United Kingdom ‘Cànan nan Eun’: Chihiro Ono (violin), Anna Bastow (viola), Colin Alexander (cello), Mischa Macpherson (voice), Sandy Leong (live projection and animation). Jerwood Hall, LSO St Luke’s, London 5.9.2026. (PC)
As part of Lisa Robertson’s current participation on the London Symphony Orchestra’s Jerwood Composer+ scheme, she curated an atmospheric and engaging concert that featured new and recent repertoire, occasionally accompanied by live projection and animation. The pieces in her chosen programme were inspired by our relationship with birds, a close association that has sadly degraded as bird numbers diminish.
Chihiro Ono and Colin Alexander began the evening’s events with the London premiere of Avian Mirrors, for violin and cello (2013) by Arlene Sierra, who was in the audience. In the vigorous, puckish first movement, ‘Greeting’, both players answered rapidly each other’s tiny motifs, shifting briskly from plucked to bowed phrases. The shadowy central ‘Reflection’ featured inverted, tutti lines that contrasted cello in low register with soaring violin. In the final movement, ‘Display’, virtuosity was to the fore, from the violin’s opening tiny soliloquies to declamatory, highly ornamented figurations for both instruments. The performers enjoyed the outer movements’ playfulness and the central movement’s muted meditations in an astute and spirited account.
Anna Bastow gave the London premiere of Ailie Robertson’s Skydance, for solo viola (2020). In this delicate, freely expressive evocation of a hen harrier swirling and swooping in the open sky, the music’s shimmering, airy gestures were interpreted poetically and with great warmth.
Mischa Macpherson took to the stage for an unaccompanied rendition of the traditional Gaelic collection of rhymes, Cànan nan Eun (‘The Language of Birds’). Delivered in song and speech with imitations of bird calls, this enchanting, gentle solo served to draw the audience even closer to the subject of the evening’s events.
Chihiro Ono performed Carola Bauckholt’s Doppelbelichtung, for solo violin and recorded samples of birdsong (2016). Incorporating material in extremely high register and over-pressured bow strokes, the instrumental line was a tour de force for the violinist, yet the most remarkable aspect of the performance was her creative interactivity with the original sounds. With remarkable imitative skill and split second timing, she seemed to, at various points, anticipate, synchronise with and echo the transcribed samples. In this spontaneous-sounding dialogue, Chihiro Ono’s flair and musicianship was entirely at the service of the score.
Linda Buckley’s Fiach, for solo cello (2022) addressed the use of the raven in Celtic folklore to signify death and the underworld. Driven by a brooding vitality, this piece had something of the night about it. Colin Alexander savoured its idiomatically written lines, expansive in the sonorous chordal opening sequence and bringing an improvisatory freshness to the quicker, more rhapsodic episodes.
The three string players gathered for the UK premiere of Daniela Terranova’s Rainbow Dust in the Sky, for string trio (2018), a gently resonant piece that deconstructed the song ‘Over the Rainbow’, so that only faint vestiges of the melodic line lingered on in vague recollection. Emerging from and disappearing back into silence, the whole piece was distanced and unfolded with spaciously long lines. This performance captured the music’s elegiac, fugitive allure.
After the interval, the musicians reconvened for the UK premiere of Emily Doolittle’s Field Guide, for string trio (2017) in three movements, each based on the song or call of a bird. There was a classical elegance to the opening ‘Horned lark’ and its plunging glissandos, a lively sense of wonder in the pizzicatos in ‘Sage Grouse’ and a poised energy to ‘Western meadowlark’. Due weight was given to the pauses between the music’s halting gestures throughout the work, lending the score an inspiriting sense of expectancy and hope.
Bent Sørensen’s wistfully expressive The Wings of Spring, for solo cello (2010) featured birdsong-like figures and combined pizzicatos and glissandos to poignant effect. Colin Alexander was assured and sensitive in his intuitive approach to this plaintive, lamenting score.
Mischa Macpherson then performed Pill iù Pill ill ill ill Eòghainn, a traditional Gaelic ‘keening’ song thought to replicate the call of the redshank, a bird associated with grieving. It received an affectingly heartfelt rendition, which was rewarded with a deservedly warm reception.
In Helen Grime’s To see the summer sky, for violin and viola (2009), Chihiro Ono and Anna Bastow floated the initial high harmonics with a natural expressive freedom and found a dance-like spirit in the second movement before embracing delicacy and, later, more forthright gestures in the calm slow movement. They tore into the brief, closing moto perpetuo with gusto, rounding off a fluent reading of considerable intensity.
All four of the evening’s performers returned to the stage to give the world premiere of Lisa Robertson’s fèath nan eun (‘the calm of the birds’), for singer and string trio (2026). The work’s title is a reference to a gradual silencing of the environment due to the fall in bird numbers. Slivers of Gaelic bird imitation songs and notated bird calls were an intrinsic part of the delicate but robust material, which, at certain junctures, involved the players whistling, as well as blowing through tin whistles affixed to their music stands. The narrative progressed through woodland, moorland and seashore habitats as the bird sounds slowly faded. Fragile and feathery, the closing textural strands had a wraithlike melancholy. Lisa Robertson’s eloquent score carried a supplicatory fervour. It received an acutely responsive first performance that ended on a climactic note a thoughtfully collated programme, consummately performed.
Paul Conway
Arlene Sierra – Avian Mirrors (London premiere)
Ailie Robertson – Skydance (London premiere)
Trad – Cànan nan Eun
Carola Bauckholt – Doppelbelichtung
Linda Buckley – Fiach
Daniela Terranova – Rainbow Dust in the Sky (UK premiere)
Emily Doolittle – Field Guide (UK premiere)
Bent Sørensen – The Wings of Spring
Trad – Pill iù Pill ill ill ill Eòghainn
Helen Grime – To see the summer sky
Lisa Robertson – fèath nan eun (world premiere)