Scenes from the Wild (2021)

[The] Orchestral forces are modest (three violins, three violas, three cellos, double bass, flute/piccolo, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, trumpet and percussion), but the richness and variety of the instrumentation, including a wonderfully delicate application of percussion instruments and an imaginative deployment of string effects, including harmonics and strumming, ensures that the ear is constantly intrigued by the changing sonorities. The inherent spontaneity of the writing ensures there is a freshness to the players’ responses to their solos and ensembles throughout the piece.

...a captivating work, marrying insightful words to gently powerful music.

The work is economically scored and often very beautiful, never more so than when the soloist is singing about the oak tree (McAnulty’s first name means “oak”), which forms a steady touchpoint. The descriptions of wildlife are pithy yet evocative: we hear about “the monochrome suit of a razorbill; the art deco lines of a northern gannet”. Occasionally, the music is onomatopoeic, but more often it’s allusive: a solo viola in an off-key jig disperses an elegant crowd of wading seabirds; an angular, swooping violin tune traces the ballet as researchers are hoisted up to a goshawk nest to tag the chicks; a chattering piccolo moves behind us as if making a bat’s squeaks clearly audible.

...a stunning new orchestral song-cycle.

In Frances-Hoad’s evocative song-cycle, by turns tender, threatening and traumatic, these two worlds are fused.  Alongside rhapsodic lyricism, there is fiercely honest – sometimes uncomfortably so – self-scrutiny, and prosaic directness.  It must have been a challenge to find a musical voice that could encompass all three in a single vocal line and make them cohere.  Indeed, there were a few places where the plain straightforwardness of McAnulty’s declarations seemed to be an awkward fit for melodic utterance.  But, the vocal line modulates effectively from parlando through arioso to lyrical outbursts of searing intensity.

The truly remarkable aspect of Frances-Hoad’s score is its integration of inner and outer.  It’s not so much that the music paints the words’ images in a literal sense, though it does do that with delicate suggestion and gentle humour, rather that she somehow finds just the right musical colour, weight, timbre, movement and shape to evoke not just ‘things’ but ‘phenomena’ and ‘abstractions’ too.  And, in so doing, as she recreates Dara’s close communion with trees, insects and birds, Frances-Hoad not only communicates his total immersion in nature – the sounds seem fused with Morgan’s own ‘self’ – but her music also makes us feel the joy and pain of his experience.

Scenes from the Wild is a raw work, painfully so at times, but richly rewarding and ultimately restorative. 

A tremendous achievement.

...thoughts on particular aspects of the natural world can develop into poetic meditations, anger about loss of habitat or aspects of living with autism. Frances-Hoad reflected this by giving the music a free-form, rhapsodic nature, with each song/episode often featuring a solo moment for particular instruments from the orchestra. Though writing for quite a small chamber orchestra, 10 strings, single woodwind, two horns, trumpet and percussion, Frances-Hoad managed to create a series of atmospheric and imaginative textures, as well as bringing the feel and sound of the natural world into the music without ever feeling cornily descriptive. 

There were so many lovely moments to the piece, and you felt that Frances-Hoad's inspiration was positively verdant...The music had a sort of free-form dynamism too it, allied to a very fine ear for orchestral textures and so many moments impressed.