BBC Proms 2016: Julian Anderson and Thomas Larcher

Extract

Julian Anderson has been interestingly public about the genesis of his new orchestral piece Incantesimi, co-commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society, Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation and Boston Symphony Orchestra, writing about its genesis in The Guardian as a trailer to its UK Proms premiere. Premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle in June 2016, Incantesimi toured to Rotterdam and Lucerne before opening that orchestra's Prom (Rattle's last as their chief conductor) in September. Wanting not to write a ‘showpiece’ but instead ‘something slow and quiet’, Anderson described Incantesimi as a ‘nocturne’ which takes its musical inspiration from Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, in that five themes are deployed ‘in perpetual orbit’. He also spoke of his focus on the Berlin Philharmonic's beauty of sound as a prompt to write something that would unfold slowly.