Concerts Reimagined No 2: Reich and Sibelius
Welcome to 'Concerts Reimagined’: a season of classical music for the 21st Century, live from the Oak Room and presented by the Arensky Chamber Orchestra, the Hospital Club’s new resident orchestra.
Described as ‘deeply moving’ by the Independent, Arensky Chamber Orchestra shows fuse electrifying classical music performance with theatre, lighting design, themed food and drink and commissioned work from other artists that range from dancers to video DJs. The orchestra will be presenting four concerts this season at the club.
Our second performance of the season comes on November 24th and features the hypnotic beats of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet and the wintery Finnish soundscapes of Sibelius’s 7th Symphony. If this is your first Arensky Chamber Orchestra, experience, here’s what you can expect:
When you arrive at Oak Room, find somewhere comfortable and we’ll begin by serving you a unique cocktail created by the club’s very own Nicolas Lespagnol and inspired by the music you’re about to hear.
Then, with drink in hand, sit back and journey first to New York, where you'll discover Steve Reich, cult composer and inspiration for names like Bowie, Radiohead and the Who, then to Finland, icy home of the Romantic giant Jean Sibelius. The orchestra will share excerpts and short performances from both masterpieces as well tales from both composers’ lives, taking you deep into the story behind the notes.
Finally, it’s the main event: sit back and lose yourself in full performances of these two masterpieces, live from the Oak Room stage!
This is classical music - but not as you know it.
Season passes:
We’re offering a brilliant double-concert deal. If you want tickets for both Arensky Chamber Orchestra events this autumn, simply click here and order a season pass with a saving of £6.
Can’t wait for November 28th? Here’s a preview of the plot for you:
The Southern shores of 1920s Finland and the never-dimming lights of 90s New York may seem like worlds apart, but the music of Sibelius and Reich course with same lifeblood: the beat. Both Sibelius's 7th Symphony and Reich’s Double Sextet are driven by the same hypnotic pulse, one changing with the same spellbinding rhythm of the Northern Lights, the other with the mesmerising energy of a techno beat.
Who is Steve Reich? As classical musicians we know him as one of the great 20th century composers, but his first CD received it’s original review from Billboard Magazine, not the Financial Times, and he quotes John Coltraine and the drumming music of Africa as his central influences. And then there are his followers - it’s names like Apex Twin, Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd, that you’ll hear referencing Reich not the avant garde of classical music. Perhaps that makes him the perfect modern composer - a man who quotes Bartok, writes music for Radiohead and finds inspiration in the melting pot of the global folk music world. His Double Sextet, which in his own words is ‘one of my better pieces’ (we couldn’t agree more) is the perfect example of his work. It is rich with pop harmonies and autumnal colours, almost melodic in tone and driven by unending dance music rhythms. Yet it is also underscored with an intellectual rigour, extraordinary inventiveness and technological know-how that marks it out as one of the great 20th century works. Here’s the band that commissioned it, Eighth Blackbird, performing it live
When Sibelius wrote the 7th symphony he changed the game for ever. Up till then symphonies always had four movements with breaks in between, but Sibelius’s 7th is just one continuous flow of sound. Likewise, by the 20th century no one wrote in the key of C major anymore. As the simplest key available it was completely used up - there was nothing more that could be said with it. Not for Sibelius however, who set the 7th Symphony (a piece that sounds like nothing that had come before) in - guess what - the key of C major.
So what is this symphony that with just one movement and the most basic key possible tore up the rule book? To quote the great Bruce Lee: ‘the height of cultivation always runs to simplicity’ and never was it more true than in this piece. It is one of the most deeply moving things you’ll ever hear - from its opening theme, Tähtölä, (Where the Stars Dwell) you’ll sweep through cool silent fjords at dawn, fierce arctic storms crackling with lightning and breathtaking starry nights. But for all this expressive power it is a universe created using only the bare essentials of music and expressed with the conciseness of a Haiku. We like to think of it as Sibelius's ‘holy grail’: the sum total of his life in music, his constant striving to improve, refine and distill his compositional process to its essentials. Have a listen to this brilliant performance from Simon Rattle and the Danish Radio Orchestra and we’ll see you at the concert!