Phoenix Rising (1997)

… music of serious beauty … Her music is bold, theatrical and full of wit … It’s odd that such a spellbinding orchestral showpiece, tracing a gripping journey from dark to light, should take so long to rock up in South Kensington, but the BBC Symphony players relished its kaleidoscopic palette.

20 years after its première, Phoenix Rising continues to impress by dint of a very simple characteristic: the music always seems to know exactly where it is going. It never outstays its welcome and the composer skilfully contrasts the moments of dramatic intervention (here given over to horns, timpani and side-drums) with pastoral interludes in which a dazzling array of instrumental colour is exploited.

The music is pungently expressive in varied moods that move from depicting initial chaos and despair, then the triumph of rebirth and the eventual achievement of a state of serenity. The quality of musical invention is unflaggingly imaginative and Musgrave’s handling of the orchestral forces is masterly. For once in a newish work, the percussion section is not blatantly used but very judiciously adds piquant colour to the already luminous textures. And there is a touch of humour when at a certain point the timpanist gives up a struggle to dominate opposing brass forces and storms off the platform.

In a way Musgrave makes no concessions to her audience, since some of the music is pretty tough and unyielding, but somehow she manages still to make it attractive and easily assimilable. If only some of her younger colleagues possessed similar skills.

The 20-minute piece is a fine example of her gripping musical narrative and brilliant orchestration, especially in the early stages where the music’s jagged edges and bracing harmony made for a sit-up-and-listen start to the concert.

Thea Musgrave's Phoenix Rising is a beauty, one of those pieces that walk into your life and become a friend forever. Like most of her music, Phoenix Rising is highly dramatic. The piece is loosely based on the legend of the miraculous bird, the phoenix. Forces of darkness and death cannot resist the force of light, rebirth, and creation, although light cannot utterly banish darkness; the two seem to need each other. But throughout the piece the music engages the issues of the fable, not its details; Musgrave is a storyteller, but she doesn't write program music, and one of the characteristics of her music is that real things are happening in it that you cannot describe in words, which is why they are unfolding in music.

Musgrave has a fabulous ear for combinations of sonority and for meaningful musical gestures; there is no "fill" in her work, and the piece ends in a miraculous radiance that is not just a triumph of orchestral imagination but of emotional fulfillment. Musgrave knows how to make an orchestral part interesting to play and good-sounding; more important, this is entertaining, vigorous new music that engages on a profound level with timeless concerns.

Musgrave’s lyrical gift is prominent, everywhere seductively orchestrated; concentrated and enhanced by her atonalist stretch long ago, when Schoenbergian “twelve-note” composition was in vogue. Now she fixes tonal roots, comforting to the ear, but composes much as she has always done: strong lyrical lines that really sing, often through some favoured first-desker: the score teems with orchestral solos, besides the horn and timpani roles; and plangent harmonies that betoken a special ear and personality. Phoenix Rising is too unabashedly romantic to count as “modernist”, but nothing in it sounds second-hand. The many episodes it traverses, from the opening “Dramatic, violent” to the final “Floating and luminous”, make a cogent sequence: attractive and rewarding to hear, much more than just once.