxuriant melody at 3’55”, it is Shakespeare who is evoked. Using a technique described by Robin Holloway, who taught Dove at Cambridge, as ‘suppressed vocalisation’, the words of John of Gaunt in Richard II, are ‘secretly sung’ by the strings:

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea

Hojoki (An Account of My Hut), is the setting of a thirteenth century text by the poet Kamo no Chōmei (1153-1216). In a thought-provoking story of timeless relevance, the author chronicles a series of natural disasters that befell the people of Japan in the course of but a few years. Having witnessed the horrors of fire, earthquake, flood and famine, the poet retreats to a small dwelling in the mountains. ‘Now that I have reached the age of sixty’, he explains, ‘and my life seems about to evaporate like the dew, I have fashioned a lodging for the last leaves of my years…this hut is not even one hundredth the size of the cottage where I spent my middle years.’ Subtitled a ‘dramatic cantata’, it is probably the most substantial work ever written for counter-tenor and symphony orchestra and draws on all of Dove’s considerable skills as a musical story-teller. The premiere was given in September 2008 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek with Lawrence Zazzo singing the solo rôle.

Jonathan Dove’s 1997 comedy Flight was the work that confirmed his operatic talents to the world. Commissioned by Glyndebourne and premiered under the baton of David Parry, the conductor to whom Dove has entrusted so many of his first performances, Flight is based on the same true story that later inspired the 2004 Tom Hanks movie The Terminal. With a libretto by April De Angelis it tells the tale of a refugee, trapped in an airport, his encounters with all who pass through the building, and, ultimately, his acceptance that this might be his new home. As the composer writes, ‘Airports are gateways to adventure, strange micro-cities between countries. They are places where stories meet, imbued with the magic of flight’. Airport Scenes, a four-movement orchestral suite, was commissioned for Warwick University in 2006 by Paul McGrath, who had previously conducted the opera’s Belgian premiere.

Flight starts with a great theatrical flourish: an upward surge of excitement that compels us, as the refugee sings, to ‘Look! Up there’, and it is with this music that Take-off begins. The cast of the opera is peopled with holiday-makers, business-travellers and employees of airline and airport alike and it is their infectious enthusiasm for the possibilities of travel that is depicted in this first movement. A slow unfolding of the notes in the harmonic series causes the great blades of a jet engine to turn (0’55”) before the orchestra starts to send the plane on its thundering journey down the runway. As the wheels of the aircraft eventually leave the tarmac, a pair of piccolos takes us to the very edge of the orchestral pitch spectrum (2’15”), and a triumphant theme in E-flat major spirits the plane off into the distance. Storm is derived from Act II of the opera. The travellers are grounded overnight during electrical storms; the turbulence outside seems to affect them and leads to some strange behaviour, with violent consequences for the refugee. Dawn Landing sees the weather clear and the characters acknowledge the unfortunate events of the previous evening: ‘What a dreadful night. What have we done?’ (0’14”). A plane lands and a message of love is delivered (3’00”). Departures sees a reprise of the opening material which quickly accelerates into an irresistibly toe-tapping final chorus: ’Goodbye, goodbye. We’re for the sky’ (0’25”).

The last work on the disc, Gaia Theory, takes its inspiration from the groundbreaking writings of scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock. ‘Lovelock’s assertion that the Earth behaves as a self-regulating organism, which tends to maintain surface conditions on the planet that are favourable for life, is a beautiful idea in itself; and his image of everything dancing together to achieve this balance obviously invites music.’, writes Jonathan Dove. ‘I was struck by his observation that, since life on Earth began, the sun has got perhaps 30% hotter, and yet the Earth has not. For hundreds of millions of years, the impact of the sun’s heat has been moderated by cloud cover, the atmosphere, the albedo of the polar ice-sheets and so on, all affected by the behaviour of microscopic organisms as well as by animals, the respiration and rock weathering activities of lichens, plants and trees and innumerable other processes, including human activity – all, as Lovelock describes, “locked in a sort of dance in which everything changes together.”’

The dance that Dove creates in response is for a very large orchestra – including triple woodwind, five trumpets and an extensive percussion section – and is divided into three movements. The first, marked Lively, emerges from a triad of C major played high on the violins. Those three notes are joined by two more to create a five-note chord built of fourths: E-A-D-G-C and it is this musical cell that informs the entire work. Great melodic arcs, scurrying rhythmic patterns and hypnotic bass-driven ostinati are layered one over another, building and then dissipating, until we are left with the gentle ringing of a single triangle. The middle movement Very spacious describes a whole panoply of living entities and the different rates at which they breathe. Over the glacial ebb and flow of the strings, who need half a minute to complete their slow pattern of respiration, the bassoons take seven seconds and the flutes barely four for their three-note chords to rise and fall. Harp, vibraphone, celeste and piano add a gentle phasing of shifting sounds, their notes quietly resonating like a reflection of colours caught in the passing light. As this trance-like movement ends, the sound of the vast orchestra slowly dissolves to reveal only two notes remaining from the original five-note cell. Just as it seems as if the music will come to a halt, the violas take hold of this slim strand of musical DNA and the piece bursts into life once more. The Dancing finale teems with endless invention as Dove considers ‘how the heat of the sun would change the character of the dance’. And then, after briefly settling over a driving bass pattern, and with a nod to the Stravinsky of Le sacre, this orgiastic dance of perpetual life accelerates until frozen mid-frame.

After many years of conducting Jonathan Dove’s orchestral works and experiencing their popularity with orchestras and audiences alike, it had always struck me as something of an anomaly that none had been commercially recorded. This is music that deserves to be heard and so I’m delighted that now, thanks to the generosity of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells whose financial support made this recording possible, it has the chance to reach the widest possible audience.

© Timothy Redmond