Jonathan Dove's Portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi
Post categories: Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 3
| 17:25 UK Time, Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Aung San Suu Kyi meets Jonathan Dove (l)
This afternoon Barry Wordsworth took the stand at Cadogan Hall to conduct the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Concert Orchestra in a live broadcast of Portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Burmese opposition politician. On Radio 3's highly successful Portrait Day in May this year, listeners were asked to suggest an individual for Jonathan to take as the subject of a portrait in music.
In his opening remarks to presenter Louise Fryer, Jonathan explained that Aung San and the details of her life were so well known that there was a risk in trying to portray a life of events, many of them cataclysmic, and so his approach was to compose ‘around’ aspects of her character – and there wouldn’t be any pastiche of Eastern music, although we might hear some ‘modes’.
The piece makes considerable use of the strings, which opened the work with an extended passage of Mahlerian calm and serenity – the beauty of Burmese countryside was evoked, along with images of Aung San’s stoic calm through endless years of house arrest. We know that this was no idyll, as Aung San remained separated from her husband in the UK, even to his death; a reminder of the egregious cruelty of this comes with the shock interruption of chilling machine-gun raps in the percussion and blaring military tropes from the brass. The final section of the work is a fast workout with accelerating Sibelian busyness in the orchestra with beautiful woodwind solos atop – this struck me as representing the frenzy of renewed political activity and positive energy which has flowed from Aung San’s release from captivity. The work ends suddenly – Aung San’s work is far from complete, and the story is by no means over.
If I’m right about the Sibelian flavour of Jonathan’s work, he could not have known that the Concert Orchestra would pair it with Vaughan Williams’s 5th Symphony, which RVW dedicated ‘To Jean Sibelius, without permission.’ ÌýIn fact, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Symphony Orchestra’s legendary conductor Sir Adrian Boult (whom I heard conduct the 5th at a Prom concert in 1975, in one of his last public Ìýappearances) subsequently secured permission. Sibelius wrote: ‘I heard Dr. Ralph Vaughan Williams' new Symphony in Stockholm under the excellent leadership of Malcolm Sargent...This Symphony is a marvellous work...the dedication made me feel proud and grateful...I wonder if Dr. Williams has any idea of the pleasure he has given me?’
Certainly, I felt the spirit of Sibelius’s poignant, limpid Swan of Tuonela hovering over both works this afternoon. VW’s 5th is one of those symphonies which ends quietly, and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Concert Orchestra did the work full justice before a packed Cadogan Hall, not least in the closing bars of the third movement, Romanza, which is one of the most beautiful pieces of lyric orchestral writing in the entire canon.
Comment number 1.
At 5th Dec 2012, augustusIV wrote:Please stop calling her Aung San. That's her father, not her. Burmese names do not work like Western ones. Worse, it was a very un-Burmese quirk of her father to give his children his own name first. She can be Suu (named after her grandmother) or Suu Kyi (mother too). Thanks.
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Comment number 2.
At 7th Dec 2012, Abdul Basir Saber wrote:The deafening silence of Aung San Suu Kyi over the plight of the Rohingyans is shocking us all. As a champion of democracy and acclaimed human rights activist is silent over a hidden genocide in her own country. People are denied the right to exist in their own country in their own birthplace in Aung San Suu Kyis homeland and she does not want to even pay a lip service to it.
What was more shocking was when in a response to a question over her silence, she replied she wanted to get to the root causes of the conflict. She was referring to the clashes between Buddhists and Rohingyans that has led to the ongoing genocide. She absolutely ignored the plight of the Rohingyans over the decades that the government of Burma and the Buddhists do not accept and even tolerate the Rohingyans as citizens despite the fact that they are indigenous people of the land, they are born there and have lived there.
Why Aung San Suu Kyi? Why have you disappointed the humanity and made them a pessimists in the work of all those who claim to work for human rights. You have to speak up for the rights of your own country men who happen to believe in God and worship Him in a different way than the majority. Speak about the plight of the Rohingyans and stop the genocide. You owe it to us all. We have supported your cause for decades. Position and politics are not worth it.
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