News

Martin Suckling's run of success continued in October with the world premiere of storm, rose, tiger by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Robin Ticciati. Bright and shimmering, this exceptional work showed off the orchestra’s lightness and deftness of touch, and combined old forms with new sound colours. Once again the critics were enthralled by Martin’s music.

'Hebridean psalm singing and chaos theory, Jorge Luis Borges and the harmonic overtone series. Unlikely bedfellows, but Martin Suckling fuses these influences and more into his engrossing, haunting and self-assured storm, rose, tiger. The Glasgow-born composer has been earmarked as an emerging talent; this latest work, written for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, confirms the distinctness of his voice. It couples fierce intellect with the musical sensibility of a fine violinist, and offers a generous hand to listeners by keeping earthy hooks at the core of its clever tricks.'

 

'Martin Suckling's storm, rose, tiger, which takes its title from Jorge Luis Borges's short story The Circular Ruins. Suckling seizes on Borges's allegory of the creative process - a wizard dreaming of creating another human being - and translates it into abstract musical terms. There's a palpable sense of exploration throughout this delicate score, whose intricate web of textures come and go like fleeting thoughts, yet are ingeniously threaded together with rich lyrical seams, some of them very British in a Brittenesque way.'

 

'Martin Suckling is a young composer from Glasgow whose star is resolutely in the ascendant...

...striking, innovative and affecting sound world.'

 

'For all the bewildering complexities of Martin Suckling’s new work, entitled storm, rose, tiger, Ticciati and the SCO delivered the brilliantly-orchestrated piece with the lucidity required to make its individual sections clear: from its breathtaking start, opening one window allowing the light to stream in, and a second, permitting a creeping darkness to filter into the music, to passages of great animation and sections of relative calm and stillness.'

 

'...a distinctive voice that we’re likely to hear a good deal more of.'