When I was commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra to
write a work for them and a children’s choir I was excited by the combination
of beautiful young voices with the flair and energy of the Irish Chamber
Orchestra. My first task was to select a text that would appeal to both
performers and listeners and this allowed me to work again with the writer
Charlotte Cory who I earlier collaborated with on a BBC Education
Project. Based on the theme of Time this BBC project involved the 5 BBC
orchestras, the Ulster Orchestra and over 1000 people aged 8 to 80 who were
given the opportunity to compose and perform with professional musicians.
Mercy Primary School in Belfast was involved in the Ulster Orchestra’s The
First Time and provided the text and voices for the choral section. In
Charlotte’s writing workshops the girls explored ideas of memory and time and
from this a text was created. In Wait and See I
specifically wanted to write a piece for children using words by
children. For this commission Charlotte created another text from their
unused material.
Consisting of 3 vocal sections, the first recollects early photographs and
memories as the piece entices the listener into the children’s intimate
thoughts. These memories bring excitement and joy to their voices as they
think back to unforgettable times. The central vocal section concerns the
world of growing up, now thinking ahead to the future. The third section
reflects back to the opening and in the final few seconds the listener is drawn
in as the choir and orchestra comes to a quiet end.
Wait and See was performed by the RTÉ National Symphony
Orchestra and RTÉ Cór na nÓg at the National Concert Hall in 2010 as part of
the RTÉ Horizons Series. Later this year a CD of all Elaine’s orchestral
works will be released on the RTÉ lyric fm label featuring the RTÉ
National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gavin Maloney as part of the
Composers of Ireland series.
Andrew Johnstone, Irish Times:
“The third of this year’s RTÉ Horizons concerts
generated a memorably bright and upbeat atmosphere. The selection of
contemporary works by featured composer Elaine Agnew took in some challenging
enough listening but what made it especially engaging was the range of colour
and the zestful delivery.
Two further pieces of Agnew’s both dated from 2000, yet offered such
stylistic contrasts that each might have been taken for the work of a different
composer. Owing its origins to an educational project with Charlotte Cory at
Mercy Primary School, Belfast, the pervasively diatonic Wait and
See proved a tour de force of memorisation and sustained accuracy
for the buoyant young voices of RTÉ Cór na nÓg.” |
