räsonanz – Munich 2019
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage is one of the most important British composers of the past three decades. His orchestral and operatic music, characterised by sharp contrasts, holds up a mirror to the realities of modern life – with its energy and vivid titles, but above all with its amalgamation of jazz elements into a contemporary classical idiom, it is widely appreciated by audiences. At the same time, his musical language is capable of expressing great tenderness and sadness.
Turnage, born in 1960, studied under Oliver Knussen and John Lambert, and later under Gunther Schuller. On the initiative of Hans Werner Henze, he wrote his first opera, Greek, for the 1988 Munich Biennale. Important works from the following period, such as Three Screaming Popes, Kai, Momentum and Drowned Out, were the result of a four-year period as Composer in Association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle (1989–93).
Forget the idea that inspiration will come to you like a flash of lightning. It’s much more about hard graft.
If you write something in the evening or at night, look back over it the next morning. I tend to be less self-critical at night; sometimes, I’ve looked back at things I wrote the night before, and realized they were no good at all.
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Three years later, the Ensemble Modern commissioned Blood on the Floor. Written for John Scofield, Peter Erskine and Martin Robertson, this work demonstrates Turnage’s ability to draw inspiration from the characteristic sound of certain artists with whom he usually works closely. Turnage’s major work of the late 1990s was his second full-length opera, The Silver Tassie, which premiered at English National Opera in February 2000. At the turn of the millennium, Turnage also became the first Associate Composer of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
In autumn 2002, Sir Simon Rattle conducted Blood on the Floor in one of his first concerts as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic commissioned Ceres, an “orchestral asteroid” to complement Gustav Holst’s The Planets (premiered in 2006).
The trumpet concerto From the Wreckage was written for the soloist Håkan Hardenberger, who performed it at the London Proms in 2005 after its premiere in Helsinki.
Routine is really important. However late you went to bed the night before, or however much you had to drink, get up at the same time each day and get on with it.
His collaboration with the London Philharmonic Orchestra during the 2004/05 season led to him becoming composer-in-residence with the orchestra between 2005 and 2010. A highlight of this period was Turnage’s first violin concerto, Mambo, Blues and Tarantella, written for Christian Tetzlaff and the LPO under Vladimir Jurowski and premiered in 2008 at London’s Southbank Centre.
From 2006 to 2010, Turnage was Mead Composer in Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for which he wrote From All Sides and Chicago Remains. He composed Scherzoid for the New York and London Philharmonic Orchestras, and his viola concerto On Opened Ground was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for Yuri Bashmet.
In 2009, Turnage wrote A Constant Obsession, a commission from London’s Wigmore Hall for the Nash Ensemble and Mark Padmore, and Five Views of a Mouth for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and flutist Dietmar Wiesner. Anna Nicole, Turnage’s third opera based on a libretto by Richard Thomas, premiered in the spring of 2011 at the Royal Opera in London.
In 2011/12, Turnage wrote the dance scores for UNDANCE for Sadler’s Wells and Trespass for the Royal Ballet Covent Garden. Recent solo concertos were written for cellist Paul Watkins, pianist Marc-André Hamelin and jazz percussionist Peter Erskine. Turnage’s most recent orchestral works include Frieze, premiered by Vasily Petrenko at the Proms, and Passchendaele, which commemorates the outbreak of World War II. Strapless premiered in 2016 at the Royal Ballet Covent Garden in a choreography by Christopher Wheeldon and is a co-production with the Bolshoi Ballet.
Turnage is a Research Fellow in Composition at the Royal College of Music. He was awarded the rank of CBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours.