In the 20 years that he has been associated with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, first as its principal conductor, and then, since 2009 as its principal guest, Ilan Volkov has arguably been more adventurous and introduced a wider range of contemporary music than any other conductor working regularly in the UK. His visits to the Proms consistently include something new or unfamiliar, and his latest appearance there was no exception, pairing Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, with a world premiere from the US-born, now Berlin-resident composer Catherine Lamb.
Strictly speaking it was a partial premiere: the first section of the three-part work dates back to 2013, the BBC commissioned the remaining two parts to complete the triptych. Lamb’s completed work, titled Portions Transparent/Opaque, lasts just over half an hour. The first section, subtitled skin/shimmer, begins with the strings alone, playing in “just” intonation – an ancient tuning system that subtly adjusts the distance between the notes – to create a quietly sustained, ever shifting continuum of sound constantly blurred by microtones. Lamb adds brass instruments in the second part (subtitled bone/saturate) to provide a more clearly defined harmonic core, and finally in the third part (nerve/cluster) introduces the woodwind, which bring in melodic ideas, more complexity and a sense of forward motion.
