Clare O'Connell on her new album 'Light Flowing'

Its starting point lay in the work of Edmund Finnis, from whom I co-commissioned with the bassist Elena Hull a duo for cello and bass, inspired by Brother and Sister, the duos he had already written for violin and viola and violin and cello respectively. I discovered his Three Solos (commissioned by London Sinfonietta) during lockdown and was deeply honoured when he gave me permission to record them. It is utterly compelling music inspired by Bach and which approaches the cello in the most naturalistic way, allowing the instrument to speak as it was designed to.

I had already commissioned a piece for cello and harp by Alex Mills for my concert series Behind the Mirror, which explores the higher registers of the cello in its depiction of the midsummer sun at its highest point and provides relief in the sound of the harp; the next person I approached was Nick Martin, a composer whose music speaks tome profoundly. This is highly emotive, moving music which tries to express the inexpressible at the deepest level. We had a long conversation, him sitting on a bench in Copenhagen where he lives, me in my practice room, discussing the notion of light, which I was hoping he would find a way to represent, and over the course of the next few months, two extraordinary movements found their way to me, multi layered, music so powerful I felt compelled to record it at home immediately.

I’m extremely grateful to NMC for taking this project on in its early stages, questioning my choices and encouraging me to look to three female composers for the rest of the music. I chose Natalie Klouda, Emily Hall and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, three wonderful composers with very different styles writing, all of whom I hugely admire and whose work I wanted to champion. 

Natalie’s stylish writing creates a polyphony of sound acoustically ŪhtĆeare is inspired by the faint but rising midsummer sun and the overall structure mirrors the emotional rollercoaster of a looming and yet enchanted midsummer’s day. In contrast Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch uses loops and layering to refract the sound world of each open string into individual elements, ranging from textural to melodic; from woodland dark greens to rich feminine textures with resonant depth. Emily Hall’s You Sail to the Sky is a piece of perfect minimalism; inspired by Nick Drake’s Cello Song, its undulating harmonics and slowly modulating double stops take us all the way to heaven. It has been a huge privilege to explore with them all, and I’m enormously proud of what has been created.

Clare O'Connell, December 2024