Bridging worlds: premiere of Eleanor Alberga’s Symphony No. 2 by Academy of St Martin in the Fields alongside music by Grazyna Bacewicz, Florence Price, Carolyn Shaw

Bridging Worlds: Grazyna Bacewicz, Florence Price, Carolyn Shaw, Eleanor Alberga; Elena Urioste, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Tomo Keller; Church of St Martin in the Fields
Reviewed 9 April 2026

The premiere of Eleanor Alberga’s vividly inventive second symphony alongside works by three other women composers spanning two continents and two centuries in compelling performances 

Back in 2020, a wind ensemble from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields gave the first performance since its premiere in 1993 of Eleanor Alberga’s Nightscape, then in Autumn 2021 the Academy launched The Beacon Project, a digital offering of educational resources and performance films that shine a light on three beacons of contemporary music: Eleanor Alberga, Sally Beamish, and Errollyn Wallen, with the first film to be issued being Alberga’s Nightscape. In 2022, I chatted to Eleanor Alberga about Nightscape and also about her first symphony, which she had just completed [see my interview].

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields were so taken with Alberga’s music that the idea of a commission developed and finally, last night (9 April 2026), the Academy of St Martin in the Fields directed from the violin by Tomo Keller premiered Eleanor Alberga’s Symphony No. 2 at the Church of St Martin in the Fields as part of a concert entitled Bridging Worlds which featured Grazyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra, Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (with soloist Elena Urioste) and Carolyn Shaw‘s Entr’acte.

It was a fascinating programme of 20th and 21st century music by women composers moving between Europe and America. The first half focused on the mid-Century period as Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 dates from 1939 whilst Bacewicz’s piece dates from 1948. Then in the second half we had Shaw’s 2011 work and Alberga’s immediately contemporary one.

We began with Bacewicz’s Concerto for Orchestra, one of her best-known works. It is written in her vigorous, neoclassical style with harmonies that are spiky but which stayed just on the right side of the Soviet authorities in Poland at the time. The opening movement was vigorous and strenuous, the sound vivid and very present. Whilst the music did ease off and folk-like material appeared, the piece was constantly changing and restless with the players performing with both precision and amazing vigour. The second movement, Andante, was lyrical yet rather expressionist, developing into richly expressive textures. For all the spiky elements to the harmony, there was something richly romantic about the mood. The finale was all impulsive vigour and infectious rhythm, played with a great intensity of manner. Thought the music pushed onward, the players brought a sense of joy to it, with a vital and uplifting end.

Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 is one of the scores that was found in a cache of manuscripts discovered in 2009 her former home, one of a number of pieces by her that would have been lost otherwise. Written in 1939 at the apex of her career, the work remained unperformed during her lifetime.

It is a big romantic work where Price’s music material seems to weave in motifs that are inspired by African-American music yet never quite quote. The opening featured a restless orchestral introduction with intriguing harmonies that led to a rhapsodic violin statement where there was almost a moment of Mendelssohn. The violin’s dialogue with the orchestra also hinted at RVW’s lark. The movement’s rhapsodic drama was punctuated by more lyrical moments and plenty of bravura, cadenza-like writing. The ending was a short, vigorous moto perpetuo. For all the romanticism of the work, it was certainly a very full-on violin part, played with engaging warmth and real personality by Elena Urioste. The second movement was lyrical and romantic, the violin’s singing melody often in dialogue with the orchestra. Price created some quite rich, busy orchestral textures over which Urioste’s violin soared. The finale moved between a vigorous orchestral contribution and rhapsodic violin writing. The music was constantly moving, leading to a vigorous, upbeat ending.

After the interval was Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte. Written in 2011 for string quartet, Shaw arranged it for string orchestra in 2014. The inspiration was the transition from the minuet to the trio in Haydn’s String quartet Op. 77 no. 2 and the work is a seemingly restless exploration of transitions from one musical texture to another. The memorable opening featured short motifs with significant use of the space between. There was a sense of constant motion, the music played with great intensity as textures moved through vivid pizzicato, urgent string crossing and a dazzling array of others before returning to the opening material, yet this was not the end and the work evaporated in cello arpeggios. The result is a dazzling display, particularly when played by a full body of strings.

Eleanor Alberga’s Symphony No. 2 deliberately uses Haydnesque forces of strings with two oboes and two horns. Much of the writing felt quite string dominated and though there were lots of solo opportunities for the oboe, her use of the wind was often more for colour. Because of the limited forces, she talked about writing divisi for the strings to bring added richness and commented that she hoped that the work was “still something Haydn might recognise a bit”.

The long first movement began with a sense of anxiety and anticipation with lyrical oboe roulades echoed by the strings. And engaging rhythmic texture began a sense of urgent, onward motion with the oboe wafting over the strings. The strenuous sometimes neoclassical texture rather reminded me of the Bacewicz and the two works made an apt pairing. The movement featured moments when things wound down, time was suspended and often the harmonies grew rich and sonorous, but energy always returned with vivid engaging rhythms. At the end, after a final pause point the quiet scurrying of the strings moved ever upwards into the violins in what Alberga described as the work’s tiny scherzo.

The slow movement kept those high violins, weaving in an around each other, then joined by the other instruments into some gorgeous textures. An oboe melody over throbbing strings provided material for the whole orchestra, but eventually the music unwound the richness evaporating into transparency and eerie oboe writing, before the richly sonorous ending. The vigorous finale began strong and direct, its busy rhythms played with vivid intensity. Constantly changing yet always moving onwards and ending with vivid energy.

Alberga’s Symphony No. 2 is a vivid and inventive piece, full of engaging rhythms and vigorous textures. The performance from the conductor-less Academy was terrific and throughout the music had a great sense of presence as well as commitment.