BBCSSO/Volkov – review

During his time (2005-2008) as composer-in-association with the BBC Scottish Symphony, Jonathan Harvey composed a trilogy of works dealing with Vajrayana Buddhist concepts of purification for the orchestra and its then chief conductor Ilan Volkov . The three sections have been performed and recorded individually, but this is the first time, remarkably, the trilogy has actually been performed complete. It's a complex experience; at times baffling, at times astounding, but never less than engrossing. The trilogy is, above all, a statement of belief, and sound and structure are consequently inseparable from its underlying metaphysics. Its sections – Body Mandala, Speakings and … Towards a Pure Land – examine ideas of bodily, verbal and mental purification respectively. Body Mandala takes Tibetan ritual music as the starting point of a tremendous outpouring of energy and weight that gradually turns from dark physicality to transparent joy. Speakings uses electronics to replicate the erratic confusion of human speech until a huge, mantra-like monody eventually stills the babble. The Pure Land, meanwhile, represents the clear mind, free from the disturbances of samsara . Harvey's journey towards it is a kind of concerto grosso in which an independent string ensemble maintains a series of barely perceptible chords around which the rest of the orchestra shifts and swirls. I'm not convinced it all works. Speakings feels too long. And though it's integral to Harvey's structure that we should never return to the soundworld of Body Mandala, I found myself hankering for its viscerality once we had left it behind. It's a tour de force for the BBCSSO, though, and Volkov conducts the trilogy with a sense of commitment equalled only by Harvey's profound devotion to his subject.