Space music and flute solo

“Infinity, movement, speed, light… these words guided me as I composed.”

This is what the French composer Camille Pépin, born in 1990 and widely appreciated for her imaginative and seductive soundscapes, not entirely different from those you can find American film music á la John Williams – Star Wars, you know.

And the space reference is in order. The evening’s work is named after Laniakea, a super cluster of galaxies discovered by physicist Hélène Courtois in 2014. In this unimaginable collection, all matter moves at an insane speed towards a common point. Something that in the last section of the work takes the form of an ecstatic cosmic dance in sparkling stardust.

Laniakea has also been inspired by the evening’s second title number, Joseph Haydn’s (1732–1809) penultimate symphony, the hundredth in order – created during one of his happy periods in London. Both works begin with a suggestive hump swirl.

The evening’s other contemporary composer is Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955), with his ceremonial flute concerto. Here he has the flutist personify a shaman who invokes nature and the entire universe in the form of the orchestra. The sound of his breathing becomes a wind that awakens the spirits.