The release of the March 2024 EP, Swaddling Silk and Gosammer Rain, marks part three of Dalia’s Mixtape, conductor Dalia Stasevska and the BBC symphony orchestra’s ten track journey toward reimagining the future of classical music. As easy as it has been in recent years to lose hope in the relevance of classical composers — outside of the film and video game industry — Stasevska brilliantly employs Japanese composer Noriko Koide’s 2022 piece to capture the beauty of modern music in orchestral settings. Koide explores music and sound using modern techniques combined with the inspiration of past composers.
The start of Koide’s piece invites the listener to close their eyes as she paints a picturesque, sonic soundscape reminiscent of a rainy Japanese day. The vibraphone’s warm, bright, and oscillating timbre is blended with sounds from the mouths of the orchestra to add the effect of rain droplets splashing against the ground. After a long-sustained note from the oboe, the listener is engulfed in Koide’s world and free to roam it as they please while the other wind and string instrumentalists are brought to life by the clarinets’ magical glissando.
As the listener is transported from their everyday life to the misty countryside of Japan, Koide’s piece starts to symbolize more than just another rainy day, but rather the beauty one can find in simplicity. Koide introduces the piano and harp as two new colors which tastefully juxtapose the sound of the orchestra with their ethereal timbre and tone qualities. The strings and winds are used in collaboration with the harp and piano, highlighting the beauty of the two instruments by subtly mimicking nature’s sounds. The clarinet is used to mark the beginning and ends of large phrases during the middle and busiest portion of the piece where the entire orchestra is playing.
As the piece ends with the airy flute —reminiscent of a bird song— and the oral sounds of the orchestra, the harpist gracefully glissandos up the strings, acting as the wind which will transport our listeners from their mystic dreams back into the here-and-now. Following the harp’s six glissandi, the bird song and water
droplets of the orchestra bring the listener’s journey with Stasevska and the BBC Symphony to a calm conclusion.
Although the work is effortlessly transcendental, and a gorgeous piece of music, unfortunately it seems short lived. After roughly eleven minutes, the listener is snatched from the Beyond of their thoughts and dropped back into their harsh reality when British commentator Andrew Mellor boisterously explains the piece for 13 minutes.
Designed for consumption by a broad audience, Swaddling Silk and Gosammer Rain is nothing complicated. However, performing it well requires true professionalism and technique. Stasevska delicately leads the orchestra to success, highlighting all the simple qualities in Koide’s piece while effectively breathing a Debussyian mysticism into it. Rather than viewing this composition as just another piece of contemporary music, Stasevska approaches it as a true work of art that makes one optimistic about the future of modern classical music.
thecounterpoint.org 