Andrea Tarrodi: Serenade in Seven Colours

SCO Digital Season, Filmed live at Leith Theatre, Mauro Silva director

Andrea Tarrodi: Serenade in Seven Colours

Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Ensemble, Gordon Bragg conductor, Louise Lewis Goodwin percussion

Andrea Tarrodi’s nine minute composition, ‘Serenade in Seven Colours’, is the second work in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Digital Season.  The young Swedish composer claims influences from two very different sources: from Mozart’s Serenade No 10 for thirteen instruments (Gran Partita) she’s taken the number and type of instruments; from the Miles Davis and Gil Evans album ‘Quiet Nights’ the percussion and the trumpet.

The ’Adagio’ from the Gran Partita was famously singled out by Peter Schaeffer’s Salieri in ‘Amadeus’ as the music which convinced him of his young rival’s genius.  Andrea Tarrodi says she wants to recapture “the long singable melody lines against the simple pulse”, and the work begins with the pulse being set by repeated notes on the wind instruments.  From the original scoring she retains pairs of oboes, clarinets and bassoons and replaces basset horns with flutes; there are two horns instead of the original four; and in homage to the Miles Davis source, two trumpets, with Louise Lewis Goodwin on percussion instead of the usual double-bass.  From these repeated notes, backed by soft drumstick on cymbal, a melody emerges on oboes, soon picked up by horns and trumpets.  Throughout the work, the players move seamlessly from providing the background pulse to taking their turn in delivering part of the melodic line.

There are no breaks between sections, more gradual changes in emphasis.  The repeated note pulses become trills accompanied by a drum.  Marta Gómez picks up her piccolo, Alison Green her contrabassoon, William Stafford his lower-toned E-flat Clarinet, and Katherine Bryer her cor anglais to add to the texture of the sounds.  The trumpeters, Peter Franks and  Simon Bird, mute their trumpets from time to time. Then the focus falls on the xylophone, in a heady climax culminating in a slower fanfare for trumpets and drum before the repeated notes and trills and the muffled cymbal bring the work gently to a close. Gordon Bragg, the SCO’s Sub-Principal Violin, is the expert conductor of this intricate score.

Andrea Tarrodi is synaesthetic and sees musical sounds as colour.  While there are no movement breaks in the work, she tells us how in her mind the colours change with the music: “A dark blue/purple tone gradually turns into an almost white light. The xylophone enters with splashes of bright red paint that eventually, with the rest of the ensemble, almost explode in fireworks of colour;  finally, the music dies out in a yellow-white hazy shimmer.”  A number of composers have had synaesthesia, and, more recently, Scottish double-bass player, Karen Matheson has used her synaesthetic response to music to create paintings, for SCO Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld’s ‘The Origins of Colour’ and for evocative programme covers for the 2023-2024 Dunedin Consort season. 

The film’s lighting changes colour throughout the work, though without replicating fully those in the composer’s notes, perhaps wisely leaving the musicians to create the fireworks.  With contemporary music, I find it useful to see as well as hear the orchestra, and the nicely judged camera angles – there are five camera personnel named in the credits – perfectly complement this richly layered work.

Watch the work and read David Kettle’s programme notes at: TARRODI Serenade in Seven Colours | Scottish Chamber Orchestra