Page 403 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK
P. 403
16 June 2022
FIRST NIGHT | CLASSICAL
CBSO/Morlot review — a riveting
premiere from Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
new
Geoff Brown
Ludovic Morlot conducting the soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
★★★★☆
What can you expect from a composition called Catamorphosis? Lots of meowing and hissing,
maybe, plus mouse chasing and clawing of furniture? But there was nothing remotely feline
about the UK premiere of this new piece by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, the Icelandic composer who
has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained
brilliance and considerable power from the steady collision, growth and mutation of precisely
imagined sounds and textures, and even some conventional chords.
The title, I’m guessing, mixes “catastrophe” with “metamorphosis”, though you didn’t have to
be a climate change warrior to be riveted on the spot by the singular, unstable and worried
