Anvil to premiere Cecilia McDowall's Theatre of Tango next week (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Anvil to premiere Cecilia McDowall's Theatre of Tango next week

2:03pm Wednesday 18th January 2012 in Music By Joanne Mace

NEXT week’s London Mozart Players concert at The Anvil is a very special occasion for acclaimed English composer Cecilia McDowall.

It marks the premiere English performance of the PRS Beyond Borders commission of her work Theatre of Tango. The piece was originally performed in 2011 by the Welsh Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Hose, under the title Tales from South America at the Beaumaris Festival in Anglesey.

Now this orchestral song cycle has now been re-set using poems by Seán Street, and it’s all in a tango idiom, thanks in part to Cecilia’s recent passion for the latter dance form.

After the premiere performance in Basingstoke, LMP will perform the work in St John's at Smith Square in London and in Fairfield Halls in Croydon.

The award-winning composer explained: “For a few years now I have been having lessons in the Argentine tango – I don’t profess any great achievement but it is a dance form I find endlessly fascinating, both technically and musically. It seemed only a step away to try to translate some of my feelings about the dance itself into music.

“The virtuoso violinist David Juritz (for whom it was written) is also a fine exponent of tango music as he runs the London Tango Quintet and we discussed the tango idiom as I was writing.”

The re-setting of the work came about when the original work, which was based on three poems, two by Borges and one by Neruda, had the copyright withdrawn when the former’s estate refused permission.

Cecilia said: “So it was plan B. And it had to be a quick plan B.”

And plan B involved Seán?

“I had recently collaborated with poet and broadcaster Seán on a new choral work, Shipping Forecast, which attracted a lot of media attention last summer. So, I plucked up the courage to ask if he would consider writing three new poems, all about different aspects of tango, all within a week!

“With a new text we had to have a new title, Theatre of Tango, which comes from the last poem of the trilogy. Seán’s three poems fitted into place where the Borges and Neruda had once been with just a little adjustment here and there.”

Could she talk us through the work?

“It begins with The Dance, set in a place where the tango, dark and alluring, full of lost hearts eaten by shadows merging in flickers, brings the dancers together in rhythmic intensity, passion and nostalgia. The second movement, Ghost Light, eerily evokes the tango played by phantoms like a cry that comes over wind and grass, the rattling bones of rain's dark thunderclap voice drumming.

“It’s in the third movement, A Tango of Time, that the Argentine tango comes most fully to the fore; passion and violence stalk through the music like fate; with shades of menace and ruthlessness Time steers its dance towards the inevitable, this nemesis.”

It sounds like Sean’s poetry was once again a joy to work with?

“Because time was short I couldn’t alter the orchestral accompaniment in any way; only the vocal line took some alteration to give the best stress and emphasis to Seán’s sinuous poetry.

“His poetry is beautiful to set and his poetic ideas, rich. Asking anyone to write poetry to fit into the footprints of music which already exists is a difficult task but to do it in a short space of time, well, that is not easy by any standard!”

*The LMP performance on Thursday, January 26 at 7.45pm will be conducted by Nicholas Collon and will feature violinist Marieke Blankestijn and baritone Jeremy Hugh-Williams. The music on the evening will also include Stravinsky’s Danses Concertantes and Beethoven’s Symphony No 6.

Tickets priced from £18 to £36, are available from the box office on 01256 844244 or the website anvilarts.org.uk.