Even pop geniuses have a patchy record when it comes to writing for an orchestra. For every success (a Jonny Greenwood or a Randy Newman, for instance) there is at least one dud (a Paul McCartney, a Sufjan Stevens, a Deep Purple). Sadly, on the evidence of the world premiere of her first symphony, Joan Armatrading is very much in the latter category: a brilliant pop melodist who somehow turns cloth-eared when trying to write for an orchestra.
It’s difficult to see what Armatrading was trying to achieve with her half-hour composition, written in four movements. It features a handful of aimless, glib melodies, played almost entirely in unison. There is little harmony, no counterpoint, no tension and no sense of development. It’s difficult to believe that the writer of such clever and harmonically rich masterpieces as Love and Affection, Willow, I Need You, Your Letter or Cool Blue Stole My Heart has put her name to this.
There are moments where things threaten to get a little interesting: a rave-like rhythmic pulse played by the strings in the first movement; a touch of doomy dissonance in the third movement; a flirtation with minimalism in the fourth; a widescreen, big-skied western theme right at the end. But nothing here coalesces – these are disconnected fragments from a mood board; garbled ideas hummed into an iPhone. Perhaps Chineke! should have taken Armatrading’s first draft (composed on programming software) as the basis for a collaboration and teased out something more developed and complex? Instead, the orchestra’s founder, Chi-chi Nwanoku, who admits to “pinching herself” when discussing the project with Armatrading, saw fit to play this baffling mess. Neither composer nor ensemble come out well from this.
Oh well. The rest of the programme was pretty good – Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s take on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite made a big-swinging opener, and a slightly ragged but romantic take on the Russian composer’s fifth symphony was a rousing closer. But the meat in this Tchaikovsky sandwich was sadly rather rotten.
