Page 537 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

for its scheduled first performance in 2004, nor when rescheduled for 2005 and 2009. Typical

Olly, his friends might say.

It was still unfinished when he died, but the 16 minutes that exist — inspired by six paintings in
the Cleveland Museum of Art — are magnificently pictorial, allusive and quirky, with a rich

orchestration reminiscent of Knussen’s beloved Ravel. The last movement, evoking Turner’s

painting of the Houses of Parliament on fire, breaks off just before the blaze really gets going,

which is tragic on several levels. Still, we did hear one finished Knussen orchestral piece: his

attractive and atmospheric Horn Concerto, superbly played by Martin Owen.

Earlier in the day, three action-packed chamber concerts featured some outstanding performers

led by the soprano Claire Booth and cellist Anssi Karttunen. We heard rather too many tributes
to Knussen written almost entirely for cello harmonics, but also a moving and lyrical Song for

Big Owl from Mark-Anthony Turnage and a fast, staccato and jagged Riddle by Augusta Read

Thomas, both for solo cello.

Other highlights included two elegiac works for soprano, violin, cello and piano: Colin
Matthews’s wry, gentle and radiant O, and Julian Anderson’s intense, neurotic Tombeau. The

violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen and pianist Huw Watkins also gave a staggeringly good

performance of Ravel’s Sonata, its perpetual-motion finale fizzing like a firecracker.

Fittingly, however, all was eclipsed by Booth’s unaccompanied soprano delivering Knussen’s
compellingly passionate settings of Rilke’s late poems, and then by a ghostly collage put

together by his companion, Zoë Martlew, that incorporated a tape of his voice — still haunting

the festival where he inspired so many memorable performances.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra concert is available on BBC Sounds