The highly anticipated 2021 BBC Proms programme has been officially announced and Grace is excited and honoured to have received a new co-commission by The BBC Proms and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The piece, entitled ‘The Imagined Forest’, will be premiered at the Royal Albert Hall under the RLPO’s new Chief Conductor, Domingo Hindoyan on September 5th 2021. The piece has also been commissioned to mark the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Albert Hall.
‘The Imagined Forest’
‘The Imagined Forest’ (2021) for orchestra is a fantastical journey through a space that appears to be a familiar impression of nature, but simultaneously somewhere entirely unknown. The forest, a place rooted in fairy tales, fantasy and folklore, often represents areas of refuge, danger, transformation, and adventure. Recognising the forest as an ethereal and intangible entity, the piece seeks to momentarily transport the listener somewhere intimate and yet, surreal.
The piece is inspired by the work of Clare Celeste Börsch, a Berlin-based artist who uses collage techniques to build imagined worlds filled with foliage and fauna. Bringing together thousands of delicate hand cut paper images, she creates intricate and immersive spaces to transform ordinary rooms into magical forests. ‘The Imagined Forest’ travels through the musical space by interweaving atmospheric textures and fragmentary melodic lines as a collage of fleeting images, just like the artwork upon which it is inspired. The music follows a voyage through the forest with moments of florid energy marked by tumbling, intervallic passages enacting the liveliness of nature itself, contrasted with large interludes of static stillness embodying expansive clearings. The central musical theme wanders through the piece towards enclosed glades where it pauses, as if it is interspersed with shimmering light from the canopies above and the dreamlike dances from the elements of nature; the orchestra glistens with sparkly interjections. Both music and art are fascinating in that countless people can all be experiencing the same work at once and yet, through the lens of their own influence, encounter a completely different artwork. This piece is therefore not a prescriptive experience but is instead a fictional journey; whether it is blooming with flora, captivated by colour, or an airy garden darkened by storm, it is the forest of your own imagination.
The Concert
Former BBC Young Musician winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason returns to the Proms as the soloist in Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. A new Proms commission written for the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th anniversary by former BBC Young Composer winner Grace-Evangeline Mason contrasts with two scintillating orchestral showpieces – Hindemith’s jovial reworking of themes by Weber for what was initially intended as a ballet, and Richard Strauss’s colourful take on the Spanish lothario Don Juan. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra makes its first Proms appearance under its new Chief Conductor, Domingo Hindoyan.
150th Anniversary of the Royal Albert Hall
‘The Imagined Forest’ has also been commissioned to mark the anniversary of the Royal Albert Hall as 2021 marks 150 years since the Royal Albert Hall first opened its doors as part of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s grand project to enrich the cultural life of Britain. It is 80 years since the Hall became home to the BBC Proms, perhaps the event most widely associated with this iconic venue. To celebrate the Hall’s anniversary, four composers have been commissioned to write a work taking the original name of the Hall - The Royal Albert Hall Of Arts and Sciences - as a starting point including Grace-Evangeline Mason’s work inspired by a specific work of visual art.
More Information can be found in the BBC Press release here, as well as the official concert programme here.
