Jonathan Harvey - Speakings

Speakings for large orchestra with electronics, by the late Jonathan Harvey, performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC for the 2008 BBC Proms, with Radio France and IRCAM, where Jonathan Harvey spent much time working on new ways of integrating electronics and live instruments. In this work, Harvey 'gives voice' to the orchestra, using a special programme he developed in Paris. Instrumental sounds are captured and transformed to create the characteristic components through which we identify speech and human utterance, which Harvey believed to be fundamental to life and which could transcend it through a 'pure language' toward which the work strives at its end.