The composer-conductor Oliver Knussen died, aged 66, more than two years ago. That loss still feels raw to countless musicians. From his teenage years, when he won the admiration of Benjamin Britten, until his final days, half a century later, Knussen towered over the musical landscape, in the UK and beyond. Mark-Anthony Turnage was his pupil and lifelong friend. His new piece, Last Song for Olly, in a reduced orchestration to meet pandemic restrictions, was given its world premiere by the London Symphony Orchestra at St Luke’s on Wednesday, in front of a small audience. The music was as anguished, generous and heartfelt as any elegy can be, yet Turnage also caught the jewelled wit that characterised Knussen’s turn of mind and surfaced in his own compositions.
Still needing a large orchestra – players were spread around the main body of St Luke’s, with brass in the gallery – Last Song bursts into life with a propulsive, jubilant dance: trumpets and woodwind skittering, percussion (claves, timbales, chimes, tom-toms) holding their own jerky conversation with pizzicato violins, and underpinning all a steady, big-footed bass line. Two dances alternate with what Turnage calls chorales “for Big Owl” (his nickname for Knussen, which needs no unpacking) – grand, sonorous laments in which a quartet of horns and brass dominate. After a shattering fortissimo crisis, the “song” emerges, lyrical with woodwind, strings, harp and horns. A poetic double bass solo pays tribute to Knussen’s father, one-time section principal in the LSO, then the piece dies away, a delicate sizzle cymbal sounding, like a last smile, in the penultimate bar.
The programme neatly plaited the Turnage with music from Knussen’s opera Where the Wild Things Are and Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. The soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Allan Clayton and horn player Richard Watkins were top soloists, though the St Luke’s acoustic isn’t entirely kind to singers. Simon Rattle conducted an LSO on keen form, ready to meet the challenge of old works and new: this was Turnage’s night.
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