Following months of closure as a result of the Covid pandemic, the CBSO Centre hosted a brand-new series of chamber music concerts for socially distanced audiences every Friday. The first concert – Octets of the 20s - took place on Friday 16 October (at 1pm and 5:30pm). CBSO Associate Conductor Michael Seal conducted music by Shostakovich, Varèse and a brand-new commission by Grace-Evangeline Mason whose World Premiere was sadly cancelled earlier in the year. Celebrating 100 years of the CBSO, the orchestra had commissioned an unprecedented series of new works earlier in the year from some of the boldest and most dynamic composers in the world today including Thea Musgrave, Thomas Adès, former Composer in Association Julian Anderson, Jörg Widmann, Grace-Evangeline Mason, Gary Carpenter and Unsuk Chin.
Grace-Evangeline Mason’s new commission, ‘My Thoughts Fly In At Your Window …As A Flock of Wild Birds’ (2020), is a chamber work in two movements inspired by the final line in Sara Teasdale’s poem ‘At Night’, which reads ‘my thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.’ Each movement is titled after the two halves of the sentence so that the first movement leads into the second as if thoughts are expressed within one and turned into and released as birds in the other. The structure of the central melodic line in ‘My thoughts fly in at your window..’ acts as an unspoken vocalization of the poem, which breaks into a flurry of motivic fragments to emulate the building up and accumulation of swirling thoughts at the conclusion of the passage. These thoughts are then freed in the second movement scored for strings ‘..as a flock of wild birds’; the harmonic foundation of the central melodic line in the first movement returns as delicate figures to create a fragile sound-world emulating thoughts expressed with the liberty of wild, untethered birds.
“A world premiere from Grace-Evangeline Mason (b. Oct 1994) “My thoughts fly in at your window”, commissioned for the orchestra’s centenary year, was greeted with curiosity and delight.. Sturdy fortissimos offset a sonorous solo cello as we listened to second-movement chirping ‘As a flock of wild birds’”
“Commissioned by the CBSO for its centenary year, Grace-Evangeline Mason’s My Thoughts Fly In At Your Window (2020) is a two-movement piece for an octet consisting of two violins, viola, cello, double-bass, clarinet, bassoon and horn. It was inspired by the closing line of Sara Teasdale’s poem At Night: ‘my thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds’. The substantial opening movement, which takes its title and central melodic line from the first part of the sentence, was subtle and atmospheric, juxtaposing swirling figurations with several extended, songlike solos. The material grew out of an expressive clarinet line heard at the outset over hushed, held string harmonics. A later solo passage of considerable emotional intensity for cello was eloquently interpreted by Eduardo Vassallo. A sustained viola line ushered in the shorter second movement, which followed without a break. Scored for strings only and quietly teeming with invention, this tiny coda-like utterance was inspired by the idea of a flock of wild birds. It formed a spirited, telescoped counterstatement to the more expansive opening movement. Deft, intricate and concise, Grace-Evangeline Mason’s new chamber piece suited the intimacy of the venue and its delicate tracery and shimmering gestures elicited a first performance of considerable poetry and emotional commitment from the CBSO and conductor Michael Seal.”
