Concerto for Orchestra- 2023 - 15’
2.2.2.2 - 2.2.3.0 - cel - 1perc* - timp - strings
*Drum kit, woodblock, triangle, four drinks glasses tuned with water
Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by Yoel Gamzou and oneMusic Orchestra for Beethovenfest Bonn 2023.
Never judge a book by its cover—or, for that matter, a musical work. In Robin Haigh’s Concerto for Orchestra, composed in 2023, the opening bars might evoke an unused instrumental from the flamboyant comedy film Barbie, with the strings repeating a groovy, saccharine riff. But by the grand and lush finale, the music feels more suited to the solemn world of the historical drama Oppenheimer. Both films were released on the same date in 2023, adding a twist to the narrative as audiences came to see them not as rivals but as a yin-yang of cinematic experiences. The sentimental and cerebral, exaggerated and understated, kitsch and classy fused into the intense cultural amalgamation playfully referred to as Barbenheimer.
It is precisely this duality—or rather, oscillation—that lies at the heart of Haigh’s music. It swings quietly between wry sarcasm and a disarming sincerity, between cheap buffoonery and heightened melodrama. As a prime representative of what I’ve previously, half-jokingly, dubbed the British School of Emotionalism and Metamodernism (BSEM), the sentiments that Concerto for Orchestra elicit are full of ambiguities. Perhaps they simply reflect the world of the 2020s, with its crumbling foundations, lack of truth and subconscious desire for the ‘big Other’ to fix things for us. Haigh’s compositional embellishments (microtonal bending, undulating glissandi and ricocheting bows) offer little stability either. In this way, the hazy, faintly unnerving soundworld of Concerto for Orchestra feels perfectly at home in our early 21st-century environment.
Back to the first movement: after the opening jaunty riff collapses under its own saccharine excess, a wailing melody emerges and begins to leap from one string instrument to another. Yet something feels off, perhaps prompting the original riff to make a brief return. From here, we enter the dreamland of the second movement, transporting us to the safest haven of all: childhood. The twinkling celesta, quavering woodwinds and howling brass paint a picture of longing for a time that, for most listeners, occurred before the 21st century (a wistful aesthetic that Haigh has identified as ‘millennial nostalgia’ in writings about his own work). Like an insistent alarm whose gradual increase in volume is both inevitable and relentless, the drum kit builds agitation, accelerating the moment we wake up, with no hope of falling back to sleep. A solitary horn introduces the third and final movement. The riff from earlier attempts to creep in, but it is a new day, and yesterday is gone. Haigh’s closing message seems to be that beauty will prevail no matter how messy and chaotic things are, for disorder, too, is a fruitful soil.
Concerto for Orchestra was originally commissioned by oneMusic Orchestra, who premiered the work with conductor Yoel Gamzou at Beethovenfest Bonn in September 2023.
- Marat Ingeldeev