Page 14 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020

27 August 2020

Interview, Nicholas Collon on Music of

the Spheres

by Katherine Cooper

Themed around Pythagoras’s theory of the ‘Music of the Spheres’ and featuring
Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony (played from memory) alongside works by Max Richter, Thomas Adès
and John Dowland via Nico Muhly, Aurora Orchestra’s debut recording on Deutsche Grammophon is
released on CD tomorrow, and has already featured in my Editor’s Choices following an early digital
release back in June.

Earlier this summer I spoke to Aurora’s Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon about the impact of
rehearsing and performing from memory, how the programme came together and played out in live
performances, and how the orchestra’s rather unusual way of working has equipped them for the
challenges of resuming concerts with social distancing…

Is there any precedent for orchestral music being performed from memory in the Baroque or
Classical periods?

If you look back to the time of Mozart or Beethoven, very little music would have been memorised: in
fact Beethoven thought it was quite arrogant to play from memory! And from a practical point of view,
having orchestras perform off-copy would have been impossible, because all of these symphonies
were premiered with very little rehearsal – we're talking one or two days for most of Mozart’s
symphonies - so it was very much a case of just reading what was in front of you rather than having
any opportunity to internalise the music. I guess it was really the solo instrumentalists of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first embraced the idea of playing recitals and concertos
from memory, and for a long time it's remained the province of individual performers rather than
ensembles. With orchestral music it's also about sheer breadth and turnover of repertoire: for most
instrumental ensembles, particularly contract orchestras, to entertain the idea of playing from memory
would be really impossible because of time-constraints.

Song repertoire is slightly different, because it has a stronger history of oral transmission: so much
music is passed on through folk traditions and singing at home, without a script in front of you. People
have always picked up songs in that manner, but you generally don’t pick up instrumental music
without looking at a score first.

Was performing off-copy always part of Aurora's ethos?