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10'30’’ / open duration
for soprano and ensemble in concert format (II) and performance-installation
fl. cl. pno. perc. hp. gtr. sop. vln. vla. vc. audio
commissioned by Britten Sinfonia, FontanaMix Ensemble, and Wigmore Hall
'At the centre of this programme is a hole, a near-vacancy, a new work from the young, award-winning composer Jack Sheen. Hollow propranolol séance stretches out panels of softly teeming sound, each one attempting to conjure – however fleetingly or ambiguously – some kind of presence out of the fragile whirring that we hear in our empty rooms. A heart rate slowing hum'
Large ensemble version
Performance installation, feat. artist Emily Tilzet
Press for the première performance
The Times
★★★★☆
If I had thought to take my pulse before and after this concert I’m fairly sure I would have found that it had slowed right down into a contented Zen zone by the second reading. That wasn’t a given when one of the pieces on offer included scrunching foil and another explored “the fragile whirring we hear in our empty rooms”. Potentially infuriating? It’s to the conductor and composer Jack Sheen’s credit that this was an hour of subtle sounds and meditative magic.
Sheen paired three chants by Hildegard of Bingen, in his own arrangements, with three modern pieces, conducting them with economic gestures. His settings of Hildegard’s O virga ac diadema, O frondens virga, and O viriditas digiti Dei for five members of the Britten Sinfonia were understated; a cello note held suspended here, a shimmer of cymbal there. His hushed miniature soundscapes threw Jennifer France’s vocal lines into relief, her soprano luminous and hypnotic.
From Latin religious texts to tiddle-um-tums and tra-la-las sounds like a leap, but the contrast was effective. Oliver Knussen’s Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh offer their own wisdom in this “faded snapshot” of AA Milne’s scene with tree, bees and a balloon. Tap, click, whirr, buzz, hum: we were thrown into a busy world of onomatopoeic instrumental noises that eventually stilled into the soft instrumental chords of “How sweet to be a cloud”. The Sinfonia and France captured it to blissful, drifting perfection.
The calm continued in the premiere of Sheen’s Hollow propranolol séance, an enigmatic study in muted, almost tactile textures — those sounds in empty rooms. Spatters of flute, a soft wash of gong and bass drum, the brush of cello pizzicato all conjured up what the young Manchester-born composer described as a “heart-rate slowing hum”; propranolol is a drug used to treat heart problems, anxiety and, something that Hildegard recorded vividly in her writings more than 800 years ago, migraines. This wasn’t music that aimed to go anywhere or tell any particular story; nor did the final item, Jürg Frey’s Circular Music No 2. The Swiss composer presents his sequence of chords and simply lets them exist, asking us to pause and listen with curiosity.
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I-News
★★★★☆
Here just five players are directed by rising young conductor Jack Sheen in a performance that’s more ritual than concert.
There’s eclectic programming, and then there’s 900 years of music in one evening. A concert pairing sacred hymns by 11th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen with Oliver Knussen’s whimsical musings on Winnie the Pooh really shouldn’t work, but really does, in the hands of the ever-unexpected Britten Sinfonia.
You never know quite what you’re going to get with this chamber orchestra, as likely to turn their hand to a Bach Passion or a Mahler Symphony as experimental contemporary music. Here just five players are directed by rising young conductor Jack Sheen in a performance that’s more ritual than concert – a group meditation with just enough irony to puncture any resistance to the hipsterish cool of it all.
Running through the concert – structural pillars to hold this sonic trip together – are three works by von Bingen, arranged for the performance by Sheen himself.
Soprano Jennifer France sings the composer’s gloriously arching melodies, while around her flute, clarinet, cello, cor anglais and – most striking – a vibraphone, softly stroked with brushes, create a luminous halo of resonance. Occasionally clarinet or cello steps forward – ghost doubles or echoes, mirroring the voice.
The effect is mesmerising, bringing von Bingen into the 21st century and into touching distance of Jurg Frey’s Circular Music No. 2 – a sequence of the softest sounds and textures suspended in time and space – and Sheen’s own Hollow propranolol séance. Named after a heart-slowing drug, this centrepiece is a reflection on lockdown isolation. The ticks and whirrs and rustles of our solitary lives are translated into an intricate shadow-play of sound: tingling cymbal buzz, muttering cello, fidgety stillness.
It’s mesmerising stuff, but needs the bracing extremes and the fun of Knussen’s Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh – whose score calls for a cardboard box, a balloon and a pin in addition to its other instruments – to shake it up. Three short, half-remembered re-tellings of AA Milne’s stories are narrated in instrumental buzzes (those pesky bees) and high soprano cries, with a bass clarinet adding some cartoon menace.
France is a gifted singing-actress, and it’s all in the eyes here, as she leads us through fragmented episodes of elation and excitement, coaxing us to keep up before lulling us into sleep in the final “Cloud Piece”. A musical goodnight story for adults.