The BBC Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of conductor Dalia Stasevska, presented a powerful and immersive concert at the Barbican, featuring a sequence of works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, György Ligeti, and John Luther Adams. The program culminated in Adams's colossal orchestral piece 'Become Ocean', a work that balances on what the composer describes as 'the razor's edge between beauty and terror'.
The concert opened with Thorvaldsdottir's 'ARCHORA', premiered at the BBC Proms in 2022. The piece immediately established a listening world of ineluctable forces, scattering high-frequency sounds against an elemental low note before creating elusively shifting textures around a single, veering pitch. The work was described as simultaneously teeming and glacial, evoking shifting tectonic plates and drifting clouds of gas.
Ligeti's 'Atmosphères' followed, requiring an even larger orchestra. The sounds seemed to emanate from the air or ground rather than musical instruments, with extremes of pitch and loudness that had players near the piccolo and percussion covering their ears, while the audience gripped their seats. The piece's influence on contemporary composition was evident, particularly on Thorvaldsdottir's work.
Without pause, 'Become Ocean' emerged from the final silence of 'Atmosphères'. The 45-minute musical palindrome features three cross-currents of strings, wind, and brass that ebb and flow, creating troughs and peaks through interference. While stable and peaceful on one level, the unyielding rise and fall proved profoundly disquieting. Benign and menacing sounds passed by each other, with xylophones and four harps bubbling above a threatening bass drum. Stasevska shaped the long surges with security and a clear view of the horizon, making the experience immersive and all-encompassing for the audience.
