Colin Clarke Fanfare magazine 2024 review of Luminos CD
The next composer is a name relatively new to me, Angela Elizabeth Slater (b. 1989), who offers the first of the newly commissioned works here. Slater already has been a Tanglewood Composition Fellow, and selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society Composer program; back in 2017–18 she was a Britten-Pears Young Artist. My only contact with her previously was via the Ivors Awards last year, as her piece Through the Fading Hour was nominated for the Best Large Ensemble Composition; it was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and there is a fabulous performance on YouTube conducted by Brett Dean, with Richard Waters as viola soloist. Her Around the Darkening Sun for bass clarinet and piano was commissioned in 2020; it therefore coincided with the UK lockdowns due to the coronavirus. The sense of Angst around this time, bolstered by a NASA article stating that the sun is getting dimmer year by year, inspired her piece. It begins in the depths of both instruments’ registers; at the opening, material enjoys only passing, fragmentary connections, although the two instruments are sometimes timbrally linked via extended techniques on the clarinet. While the subject matter might not be the happiest, the beauty here is remarkable. Andrew West plays with delicacy, variety, and a sense of umbilical connection to Woodley. The agility of the bass clarinet is finely explored by Slater, and I look forward to hearing much more from this young lady.
...It is very difficult to find fault with any aspect of this disc, from performance and recording to selection of repertoire. This is absolutely not for clarinetists only, and I shall be keeping my eyes peeled for concerts featuring the music of Angela Elizabeth Slater.
Begeisterndes Rathauskonzert mit dem „Trio Tempestoso“Review about piece Das Same sucht das Licht -
Im Programm haben die drei auch Haydn. Der klingt so arrangiert ganz neu – und bildet einen gewollt starken Kontrast zum eindrücklichen „Der Same sucht das Licht“ von der 1989 geborenen Angela Slater. Das Stück wurde – ebenso wie „Breathe“ von Sebastian Fagerlund im weiteren Programm – für das Trio Tempestoso eigens komponiert. Slater spielt mit Klangschichten, die wabernd Stimmungen erzeugen, aus denen sich einzelne Melodien suchend herausschlängeln. Das Werk beruhe auf der Freundschaft zwischen Picasso und Strawinsky, die sich gegenseitig Kunstwerke zukommen ließen, erzählt die britische Komponistin. Stravinsky machte den Anfang mit einer kurzen Melodie für Klarinette. Und diese ‚Notiz‘ sei der ‚Same‘, der in ihrer Komposition zu einem Baum aufgehe. Alle drei Musiker kosten die (Dis-)Harmonien aus, baden im Klang und werden in dieser Musik abseits von Taktstrichen eins, samt Präzision. Es ist ‚ihre‘ Musik.
Von: Susanne Greiner
Twenty young composers capture the zeitgeist in Birmingham 29th January 2023 at Symphony Hall, Telegraph
‘...and a glow of Michael Tippett's dancing rituals in Angela Elizabeth Slater's beautiful Unravelling the Crimson Sky.’
Musical Opinion April June 2023
Sounds New: Twenty CBSO Centenary Commissions. Symphony Hall, Birmingham (29th January 2023)
Angela Slater’s Unravelling the Crimson Sky was an intricate, sometimes turbulent and often ravishingly scored piece that exploited the full range of a large orchestra, with brass and percussion highlighted to conjure up glowing colours streaked across sky. Taut and closely argued, it began with, and developed a fanfare-like motif, while juxtaposing diverse episodes, some reflective and others dynamic, before finishing with a passage of glinting, pellucid textures. A rich mixture of a tone poem and a study in timbre, this ambitious, accomplished work was awarded a detailed and superbly played debut performance.
Paul Conway
Boston Classical Review - A moving farewell in New England Philharmonic’s season finale April 28, 2019 at 12:34 pm By Aaron Keebaugh
Saturday’s concert also featured the world premiere of Angela Elizabeth Slater’s Roil in Stillness, winner of the NEP’s annual call for scores. Like Rakowski, Slater drew upon the natural world for inspiration. Roil in Stillness, a tone poem composed in 2015, conjures the effects of rippling water as seen through a microscope.
It’s an attractive score and as its title suggests, chock-full of energy. Pittman and the orchestra delivered a vital and enthusiastic performance to make a strong case for this young composer.
Across 14 minutes, figures churn through each section of the orchestra, coming to rest on bristly dissonances before breaking away. Slater makes deft and vivid use of instrumental color. Brasses sound out heavy chords in climactic moments, and the large percussion forces supply a steady a rumble to propel the music forward. For all its power, Roil in Stillness concludes with a single high violin note evaporating into silence.
By Aaron Keebaugh
Musical Opinion (April-June 2023 issue)
World premieres by Errollyn Wallen and Angela Elizabeth Slater. Bradshaw Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire 4th November 2022
Yannick Mayaud conducted the other two premieres, both composed by Angela Elizabeth Slater. The Louder the Birds Sing was a purely orchestral work that reflected on the effects of the pandemic, specifically the curious sensation that during lockdown the birds appeared to be singing louder. This was, in fact, the result of a reduction in noise pollution and the music explored the uneasy correlation between the presumed increase in volume of the birds and the grievousness of our current situation, as well as broader themes of strength and frailty. A thoughtful, sensitively scored soundscape, The Louder the Birds Sing offered imaginative percussion writing, subtle use of muted brass and most poignantly, a brief but eloquent, skyward soliloquy for solo cello, recalled in the work’s closing moments. Alert to every nuance of instrumentation, the players caught the music’s sense of foreboding and Yannick Mayaud’s cogent direction ensured the narrative emerged naturally, unhurried and compelling.
Then came the first performance of Angela Elizabeth Slater’s Tautening skies, a piano concerto written for the pianist Laura Farré Rozada, who joined Mayaud and the RBC Symphony Orchestra on stage. This spacious, 30-minute score was commissioned by the soloist, who is investigating memorising techniques for her PhD studies and she played the whole piece from memory, an astonishing feat, given the music’s considerable technical challenges. The three movements were based structurally on a poem written by the composer, but the piece stood up as a dramatic, variegated statement independent of this literary connection. The opening movement came across as a study on the piano concerto genre itself, presenting distant echoes and half-remembered gestures of the canonical repertoire, always expressed in the composer’s own distinctive musical voice. Delicate half-lights illuminated the introspective, elusive central movement, in which fragile, high keyboard writing was supported by held string-harmonic chords. The movement’s closing moments were especially effective as the music dimmed and slid down out of earshot. Tense and often stormy and frenzied, the massive finale made a satisfying counterpoise to the heft of the opening movement and close attention was required to follow the intricate musical argument with its towering climaxes. A powerful concertante piece, Tautening skies would repay additional hearings so that its lavish sweep and layering of prolific detail could be further assimilated. On first acquaintance, it appeared as a highly individual contribution to the medium and the premiere performance must be counted a tour de force for composer, soloist, orchestra and conductor alike.
Paul Conway
Midlands Music Reviews - 4th November 2022 at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Another world premiere followed, The Louder the Birds Sing, by Angela Elizabeth Slater, a composer concerned about the environment and climate-change, and whose music is often inspired by her own poetry. This piece is spectral, gestural, the orchestra imaginatively explored (the exuberant percussion pulling every trick out of the hat), and all authoritatively controlled by conductor Yannick Mayaud.
Chris Morley
Musical Opinion
21st May 2022 -Sheffield Chamber Music Festival. Drama Studio, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.
To conclude the first half, members of Ensemble 360 gave the world premiere of Angela Slater’s The Light Blinds, for clarinet quintet, a Royal Philharmonic Society commission for Music in the Round. The score exploits feelings aroused by extremes of light and darkness and relates to a poem written by the composer on this theme. The strings began the piece dynamically in a state of nervous tension, while the clarinet gradually emerged from the teeming string textures. A crucial point was reached at the score’s midpoint as the clarinet gave out a wide-ranging statement over held string harmonics. The shadowy second half of the piece made striking use of bass clarinet multiphonics and at one stage found all five players in their lowest tessituras of their instruments. The work ended with a reminder of the opening disquieted outburst. Clarinettist Peter Sparks, violinists Mathilde Milwidsky and Claudia Ajmone-Masan, violist Rachel Roberts and cellist Gemma Rosefield all transcended the score’s many technical and expressive demands to unveil the intensely dramatic and poetic aspects of Angela Slater’s writing. The stark contrast between the realms of light and dark compellingly etched out by the composer was engagingly brought to life in this exciting and accomplished first performance.
Paul Conway
Musical Opinion
Illuminate Women’s Music concert. Routh Hall, Bromsgrove School
30th September 2022
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’, for soprano and string quartet (2019) by Angela Elizabeth Slater sets a selection of Wallace Stevens’ haikus from his poem of the same name. The score prefaces each movement with a short prelude, or ‘bookmark’, which offers a glimpse of the final movement of the set. Sarah Parkin and the Brompton Quartet allowed their poetic sensibility full rein in these elliptical settings, whether conjuring up blackbird song, alarm and flight in the tenacious ‘Three Minds’, running wild in the aleatoric opening section of ‘The Pantomime’, for voice and cello only, or creating an icy, tremolo-laden atmosphere in the unsettling ‘Barbaric Glass’. Satisfying musically and emotionally, the concluding movement, ‘The Edge’, allowed listeners to hear the full version of the previous ‘bookmark’ allusions, and ended with a reminder of material from the opening bars, as a true song-cycle. Inventive in its writing for both voice and instruments and personal in its creative response to the texts, ‘Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ was a dynamic concluding item in a far-reaching, richly rewarding recital.
Paul Conway
Musical Opinion
Illuminate Women’s Music. Naomi Sullivan, saxophone and Kumi Matsuo, piano. Cardiff University School of Music Concert Hall
14th December 2021
Angela Slater’s Punch Echo, for alto saxophone and piano (2021) brought proceedings to a close with flair and impact. Drawing on the meaning of the words, ‘punch’ and ‘echo’, the work had a strong narrative drive, rooted in variants on a vigorous motif. The players gave scrupulous attention to the constant, abrupt shifts in dynamics and their polished traversal of the score emphasised the cogency of its dynamic gestures. Punch Echo made an ideal concluding work, its robust structure and resourceful use of both instruments seeming to epitomise the merits of all the other items on the carefully assembled programme.
This richly satisfying recital was notable for the flexibility and versatility of the performers and for shining a light on so many original and rewarding creative voices.
Paul Conway
Centrala, Birmingham: Illuminate Women’s Music written by 5:4 October 17, 2019 • 15:23
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Illuminate’s founder Angela Elizabeth Slater tapped into something that I’ve long thought about haiku poetry. It seems to me that in many haikus there’s an implied tension, even a volatility – that beneath its placid, formal, seemingly detached surface is locked away a considerable amount of emotional power and energy. Using a selection of haikus by Wallace Stevens, it felt in Slater’s setting as if all of that implied power was being unleashed in a huge, concentrated burst. On the one hand, there were times when the sheer force of the vocal line came across as not merely melodramatic, but even a touch pantomimic. Yet it was undoubtedly more, a lot more, than just that. Slater’s music wasn’t well served by the relatively small confines and boxy acoustic of Centrala, which often caused Patricia Auchterlonie’s astonishing performance to attain ear-splitting levels of loudness. Listening through the rapidly-encroaching tinnitus, there was something mesmerising about its fiery, supercharged nature, as if Ways of Looking at a Blackbird were an unstoppable force of nature that simply couldn’t be contained. Maybe haikus are like atoms – you split them open at your peril.
by Simon Cummings
The next composer is a name relatively new to me, Angela Elizabeth Slater (b. 1989), who offers the first of the newly commissioned works here. Slater already has been a Tanglewood Composition Fellow, and selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society Composer program; back in 2017–18 she was a Britten-Pears Young Artist. My only contact with her previously was via the Ivors Awards last year, as her piece Through the Fading Hour was nominated for the Best Large Ensemble Composition; it was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and there is a fabulous performance on YouTube conducted by Brett Dean, with Richard Waters as viola soloist. Her Around the Darkening Sun for bass clarinet and piano was commissioned in 2020; it therefore coincided with the UK lockdowns due to the coronavirus. The sense of Angst around this time, bolstered by a NASA article stating that the sun is getting dimmer year by year, inspired her piece. It begins in the depths of both instruments’ registers; at the opening, material enjoys only passing, fragmentary connections, although the two instruments are sometimes timbrally linked via extended techniques on the clarinet. While the subject matter might not be the happiest, the beauty here is remarkable. Andrew West plays with delicacy, variety, and a sense of umbilical connection to Woodley. The agility of the bass clarinet is finely explored by Slater, and I look forward to hearing much more from this young lady.
...It is very difficult to find fault with any aspect of this disc, from performance and recording to selection of repertoire. This is absolutely not for clarinetists only, and I shall be keeping my eyes peeled for concerts featuring the music of Angela Elizabeth Slater.
Begeisterndes Rathauskonzert mit dem „Trio Tempestoso“Review about piece Das Same sucht das Licht -
Im Programm haben die drei auch Haydn. Der klingt so arrangiert ganz neu – und bildet einen gewollt starken Kontrast zum eindrücklichen „Der Same sucht das Licht“ von der 1989 geborenen Angela Slater. Das Stück wurde – ebenso wie „Breathe“ von Sebastian Fagerlund im weiteren Programm – für das Trio Tempestoso eigens komponiert. Slater spielt mit Klangschichten, die wabernd Stimmungen erzeugen, aus denen sich einzelne Melodien suchend herausschlängeln. Das Werk beruhe auf der Freundschaft zwischen Picasso und Strawinsky, die sich gegenseitig Kunstwerke zukommen ließen, erzählt die britische Komponistin. Stravinsky machte den Anfang mit einer kurzen Melodie für Klarinette. Und diese ‚Notiz‘ sei der ‚Same‘, der in ihrer Komposition zu einem Baum aufgehe. Alle drei Musiker kosten die (Dis-)Harmonien aus, baden im Klang und werden in dieser Musik abseits von Taktstrichen eins, samt Präzision. Es ist ‚ihre‘ Musik.
Von: Susanne Greiner
Twenty young composers capture the zeitgeist in Birmingham 29th January 2023 at Symphony Hall, Telegraph
‘...and a glow of Michael Tippett's dancing rituals in Angela Elizabeth Slater's beautiful Unravelling the Crimson Sky.’
Musical Opinion April June 2023
Sounds New: Twenty CBSO Centenary Commissions. Symphony Hall, Birmingham (29th January 2023)
Angela Slater’s Unravelling the Crimson Sky was an intricate, sometimes turbulent and often ravishingly scored piece that exploited the full range of a large orchestra, with brass and percussion highlighted to conjure up glowing colours streaked across sky. Taut and closely argued, it began with, and developed a fanfare-like motif, while juxtaposing diverse episodes, some reflective and others dynamic, before finishing with a passage of glinting, pellucid textures. A rich mixture of a tone poem and a study in timbre, this ambitious, accomplished work was awarded a detailed and superbly played debut performance.
Paul Conway
Boston Classical Review - A moving farewell in New England Philharmonic’s season finale April 28, 2019 at 12:34 pm By Aaron Keebaugh
Saturday’s concert also featured the world premiere of Angela Elizabeth Slater’s Roil in Stillness, winner of the NEP’s annual call for scores. Like Rakowski, Slater drew upon the natural world for inspiration. Roil in Stillness, a tone poem composed in 2015, conjures the effects of rippling water as seen through a microscope.
It’s an attractive score and as its title suggests, chock-full of energy. Pittman and the orchestra delivered a vital and enthusiastic performance to make a strong case for this young composer.
Across 14 minutes, figures churn through each section of the orchestra, coming to rest on bristly dissonances before breaking away. Slater makes deft and vivid use of instrumental color. Brasses sound out heavy chords in climactic moments, and the large percussion forces supply a steady a rumble to propel the music forward. For all its power, Roil in Stillness concludes with a single high violin note evaporating into silence.
By Aaron Keebaugh
Musical Opinion (April-June 2023 issue)
World premieres by Errollyn Wallen and Angela Elizabeth Slater. Bradshaw Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire 4th November 2022
Yannick Mayaud conducted the other two premieres, both composed by Angela Elizabeth Slater. The Louder the Birds Sing was a purely orchestral work that reflected on the effects of the pandemic, specifically the curious sensation that during lockdown the birds appeared to be singing louder. This was, in fact, the result of a reduction in noise pollution and the music explored the uneasy correlation between the presumed increase in volume of the birds and the grievousness of our current situation, as well as broader themes of strength and frailty. A thoughtful, sensitively scored soundscape, The Louder the Birds Sing offered imaginative percussion writing, subtle use of muted brass and most poignantly, a brief but eloquent, skyward soliloquy for solo cello, recalled in the work’s closing moments. Alert to every nuance of instrumentation, the players caught the music’s sense of foreboding and Yannick Mayaud’s cogent direction ensured the narrative emerged naturally, unhurried and compelling.
Then came the first performance of Angela Elizabeth Slater’s Tautening skies, a piano concerto written for the pianist Laura Farré Rozada, who joined Mayaud and the RBC Symphony Orchestra on stage. This spacious, 30-minute score was commissioned by the soloist, who is investigating memorising techniques for her PhD studies and she played the whole piece from memory, an astonishing feat, given the music’s considerable technical challenges. The three movements were based structurally on a poem written by the composer, but the piece stood up as a dramatic, variegated statement independent of this literary connection. The opening movement came across as a study on the piano concerto genre itself, presenting distant echoes and half-remembered gestures of the canonical repertoire, always expressed in the composer’s own distinctive musical voice. Delicate half-lights illuminated the introspective, elusive central movement, in which fragile, high keyboard writing was supported by held string-harmonic chords. The movement’s closing moments were especially effective as the music dimmed and slid down out of earshot. Tense and often stormy and frenzied, the massive finale made a satisfying counterpoise to the heft of the opening movement and close attention was required to follow the intricate musical argument with its towering climaxes. A powerful concertante piece, Tautening skies would repay additional hearings so that its lavish sweep and layering of prolific detail could be further assimilated. On first acquaintance, it appeared as a highly individual contribution to the medium and the premiere performance must be counted a tour de force for composer, soloist, orchestra and conductor alike.
Paul Conway
Midlands Music Reviews - 4th November 2022 at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Another world premiere followed, The Louder the Birds Sing, by Angela Elizabeth Slater, a composer concerned about the environment and climate-change, and whose music is often inspired by her own poetry. This piece is spectral, gestural, the orchestra imaginatively explored (the exuberant percussion pulling every trick out of the hat), and all authoritatively controlled by conductor Yannick Mayaud.
Chris Morley
Musical Opinion
21st May 2022 -Sheffield Chamber Music Festival. Drama Studio, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.
To conclude the first half, members of Ensemble 360 gave the world premiere of Angela Slater’s The Light Blinds, for clarinet quintet, a Royal Philharmonic Society commission for Music in the Round. The score exploits feelings aroused by extremes of light and darkness and relates to a poem written by the composer on this theme. The strings began the piece dynamically in a state of nervous tension, while the clarinet gradually emerged from the teeming string textures. A crucial point was reached at the score’s midpoint as the clarinet gave out a wide-ranging statement over held string harmonics. The shadowy second half of the piece made striking use of bass clarinet multiphonics and at one stage found all five players in their lowest tessituras of their instruments. The work ended with a reminder of the opening disquieted outburst. Clarinettist Peter Sparks, violinists Mathilde Milwidsky and Claudia Ajmone-Masan, violist Rachel Roberts and cellist Gemma Rosefield all transcended the score’s many technical and expressive demands to unveil the intensely dramatic and poetic aspects of Angela Slater’s writing. The stark contrast between the realms of light and dark compellingly etched out by the composer was engagingly brought to life in this exciting and accomplished first performance.
Paul Conway
Musical Opinion
Illuminate Women’s Music concert. Routh Hall, Bromsgrove School
30th September 2022
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’, for soprano and string quartet (2019) by Angela Elizabeth Slater sets a selection of Wallace Stevens’ haikus from his poem of the same name. The score prefaces each movement with a short prelude, or ‘bookmark’, which offers a glimpse of the final movement of the set. Sarah Parkin and the Brompton Quartet allowed their poetic sensibility full rein in these elliptical settings, whether conjuring up blackbird song, alarm and flight in the tenacious ‘Three Minds’, running wild in the aleatoric opening section of ‘The Pantomime’, for voice and cello only, or creating an icy, tremolo-laden atmosphere in the unsettling ‘Barbaric Glass’. Satisfying musically and emotionally, the concluding movement, ‘The Edge’, allowed listeners to hear the full version of the previous ‘bookmark’ allusions, and ended with a reminder of material from the opening bars, as a true song-cycle. Inventive in its writing for both voice and instruments and personal in its creative response to the texts, ‘Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ was a dynamic concluding item in a far-reaching, richly rewarding recital.
Paul Conway
Musical Opinion
Illuminate Women’s Music. Naomi Sullivan, saxophone and Kumi Matsuo, piano. Cardiff University School of Music Concert Hall
14th December 2021
Angela Slater’s Punch Echo, for alto saxophone and piano (2021) brought proceedings to a close with flair and impact. Drawing on the meaning of the words, ‘punch’ and ‘echo’, the work had a strong narrative drive, rooted in variants on a vigorous motif. The players gave scrupulous attention to the constant, abrupt shifts in dynamics and their polished traversal of the score emphasised the cogency of its dynamic gestures. Punch Echo made an ideal concluding work, its robust structure and resourceful use of both instruments seeming to epitomise the merits of all the other items on the carefully assembled programme.
This richly satisfying recital was notable for the flexibility and versatility of the performers and for shining a light on so many original and rewarding creative voices.
Paul Conway
Centrala, Birmingham: Illuminate Women’s Music written by 5:4 October 17, 2019 • 15:23
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Illuminate’s founder Angela Elizabeth Slater tapped into something that I’ve long thought about haiku poetry. It seems to me that in many haikus there’s an implied tension, even a volatility – that beneath its placid, formal, seemingly detached surface is locked away a considerable amount of emotional power and energy. Using a selection of haikus by Wallace Stevens, it felt in Slater’s setting as if all of that implied power was being unleashed in a huge, concentrated burst. On the one hand, there were times when the sheer force of the vocal line came across as not merely melodramatic, but even a touch pantomimic. Yet it was undoubtedly more, a lot more, than just that. Slater’s music wasn’t well served by the relatively small confines and boxy acoustic of Centrala, which often caused Patricia Auchterlonie’s astonishing performance to attain ear-splitting levels of loudness. Listening through the rapidly-encroaching tinnitus, there was something mesmerising about its fiery, supercharged nature, as if Ways of Looking at a Blackbird were an unstoppable force of nature that simply couldn’t be contained. Maybe haikus are like atoms – you split them open at your peril.
by Simon Cummings