Review: BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA WITH IAN McEWAN, Barbican Hall

In this special and one-off event led by the BBC Proms, author of Atonement and one of the finest writers of his generation, Ian McEwan collaborated with the BBC symphony Orchestra and read extracts from his own works with music curated around his readings and a special guest appearance from jazz singer Emma Smith.

We are taken on a journey through fiction and music where McEwan combines freedom and pleasure and an imagined world drifting through our senses by sound. He explores his most prolific work and touches on universal truths about relationships, society and the infinite complexity of the human condition.

We began with "Overture" written by one of the first female polish composers Grazyna Bacewicz during the war in 1943; it is a musical message of hope and exhilarating way to start the Orchestra's evening off as we watched the strings striking in unison. Up and coming Boston Conductor, Adam Hickox's high energy lead us through this 90-minute show.

McEwan humbly stood at the front of the Orchestra and started to read a brief introduction and then his first extract from Enduring Love an altruistic tale where a man comes to his deadly fate due to a ballooning accident. McEwan's recurring visual language brought it to life and was matched by the music from Estonian Composer; Arvo Pärt: "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten". A spiritually significant short and chant likepiece which begins and ends in silence creating an eerily haunting tone of death and viscerally makes this extract that much more painful. We know then we are diving right into the deep end.

Starting with such prowess; each extract from then on got more and more compelling; all displaying some sort of poignancy. A passage from his book Solar combines themes off greed and the climate crisis; where a tale of a 35-pound overweight man consistently resists the present with distractions from food and drink. His words capture the distinction between reality and imagination and I think to myself this is just one victim of the overconsumption and gluttony in our times. This is comedically combined by "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky which managed to make the unfunny story vaguely amusing.

A guest appearance from the jazz singer; Emma Smith lifts the night to another dimension and bounded us into a late-night New York jazz bar. Her harmonious and deep dulcet sound of "Round Midnight" by Thelonious Monk leaves a bitter aftertaste as we heard from his book 'Lessons.' It is the story of a man who gets sexually groomed by his teacher for the majority of his life.

The overlapping of history and fiction when reading passages from Atonement were matched with Phillip Glass and another extract from the book Lessons takes on Angela Morley Final Struggle and Triumph from Watership Down which is real tear-jerker, amongst many more.

It is certain that McEwan's writing is not for the faint hearted. Vulnerably telling the personal account of his son Greg's abduction from a supermarket, which we learn later is the inspiration for Child in Time. We are then left with the Beethoven "Fourth movement of Symphony No 1" which identifies with notions of struggle, revolution and the sublime. For such a catastrophic and unusual situation; this choice of music seemed an unmatched way to end the evening.

McEwan's undeniably a serious writer and touches on darkness. The evening proved he is a sensation and his writing is only made more succulent with his choice of beautiful and profound music. McEwan's richly detailed and descriptive writing style fully immersed and enveloped us into an astonishing evening; I just can't wait to delve into one of his books.

The event is to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday 14 May with an edited version on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 8 April.

Photo Credit: BBC/ Mark Allen

To post a comment, you must register and login.