Across Generations: Birtwistle’s Silbury Air

The London Sinfonietta brings new music from Poland to London and sets it beside two British works it commissioned 41 years apart, in the final concert of its UK/Poland Season project. 

Birtwistle’s Silbury Air is an enigmatic classic. Named after Silbury Hill, an ancient man-made mound on the edge of Salisbury Plain, Birtwistle’s short piece for chamber ensemble creates an imaginary landscape in a single seventeen-minute span. In it, you hear Birtwistle examining familiar sounds—machine-like ticking, or tolling bells—from ever-changing angles.

Charlotte Bray welcomes new life into this ancient scene. Inspired by newborn twins—”innocent, curious, and fragile”—Reflections in Time is sparsely written but colouristic and playful: eight pairs of instruments pass shifting sounds to and fro. Expect jutting rhythms and expressive melodies.

Around these works come premieres from two Polish composers across generations who share a common expressive urgency. First, Andrzej Ojczenasz’s Primo: spatia continua, which translates a quote from Virgil’s Aeneid into a burst of sonic energy; then, from one of Poland’s most eminent living composers, Zygmunt Krauze, his Concertino for Piano and Orchestra.