Turnage, Mark-Anthony: Speranza

Speranza is Turnage’s most important orchestral score to date, as close to a symphony as any in his output. The four movements are titled by the Arabic, German, Gaelic and Hebrew words for ‘hope’, yet this optimism appears to be hard-won as if through a century of conflict. The work grew from reflections on the post-Holocaust poetry of Paul Celan, and the music is coloured by lamenting melodies – Palestinian, Jewish and Israeli – supplemented by the use of the Armenian dudak and Eastern European cimbalom. Other than the scherzo-like Irish-themed third movement the mood is brooding with a sequence of processions and variations illuminated by shafts of orchestral light.