University of York Music Press

Paul Griffiths' Programme Notes read:

Phoenix

This new composition, written in 2006-7, comes as the last panel ('surge' might be a better word for such dynamic music) in an orchestral triptych by Hoyland, following Vixen (1997) and Qibti (2003). Like those predecessors, Phoenix is a big piece in both music's dimensions of time and sound: it plays for about half an hour and is scored for a large orchestra that includes two harps and an active group of four percussionists, so that struck sonorities are equally as important as those bowed or blown. A difference from the two earlier scores is that the percussion instruments are all tuned, producing clangs, shimmers, vibrant streams and scintillant rushes that play through the music almost continuously. As in Qibti, though not Vixen, there is also an electronic keyboard sampling similar sounds as well as, briefly near the end, those of an organ. Phoenixes, we may recall, are born amid flames, and it is partly from brilliant metallic sparks that Hoyland's fire music is made. Phoenix is big from its beginning, where elements from Vixen and Qibti are intercut and dovetailed. They include chords on horns continuing into an excited staccato burst in quick, tight rhythm, with strings and brass to the fore, and then a melody led by superhigh violins, estatico. The ensuing sequence for percussion over a sustained string chord rises to an evocation of 'La Marangona', the great bell that sounds from the campanile of St Mark's in Venice. A long pause follows. Chords speaking from the medium-bass register move towards a flowing passage that features flutes and clarinets, interrupted by brilliant music led by what the composer imagines as the six silver trumpets that would herald the Venetian doge in ceremonial processions (four trumpets joined, in slower melody, by two clarinets). This is the real inauguration of the new piece, and out of it comes further music with prominent flutes and clarinets, followed by an adagio initiated by the strings alone, and maintained by them against—or with—insistent flares and eruptions, as well as sprinklings from flutes, piccolo and percussion. The inevitable climax precipitates a powerful message from the brass, extending into a massive tutti that brings the first part of the piece to a close. Quiet resonances summon a slow but accelerating interlude that issues in an emphatic statement. From here the second part gets going, and moves towards a tumltuous development of the staccato music from early on. Now the quiet resonances return, this time introducing another sweep of music with flowing flutes and clarinets in pole position. Trumpets and trombones signal a change, bringing the music into its last and most momentous cycle of turmoil. A thrilling culmination, again with the marking estatico, prepares for a finale in which blocks of triplets, going as fast as possible, are hurled about towards a frenzied conclusion. But this is not the end: out of it comes a slow postlude. 'I don't believe my pieces to be at all programmatic,' the composer has said, 'but I draw on absolutely specific things that feed and enrich the imagination, and help me conceive these large tapestries in sound. With Phoenix we come (back) to Venice. The first part contemplates Byzantine St Mark's, the Greek cross, the five domes, circular patterns, inward and dark, the campanile with its great bell, and much else besides, eventually to burn up and collapse. After the link passage, the second part contemplates the Frari church, the Latin cross, line and light, the Venetian Gothic (Renaissance) and, more than anything else, the superb triptych by Giovanni Bellini that was designed for and is housed in a side chapel of the Frari church. The postlude hints at Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles and so at the ending of a great era in culture, associated with Venice.'

Andrew Clements review from the Guardian: 'Over the last 15 years, Hoyland has been working on a huge orchestral tryptich. The BBC has steadfastly commissioned each part in turn, and its Symphony Orchestra introduced the first two parts, Vixen and Qibti, in 1997 and 2003. On Wednesday, it completed the task when Andrew Litton conducted the first performance of the 25-minute Phoenic. It was the opening work in a programme that was otherwise devoted, rather incongruously, to works by Richard Strauss: a group of his orchestral songs and the tone poem Ein Heldenleben. 'starting out with brief references to the material of the previous works in the tryptich, Phoenix is a vast, teeming score, thrillingly eventful and irrepressibly dramatic. Though Hoyland denies his piece is programatic, it is certainly descriptive. The art and architecture of Venice and its themes, and the two parts into which the music divides are inspired by the geometry and bells of St Mark's, and the Fari church - specifically the Bellini tryptych housed in it. 'Those references can be sometimes be [sic] identified in the music, especially in the bell sounds that surround much of the first part with halos of resonance. But Phoenix makes its points in a purely musical way, too. Hoyland's language, which has always been unapologetically modernist, has its own muscular rigour - but there are connections with late Boulez, in the toccatas of high woodwind and tuned percussion that punctuate both sections, and with Messiaen, whose joyous rampagings in the Turangalîla Symphony surely lie behind the ecstatic closing pages. Above all, though, this is an entirely personal piece of virtuoso orchestral writing, full of luscious textures, which Litton and the BBCSO delivered with great panache.' Andrew Clements Guardian, 31 January 2009

Read also Andrew Clark's review in the Financial Times.