As a composer, what do you do when you are commissioned a full-length orchestral work to commemorate the anniversary of a renowned concert hall? Do you try to write something celebratory? Not in Mark-Anthony Turnage's case. On receiving the commission from Tokyo's Suntory Hall for a work for their 30th birthday in October 2016, he chose (somewhat perversely) to write a work about loss and consolation for the Japanese people, five years on from the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. As with Turnage’s music in general, the work has strong contemporary resonance, although with considerably less edge than some of his earlier oeuvre.
Hibiki was given its European première at the BBC Proms by the massed forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, two London children's choirs and soloists Sally Matthews and Mihoko Fujimura, led with strong energy and conviction by Kazushi Ono who also conducted the world première in Tokyo last autumn. The work consists of seven movements. It's interesting to learn that the composer's working title was Six Threnodies and a dance, before Hibiki (which means beautiful sound, resonance, acoustics in Japanese) was suggested to him by the hall. Three of the movements are named after the worst-hit areas of the earthquake, Iwate (1st movement), Miyagi (2) and Fukushima (final movement); movements 3, 4 and 6 have texts (settings of Japanese poetry), and the fifth movement “Suntory Dance” is a celebratory scherzo providing some respite.
Japanese myself, my appreciation of this piece is probably more personal and emotional than that of the average Proms audience. I found it dark and probing; not a straightforward consolation but a multi-faceted exploration of a collective sense of loss. The music is not programmatic in particular and the three Japanese texts he has chosen for the vocal movements are not directly related to this Earthquake, but it is poignant and resonates with me strongly. Also Turnage hasn’t used any obvious Japanese instruments but strangely enough I felt some Japanese sounds in there.
I found the second and sixth movements particularly moving. The second movement “Miyagi” begins like a solemn dirge, built on the semitonal suspension motif from Bach’s St John Passion, which then is suddenly broken by sharp, stabbing chordal outbursts, perhaps of rage. The movement gradually subsides into trembling motifs on the cellos. The sixth movement, set to a text from a famous Japanese bunraku play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, is a lyrical song of farewell with Mahlerian echoes. It was heart-renderingly sung by the mezzo Mihoko Fujimura, accompanied by cellos, basses, harps and the tolling of bells. Elsewhere, Turnage’s more familiar jazzy and jarring orchestral texture was evident in the first and fifth movements (including lots of tricky syncopated rhythms in the first), superbly performed by players of the BBCSO. In the fifth movement, Turnage’s version of Twinkle, twinkle, little star in Japanese, the children’s choirs sang with beautiful diction and purity. Although it is a specific memorial piece, it deserves to be performed in the future.