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Landscape (1988) |
2222/2000/perc/harp/strings (min.44421) - 20'
Landscape was commissioned for the 1988 Piccadilly Festival and first performed in St. James Piccadilly in May of that year.
Written 9 years after her first acknowledged work, it represents a significant point in the development of the composer's language. During the preceding two years there had been a notable change in style, perhaps partly as a result of writing a full length opera, The Albatross. The change is particularly apparent in Archangel for woodwind and brass; a work which possibly derives its existence and overall aesthetic (though not it's musical language) from Stravinsky's 'Symphonies of Wind Instruments', it provides a link between the opera and Landscape.
In this particular piece the audience should be warned against accepting the title of the piece too literally. If anything the presence of a musical landscape is less than in earlier pieces e.g. Io Evoe and Archangel.
The basic thematic figure of the semitone in Landscape is one common to many of Diana's works, as is the 'bell' motif which appears in the last section. Also typical is the contrast between smooth and striated sections.
The scoring - double woodwind, recorders, horns, percussion, strings - gives very little suggestion of the individuality of orchestration. The wind writing, more subtle and expressive than that of her earlier orchestral works, is presumably as a result of the experience of writing Archangel.
Most significant in this regard is the increased integration of the orchestra, gesture and form- already suggested in previous works by the way in which block structures tended to be paralleled at all these levels, either simultaneously or by a super-imposed permutation. But here (whether consciously or not) the relationship between the differant levels becomes more subtle and therfore more powerful.
Landscape is in one sense a consolidation of the change found in Archangel and together they can be seen as a link between the first and second stylistic periods. For whatever reason, it is often such intermediate works in a composer's output that prove to be the most exciting and stimulating. For Diana Burrell this is certainly true.
© Nathan Lee