Alluding to the riot that greeted the first performance of The Rite of Spring in 1913, the title of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s latest concert with Carlos Miguel Prieto was Open Up: Running Riot!, and Stravinsky’s groundbreaking ballet was the closing work of a programme that dealt with dismantling cultural divisions and pushing at the boundaries of tradition.
Its companion pieces were both relatively recent. Gabriela Ortiz’s Téenek – Invenciones de Territorio (2017) takes its name from the language spoken in the Huasteca region of northern Mexico. Ortiz self-consciously celebrates ideas of diversity and difference within a global unity, while her style, all asymmetric rhythms and angular melodies, takes The Rite of Spring as its point of departure. Ortiz has added a newly written Frontispiece for Téenek, in which the performers arrive on the platform to repetitive woodblock taps, over which they play an exhilarating sequence of bravura riffs, before Prieto finally appears to launch the main body of the work.
