Simon Wills describes his new work as a concertante ballet in 11 scenes. Written for BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s principal trombone, Donal Bannister, and perhaps with a nod to his Dublin origins, it is entitled Nora Barnacle Assumes Command, ostensibly referring to the meeting of James Joyce and his muse and mentor Nora but the piece is completely abstract, said Wills.
With the composer himself conducting, the work began with the solo trombone intoning the Irish ballad, Oft in the Stilly Night – mentioned in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Bannister’s velvet sound established the work’s essentially lyrical feel and soloist and different instruments of the orchestra danced – metaphorically – around each other, though in one interlude Bannister actually joined the audience to listen to the orchestra. It seemed an irony that the balletic nature of the score – tinged with melancholy, but also with capricious elements – should often have conjured the figure of Joyce and Barnacle’s daughter Lucia Joyce who was a gifted dancer before mental illness meant her life took a tragic turn. It is an engaging enough work but, at 40 minutes, rather too discursive and overindulgent.
