Edward Gardner and Allan Clayton join forces for Turnage’s Refugee – devastating poetry set to extraordinary music – alongside the Nielsen symphony that evokes “the elemental will to live”.

This evening the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra shares the stage with Gardner and Clayton.

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Refugee sets texts by Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Zephaniah, W.H. Auden, and Brian Bilston in a work composed for tenor Allan Clayton. As Turnage says: “we need to feel outrage today. You have to battle for what you view as the true and tolerant side of the argument concerning migration and refugees. I march for what I believe in, when necessary. I can understand why some people feel threatened, but this is often because they themselves want to escape poverty and do not realise they are being duped. We have to explain that everyone is born equal and offer the same opportunities to all. That should be the fundamental aim of humanity”. Clayton echoes this: “We should be helping people and doing something. I love the way Mark sets the English language so brilliantly”.

Daniel Kidane’s Sirens is impressive in its setting of texts: in this case it resulted from a collaboration with Zimbabwean writer and poet Zodwa Nyoni, working on a BBC radio play centred on a contemporary reinterpretation of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The drama was set in Manchester and the accompanying music focused on the cacophony of sounds that one might hear on a busy university term-time night out – and Kidane explains it as being “about hearing sirens in the background and imagining the emergency or urgency that might be part of the noise”. It is a work of “animal energy and visceral drive”, with “not just rhythmic wit but also a searing clarity of purpose” (Bachtrack).

“Music is life, and, like life, it is inextinguishable”. So said Carl Nielsen of his Fourth Symphony. It is a work of supreme power and catharsis in its working-out of rage and demonic energy, moving through the tumult to reach exultation in the final movement. It closes this most dramatic and important of Aldeburgh Festival programmes.

Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra
Allan Clayton tenor
Edward Gardner conductor