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baritone and cello. Add to that a text drawn from eight sources — ranging from the Iranian-

American writer Kaveh Bassiri’s 99 Names of Exile to an Old English text, The Wayfarer — and

this substantial, 30-minute piece could be a muddle. Yet the librettist Alasdair Middleton and

Dove make it work: the narrative arc, pacing and point of view all convince.
If the language is more dissonant than Dove’s fans might expect, we’re not talking Birtwistle

here. It’s simply part of the piece’s unsettled mood, the undercurrent of anguish. And there’s

another virtue: Dove’s storytelling instinct. He guides us through a day in an exile’s life,

exploring emotions as part of character. The two soloists — a brooding Simon Keenlyside and

an eloquent Raphael Wallfisch — reveal different aspects of the narrator: outer and inner voices;
thoughts and feelings; intellect and instinct.

The vocal line is plain, the cello’s more elaborate, while the orchestration is a masterclass in
economy. Abstract writing mixes with flashes of pictorialism. The sea is an important presence,

captured in undulating strings and a certain bleakness shared with Barber’s Dover Beach. The

piece builds in intensity until, over a bass drum beat and brooding lower strings, we reach a

profound elegy. “What country, friends, is this?” the narrator asks. Lamenting cellos answer.

This is a story that can speak to any time or place. That was a smart move. For Wallfisch, the
hinterland includes the legacy of his mother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, whose cello playing saved

her life in Auschwitz and who is the dedicatee of this piece. That’s impossible to forget when

listening, yet there’s also space for the audience to bring their own experiences to the music.

Gergely Madaras did a wonderful job conducting. And in the performances of

Sibelius’s Finlandia and Dvorak’s New World Symphony, he turned the orchestra into an entire
world.

Available on BBC Sounds