The latest of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s centenary commissions to reach Symphony Hall is Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Catamorphosis. A commission shared between four orchestras, it received its first performance during lockdown last year in a streamed concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Kirill Petrenko. Even heard in that compromised way, it seemed a remarkable achievement, a Sibelius-like evocation of the fragility of nature and its impending destruction; experienced live, with the CBSO conducted by Ludovic Morlot unfolding it so expertly, it was even more remarkable.
What seemed so impressive this time around was the structural integrity of Thorvaldsdottir’s scheme across the 20-minute span. Each new section grows inevitably from what precedes it, with her technique of building upon long-held bass pedal notes producing strikingly varied results – dense string clusters, woodwind ripples or shreds of consoling melody, and, about two-thirds of the way through, a repeated falling figure that is utterly simple, yet inexpressibly sad.
