Anna Clyne - Mythologies showcases the composer’s enormous palette of colours and effects in five of her orchestral works, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors - Marin Alsop, Andrew Litton, Sakari Oramo and André de Ridder.

Anna Clynne’s enormous palette of colours and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Anna’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multimedia - including poetry, visual art and videography - combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal.

The five works on Anna Clyne - Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors. Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition. The title evokes an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers.

This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramón Jiménez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work’s inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats. More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring.

The album concludes with <, conducted by André de Ridder. It’s a wild romp imagining the backwards scroll of a video tape complete with glitches, skips and freezes.

“I’m struggling to remember the last time a piece of contemporary music made me cry ... in the final movement of Anna Clyne’s DANCE, a cello concerto in all but name, a bear-hug of a theme emerges through angry, percussive col legno snaps that is so beautiful, so heartfelt that it instantly drew tears on first hearing. Repeated listening had a similar effect.” - Gramophone Editor’s Choice (on Anna Clyne’s DANCE for cello and orchestra, AV2419)

“British composer Anna Clyne has written perhaps her most ambitious and appealing work so far. It’s hard to resist the gorgeous opening of DANCE, her new cello concerto ... Clyne’s orchestrations are keenly attentive to color and light, and she’s fearless in filling the concerto with melodies of undisguised beauty. Some are folkish, others are regal. All linger in the ear, begging to be heard again.” - National Public Radio, 25 Favorite Songs of 2020 (on Anna Clyne’s DANCE for cello and orchestra, AV2419)