Oscar Bettison: On the slow weather of dreams on tour
Asko |Schönberg gives the world premiere of Oscar Bettison’s new work for voices and ensemble at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht on 4 September. Composed as a companion piece to Louis Andriessen’s iconic De Staat, Bettison’s On the slow weather of dreams is then toured including performances at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam and at the Musica festival in Strasbourg.
As the culmination of Oscar Bettison’s residency with the Asko |Schönberg ensemble, his new 45-minute work for voices and ensemble is premiered at the opening concert of the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht on 4 September. Asko |Schönberg players are joined in On the slow weather of dreams by Ensemble Klang at the Tivoli Vredenburg venue, conducted by Clark Rundell. The year-long residency in the Netherlands, where Bettison spent many formative years studying with Louis Andriessen and Martijn Padding, has seen the British-born, US-based composer working with Asko |Schönberg in Amsterdam and returning to The Hague Conservatory for composition masterclasses, lectures and a research residency working with students, musicians, creators and technicians.
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Bettison’s On the slow weather of dreams was composed as a mirror composition to De Staat by his teacher Louis Andriessen, utilising the same overall scoring but providing very different perspectives on the distinctive instrumentation. Following the Utrecht concert, the programme with both works is toured around the Netherlands, including a performance at the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in Amsterdam on 12 September, and travels to the Musica festival in Strasbourg, where the Bettison receives its French premiere at the Maillon on 20 September, followed by a radio broadcast on France Musique.
In his programme note, Bettison describes how, “When I was a child, I used to have recurring dreams that were animated versions of art works I had seen.” His new 45-minute work was prompted by a similar experience: “I had a recurring dream in the style of Remedios Varos, from which, two images remained lodged in my mind: the first of a boat making a slow journey across the night sky, and the second a cabinet of curiosities, a collection of strange, surrealistic, and dreamlike things.”
“Usually, through the course of my writing process, initial thoughts and images like these make way to others, but that was not the case here. So, I found myself writing verses about boats traversing the night sky, as well as assembling texts concerning the idea of surreal collections and lists. In the end, I settled on a text sequence from Gianbattista Marino’s L’Adone and added two other texts, an eighthundred-year-old tanka about nightfall written by a former Japanese Empress, Eifuku Mon’in, and a poem by the seventeenth Spanish poet Luis de Góngora about the passing of time.”
“On the slow weather of dreams is written for the same scoring as Andriessen’s De Staat. From the outset, I knew that I wanted my piece to be very different from De Staat. This was in part due to my familiarity with that iconic piece, partially because I want my piece to stand on its own, but also because I remembered a comment that Andriessen once made to me: ‘You should make the orchestra sound like it has never sounded before!’ ... I decided to focus on instruments that have lesser roles in De Staat. In my piece, in addition of prominent parts for voices and violas, there is a core group of harps, pianos, and detuned electric guitars that I think of as a kind of chorus. This group plays lyre-like strummed chords that punctuate the span of the piece.”
Oscar Bettison has remained close to the Netherlands new music scene over recent decades for a series of commissioned works, including close collaborations with Ensemble Klang for O Death (2005-07) and Presence of Absence (2016) and with Asko |Schönberg for his first opera The Light of Lesser Days (2021). Recent scores by Bettison include Remaking a Forest (2019) for the Oregon Symphony, La Arqueología del Neón (2021) for the TALEA Ensemble and I Am a Garden Adorned (2023) for loadbang.
Oscar Bettison
On the slow weather of dreams (2024)
for 4 women's voices and large ensemble
Asko |Schönberg / Ensemble Klang / Clark Rundell
4 September (world premiere)
Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht
Gaudeamus Festival
12 September
Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam
20 September (French premiere)
Maillon, Strasbourg
Musica festival
13 November
Theater aan de Parade, Den Bosch
November Music
24 November
Amare, Den Haag
25 November
De Oosterpoort, Groningen
Sounds of Music
> Further information on Work: On the slow weather of dreams
Photo: Kyle Dorosz
