Good Luck: In This Brief Moment, Darwin cantata by Brett Dean

 

Counter-tenor Patrick Terry giving it everything, with CBSO

In a blog dedicated to Evolution & Music, it’s good to note a new substantial work adding to the growing canon of Darwin related music. Today, 02/02/2023 (proximal to InternationalDarwin Day ~ 12^th Feb, now up to 34 events) sees the second performance of In ThisBrief Moment, following its worldwide première in Birmingham on 24/09/2022. I only found out about it from Mark Pallen while arranging the talk I’m due to give on Monday 13^th Feb in Norwich on ‘Darwin, DNA & Music’ (for free registration, if you can make it, book here). So maybe there is a need for a blog on Darwin/Evolution Music!

So, lucky few who attended at Birmingham and tonight’s concert in Hamburg! (including Prague Philharmonic Choir / NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester). An enthusiastic review in the Guardian made the piece sound fun, with a good mix of ingredients as one would expect from a modern synthesis. Dean, based in Germany and also wielding a mean viola and conductor’s baton is (maybe!) Australia’s leading composer; he certainly knows what an orchestra is for, as a few moments listening to any of his available clips will show. It’s perhaps unfortunate that for this subject with potentially wide appeal, it isn’t yet ‘for sharing’, so we’re left with only the reviews and a list of ingredients. I’ll try and find out more.

But it seems like a lot was packed into 45 minutes: “moments of extreme beauty”in the intertwining of the soloists lines, zany cabaret sequence, recorded voiceover and “extraordinary chirruping” sounds made by 24 specially created whirlytubes, and the choir donning black masks, presumably in an ecological connection. I’m all in favour of serious artistic works using visuals, props and even audience participation (just you wait…).

And a nod to that greatest, so far, of all the stories of our Origin told in music, Haydn’s Creation. I sang this with a Parisian choir in 1996, somewhere on the Left Bank. Oh for a Darwin-based work to hold a candle to that… I look forward to hearing Brett’s work and hearing how it holds up.

Picture credit: Guardian Newspapers