Anna Clyne: SHORTHAND

For contemporary composers, getting their music recorded and released into the public arena can be prohibitively difficult. Anna Clyne, however, is the exception who proves the rule. SHORTHAND, her new release for Sony Classical, is the fourth all-Clyne album to be released, and is boosted by the all-star soloist line-up appearing on it. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist Avi Avital and violinists Pekka Kuusisto and Colin Jacobsen all have solo spots, working alongside cutting-edge New York orchestra The Knights under the baton of Eric Jacobsen. It speaks volumes of Clyne’s reputation as a composer that the cream of today’s instrumental crop are keen to play her music. “It’s such a joy and honour to work with these extraordinary soloists,” she tells Apple Music Classical. All four pieces on the album, including the elegaic and dramatic title track Shorthand, are scored for strings, a medium close to Clyne’s heart. “I love writing for strings—the cello is my main instrument, so it’s something that I’m very comfortable doing,” she explains. Knowing in advance which soloist will premiere a particular piece is another major factor in how Clyne sets about writing it. “I’m a very collaborative composer, and I can’t help but be informed by the person I’m writing for. It’s a part of the process I really love,” she reveals. “When I was writing Three Sisters for Avi Avital, he showed me some of the techniques that are idiosyncratic to the mandolin. Once I had written it, I sent it to him and received feedback.” The symbiosis between Clyne and Avital is clearly audible in the concluding movement of Three Sisters, where nimble dance rhythms ricochet from soloist to orchestra and back again. Pekka Kuusisto and Colin Jacobsen are the featured soloists for Prince of Clouds, a piece dating from 2012. “I love folk music, and when I was writing Prince of Clouds I put in a lot of double-stops and syncopated rhythms,” says Clyne. “And while Pekka and Colin are extraordinary virtuoso classical violinists, they also have a background in folk. I love that they brought to the recording that folk quality that I’d always imagined with this piece.” Within Her Arms has a very different emotional trajectory. Clyne wrote it in the aftermath of her mother’s unexpected passing in 2008, with the aim of finding “a closeness and peacefulness with her”. Scored for 15 individual string parts, Clyne stipulates that in live performance the players should occupy specific positions on stage, “so that the musical motifs move around the listener”. This posed particular problems for the technical crew recording The Knights’ performance, but Clyne is delighted with how the spatial elements of the music have been rendered. “Jody Elff was our recording engineer, and we’ve worked together for 20 years on various projects,” she says. “He’s brought a really unusual recording technique for classical music to this album; we close-miked everything and really had control during the editing process.” Clyne is especially enthusiastic about how Within Her Arms, and indeed the whole album, sounds in Spatial Audio. “We’re thrilled with the mixes,” she says. “I worked hard with Jody to get melodic gestures really moving and dancing around the ensemble. That’s something which has really been captured in what I think is a very special recording.”