Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Brighton Festival Chorus
Ludovic Morlot conductor
Francesca Dego violin
Sibelius Tapiola Op. 112
Rachel Portman Tipping Points – UK Premiere
John Luther Adams Vespers for the Blessed Earth
Has climate change reached a tipping point? So asks Oscar-winning film and TV composer Rachel Portman’s new concerto for violin, narrator and orchestra. Featuring poems by Nick Drake, it forms the centrepiece of Grammy Award-winning maestro Ludovic Morlot’s nature-themed programme, poised between Sibelius’s orchestral hymn to the Finnish forests and American eco-activist composer John Luther Adams’s choral prayers to Mother Earth and her endangered species.
Born in west Sussex, England, Rachel Portman began composing at age 14 and read music at Oxford University. She gained experience writing music for drama in BBC and Channel 4 films including Mike Leigh's Four Days In July and Jim Henson's Storyteller series. Portman has written over 100 scores for film, television and theatre. She was the first female composer to win an Academy Award for her original score for Emma. She has received two further Academy nominations for The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, the latter also earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
About Tipping Point
We hope Tipping Points - with the violin as the guiding ‘voice’ at the heart of the music - takes the listener on an emotional, imaginative journey, offering something each for the heart, the spirit, the body and the mind - our four human elements. Tipping points are points of no return and in this uncertain world how can we respond? How do we come to terms with the unknown world of the future? How might we re-enchant nature, and what would that look like? How might we harness our imaginations - surely the human superpower we each possess - to make change happen? Tipping Points was made out of such questions and let’s remember, ‘tipping points’ can also be transformative in positive, creative ways.
For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth. Living for almost 40 years in northern Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970s and into the 1980s, he worked full time as an environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made this choice with the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world. Since that time he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and many other honors.
About Vespers of the Blessed Earth
The new choral epic Vespers of the Blessed Earth by John Luther Adams turns images of clouds, canyons and endangered birds into sounds of soul-shaking beauty... Rather than Prayers to the blessed virgin, these are vespers to the blessed earth.
A Brief Descent into Deep Time traverses two-billion years of earth’s history, through the names, colours, and ages of the geologic layers of the Grand Canyon.
A Weeping of Doves is grounded on the calls of the beautiful fruit dove (Ptilinopus pulchellus), native to the tropical rainforests of Papua New Guinea.
On summer evenings, bright clouds sometimes appear on the horizon, pulsing with color as if illuminated from within. As we pollute the atmosphere more and more, Night-Shining Clouds become more widespread, and as the sun sets on carbon-burning culture, the earth just grows more beautiful.
The Sixth Extinction is entirely in Latin, the scientific binomials of 193 critically threatened and endangered species of plants and animals, ending with Homo sapiens.
Aria of the Ghost Bird is my setting of the call of the now-extinct Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō (Moho braccatus), transcribed from a recording of the last male of the species, singing for a mate who would never come.
