Kynance Cove captured in music
When you receive the score of a new piece of music there is always a mixture of excitement and trepidation. When you know that new work is being performed not only by your own choir but also by the BBC Concert Orchestra, and around one hundred talented young musicians from local schools, there is a little more anxiety than usual that the music will be suitable for the various performers and learnable within the rehearsal time available. With the first performance being recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3, you open the score for the first time with fingers firmly crossed that the music will be appealing and
When Kynance Cove arrived a few weeks ago, I already had enough experience of working with Dobrinka Tabakova to know she would deliver something really special, and deliver it she has. She has chosen to write in an idiom that will be immediately appealing to listeners, but there is still a sophistication in her unique use of harmony and orchestration.
There is a directness in the way she has depicted the rolling waves in semiquavers that act as an undercurrent running through most of the music. The waves occasionally give way to block chords representing the “wondrous cliffs” in John Harris’s poem which dates from 1855. But there are also more subtle effects like dreamy harmonies that, for me, evoke memories of hazy sunshine at the end of a day on the beach.
It is a rare privilege to host a BBC orchestra in Cornwall, and even more so to have them join us for such a significant premiere. The new work is around 12 minutes long, and there will be lots of other beautiful music in the concert, including arrangements of the folksongs Londonderry Air and Shenandoah, as well as a Bach concerto and a recent work by Cornish composer Graham Fitkin.
Christopher Gray, Director of Music