Page 59 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020

the arts desk

11 September 2020
BBC Proms live online: Aurora Orchestra,

Collon review - down memory lane

****

Insights, empathy and inspiration survive a busy filming
by Jessica DuchenFriday, 11 September 2020

Nicholas Collon with the score of Richard Ayres' 'No. 52' and wind-up gramophoneAll images by Chris Christodoulou

The Aurora Orchestra’s trademark expertise in playing symphonies from memory arguably
reached new heights this week as they tackled Beethoven’s Seventh, first in performances with a
live audience and then, yesterday, in an empty Royal Albert Hall for what’s left of the Proms.
The programme opened with a new co-commission from the British composer Richard Ayres, who, like
Beethoven himself, has had a struggle with deafness. Entitled No. 52 (Three pieces about Ludwig van
Beethoven: dreaming, hearing loss and saying goodbye), this was an unnerving and at times moving world
premiere. Fragments of melody and figuration drift through its textures, disrupted by electronic shudders, with
buzzes and whines that would be familiar to anyone who has experienced tinnitus, but now rise up and
overwhelm, sometimes spilling over into screams - yet the music continues, calm under it all, and not above
making a joke about Für Elise. Music can inspire compassion and empathy as it burrows us into the mind of
another human being, and this assuredly did - even if the compassion was more for Ayres than for the
indomitable