Title: DANCE for Cello and Orchestra
Duration: Approximately 25 minutes
Composer: Anna Clyne  (Born on March 9, 1980 in London)
Work composed: 2019
World premiere: first performed on August 3, 2019 by cellist Inbal Segev with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra conducted by Cristian Măcelaru at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California
Instrumentation:  solo cello, 2 flutes (including piccolo), two oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets (including bass clarinet), bassoon, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, 2 percussionists (playing: vibraphone, large tam tam, suspended cymbal, crotales, marimba, wind machine), strings

DANCE for Cello and Orchestra

1. “when you’re broken open”

2. “if you’ve torn the bandage off”

3. “in the middle of the fighting”

4. “in your blood”

5. “when you’re perfectly free”

British-born composer Anna Clyne spent her undergraduate years at the University of Edinburgh, (Scotland) and then completed her Master’s degree in composition in New York City at the Manhattan School of Music, and currently lives in New York.  Having composed nearly 100 works already in her 43 years, and being one of the most performed modern composers in the world, Clyne is rarely without a commission to fulfill.  Such is the origin of her 2019 work DANCE.  

Clyne was a cellist during her studies at Edinburgh before she focused solely on composing.  Her friend, conductor Marin Alsop, came to discover that Clyne had been wanting to write a cello concerto.   Meanwhile, Alsop also knew that their mutual friend, the Israeli cello virtuoso Inbal Segev, was looking for a new concerto.  Thus, in 2019 both Alsop and Segev collaborated to create a commission for Clyne, and the composer jumped at the chance.  DANCE premiered that same year, dedicated “with much love” to her father, Leslie Clyne.

In deciding what kind of structure to use for DANCE as a concerto, Clyne chose a particularly potent poem by the mystical poet, Rumi, as the structural basis for her multi-movement concerto.  Each line corresponds to one of DANCE’s five movements:

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.

Rumi was a 13th-century Persian Muslim Sufi, and his poetic challenge to dance, in spite of everything, comes from his Sufi spiritual practice, particularly as a Whirling Dervish.  Still practiced today, this sect of Persian Muslims use an esoteric spinning dance to achieve ecstatic connection and deep contentment.  Clyne explores this idea of dance as meditation, even in the midst of all the things that besiege us in life, in her exquisite Concerto.  

Clyne said that the first line of the poem, “when you’re broken open,” made her imagine a person in devastation, shattered into a million little pieces.  The opening music is immediately reminiscent of the beautiful opening to Vaughan Williams’s transcendent Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – Clyne no doubt is tipping her hat to her English forbearer.  The orchestra begins with quiet chords, settling downwards like snowflakes in slow motion.  There’s an extraordinary melancholy attached to this.  When the solo cellist enters after a few bars, it hovers in its high registers, piercingly beautiful and song-like, and yet somewhat aimless.  After a short time, one gets the sense that this is a lullaby for the devastated, a song of soothing.  At about two minutes into the movement, Clyne creates a beautifully surreal soundscape – as the cello soloist continues to play long bows in the high registers, the vibraphone (a mellow percussive keyboard instrument with metallic bars) and the crotales (a set of brass, pitched discs) are bowed by a string-bass bow rather than struck with a mallet.  The technique creates an intense, ethereal ringing.  Together with the cello’s soaring song, the musical moment is exquisitely poignant.  Eventually the cello descends slowly into its deeper registers, and the movement ends in a series of musical swells from both orchestra and soloists, like long and heavy sighs.

The second movement, having “torn the bandage off,” is directed by Clyne to be played as “Earthy and Fiery.”  Indeed, the soloist begins with a frenetic, almost angry, bit of virtuosity.  The movement moves back and forth between several short episodes – from angry virtuosity (perhaps the pain of the exposed wound) to more lyrical, meditative portions (perhaps the dancing).  While doing so, Clyne’s orchestration is incredibly colorful.  Listen especially for how she pairs instruments from the orchestra with the same line as the solo cellist, which makes for delightfully surprising sonorities.  Especially evocative is the vibraphone and marimba parts (a metal and wooden percussion keyboard instrument, respectively) at about two minutes – playing otherworldly-sounding arpeggios (individual notes of a chord played successively) burbling up and down their keyboards.  It feels as though the orchestra has been submerged underwater, while the soloist floats above in meditative song.

The middle movement, “in the middle of the fighting,” is, given its title, unexpectedly gentle.  It begins with the orchestra playing a rather haunted sounding chorale – melancholic and muted – summoning the feel of a piece from the Renaissance.  The soloist joins in tentatively at first, with single long notes that are meant to reverberate with the chorale fabric.  Bit by bit, the soloist adds ornamentation (musical filigree) and melody.  This movement evokes the feeling that Rumi’s “dancing” here is a complete detachment from the terrible present, and Clyne makes the music for it disarmingly gorgeous.

The fourth movement, “in your blood,” begins with a steady and regal theme played alone by the solo cello.  The orchestra joins in with the cellist one section at a time at first, beginning with the basses, and essentially the theme begins to transform into a series of variations.  During this, the first four notes of that original theme continually course through the orchestra in every bar, like the pulse of the heart.  The middle moments of this movement build to some majestic climaxes, with timpani and tam tam (large unpitched gong) creating some mighty sound waves – including even a wind machine (a large analog contraption that mimics the sound of wind) is used to evoke howling gales.   And amidst the variations, Clyne cleverly sneaks in a bit of the previous movement’s “Renaissance” chorale theme.

In the final movement, “when you’re perfectly free,” everything begins in a near-chaotic jumble – the soloist playing angular and dissonant snippets, the orchestral strings using violent “snap” pizzicato (plucking the strings so they snap against the finger board, making percussive sounds).  Soon, excerpts of the Concerto’s previous themes wander into that chaos, but which soon are trampled again by more dissonance.  The composer described that these searching episodes were meant to “allow the soloist to find a melody that [they] can sing above the orchestra until the close of the piece.”  At about 4 minutes into this movement, Clyne creates the mesmerizing effect of changing the dial on the radio – chords and styles change, a jazz chord, an accompaniment to lounge music, the key changing abruptly with each representation – all within a few seconds.  Immediately after, the soloist settles into a beautiful and wistful melody which will bring us to the final bars.  Appropriately, the cellist’s song is graced with hints of Persian music (some flatted notes, used in middle-Eastern scales, make appearances), sounding antique and exotic, like Rumi’s sumptuous poetry itself.  The Concerto’s final notes ring out in gloriously golden hues, evoking a deep contentment that Rumi’s dance poem sought.