BBC Proms 2011: Prom 50: CLS/Polyphony, Albert Hall,

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Another new cantata with two singers – a tenor (Ian Bostridge) and a baritone (Roderick Williams) – ventured towards similar territory but in an entirely contrasting manner. Commissioned by the late Richard Hickox, Colin Matthews's No Man's Land was performed by the excellent City of London Sinfonia, rigorously conducted by Stephen Layton. The text, by poet Christopher Reid, and with echoes of Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting", records a conversation between the ghosts of two soldiers in no man's land. Intercut with honky-tonk piano and snatches of authentic, crackly gramophone records, the orchestra's misty, sustained lines are coloured by multiply divided strings. Matthews's delicate, elegiac score is heard as if through a thick white gauze suffused with the scents and sounds of memory.

 

Fiona Maddocks

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