The Scottish Ensemble will collaborate with pianist, composer and improviser Gabriela Montero next month.
They will perform a concert which centres around the European premiere of Babel, Montero’s new commission for piano and string orchestra.
Babel is a colourful, inventive, personal and relatable portrait of Montero’s experience as a human rights activist for her politically-troubled home country of Venezuela.
Using musical metaphor to communicate her difficult experience as a narrator of injustice in a frantic 21st-century society, Babel creates a vivid picture of an artist trying to convey urgent political messages in a world which wants only to talk, and never to listen.
At times lush and lyrical, at others gripping and intense, running throughout the piece is an open, immediate sense of dialogue between the composer and the listener.
The rest of the programme explores the theme of ‘music with a message’. Scottish Ensemble will perform a range of works which similarly use music to communicate a powerful message about our humanity, including Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony Op.118a, the final movement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and Peteris Vasks’ Viatore.
As well as being renowned for her interpretations of the core classical piano repertoire, Montero is celebrated for her exceptional improvisational skills, often treating audiences to requests during concerts. In doing so, she re-visits and re-ignites a centuries-old tradition of spontaneous composition that was once an integral part of the Western classical concert experience.
Enhancing the evening even further will be theatrical touches designed and directed by Poppy Burton-Morgan and William Reynolds of Metta Theatre, one of the UK’s leading theatre and opera touring companies.
Babel is Montero’s third composition, following Ex Patria (2011) and Piano Concerto No.1 (“Latin”) (2015), and was co-commissioned by Scottish Ensemble, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra (USA) and Kings Place (UK).
Scottish Ensemble first collaborated with Gabriela Montero in 2015 on South Atlantic Crossings, a programme of music celebrating the links between the musical output of mainland Europe and Gabriela’s homeland of South America. SE and Montero recently performed the concert at the Is Sanat Concert Hall in November 2018 (rescheduled from May 2018).
Babel was premiered in Columbus, Ohio in November 2018 with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.
Gabriella said: ‘Very violent but also very beautiful… it’s a faithful photograph of the systematic collapse and demise of my country. It was intended as a physical experience for the audience; I wanted them to be able to relate to what was happening in Venezuelan society. I wanted the public to understand our plight in a visceral way by feeling physically crushed, suffocated, and claustrophobic, as Venezuelans feel.’
Babel will tour across Scotland, visiting Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh and Perth, before being performed at London’s Kings Place as part of Venus Unwrapped 2019, and as a one-off engagement at Kendal in collaboration with Lakeland Sinfonia.
Scottish Ensemble’s desire to commission a new piece from Montero emerged following their first collaboration in 2015. Having discovered a like-minded creative connection, and drawn to the deeply personal, engaging, storytelling compositional style of her first two published works, SE led on commissioning this, Gabriela’s third work, alongside Kings Place (London) and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.
Montero’s compositions tell stories that resonate with her on a personal level in a vivacious, expressive yet immediately engaging and relatable way. Her first published work, Ex Patria, is a tone poem for piano and orchestra that portrays the violence and human rights violations that have gripped Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s election in 1999.
Her second composition, Piano Concerto No.1 (Latin), widened the focus even more by telling the story of her continent, South America. Venezuela features prominently in this composition as well, specifically in the third movement, Allegro Venezolano.
For her third work, the Scottish Ensemble wanted to give the composer a blank canvas, to allow her to be able to continue her narrative journey as an artist and write about something that mattered to her deeply, or a message she wanted to convey.
Babel, for solo piano and string orchestra, does both, simultaneously encompassing the political and the personal by drawing on her experiences as a human rights activist for Venezuela – more specifically, the difficulty that comes from trying to narrate others’ experiences amidst the overwhelming babble of today’s constantly-chattering world.
The title refers to the biblical Babel myth, which attempted to explain why people across the world spoke different languages. In the story, as told in Genesis, a united group of humans arrives at the land of Shinar, working together to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. Seeing their attempts, God confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.
Scottish Ensemble (SE) is the UK’s leading string orchestra; a core of outstanding string players who perform together under Artistic Director Jonathan Morton. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, SE inspires audiences in the UK and beyond with vibrant performances which are powerful, challenging and rewarding experiences, crossing genres, styles, musical periods and artistic forms to offer fresh perspectives on classical music.
The tour dates are:
New Auditorium, Glasgow Royal Concert Halls, Fri 8 Feb 2019, 7.30pm, 2 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3NY. Tickets: www.glasgowconcerthalls.com
Eden Court, Sun 10 Feb 2019, 7.30pm, Bishops Rd, Inverness, IV3 5SA. Tickets: www.eden-court.co.uk
The Queen’s Hall, Tue 12 Feb 2019, 7.30pm, 85-89 Clerk Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9JG. Tickets: www.thequeenshall.net
Perth Concert Hall, Wed 13 Feb 2019, 7.30pm, Mill Street, Perth, PH1 5HZ. Tickets: www.horsecross.co.uk
Kings Place, Fri 15 Feb 2019, 7.30pm, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG. Tickets: www.kingsplace.co.uk
Kendal Leisure Centre, Sat 16 Feb 2019, 7.30pm, Burton Road, Kendal, LA9 7HX. Tickets: www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/kendal
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