A shift towards greater musical clarity evident in Stuart MacRae’s Violin Concerto (premiered at the 2001 Proms) continues in Interact, written for the London Sinfonietta and trumpeter John Wallace. Yet this shift in style is not simply a matter of more translucent textures – although there is a less profuse layering of ideas than in his earlier pieces, partly to highlight the soloists’ roles in these two concertante works. Just as significant, however, is an increasingly clear sign-posting of musical plot, and of the expressive complexities thus revealed by MacRae’s richly emotional, smartly structured music.
Interact also carries the Violin Concerto’s interplay between soloist, ensemble and other section leaders a stage further. In addition to the trumpet’s leading role, the brass players in Interact’s ensemble – trumpet, horn and trombone – are also prominent agents in the action, moving around the stage to take up soloing positions of their own. Such interactions are a clue to the work’s title. Although the name Interact was one of the last details to be added to the piece, choreographing the interactions between solo trumpet and different ensemble groups or soloists – and, more importantly, of the musical materials they ‘embody’ – was always a goal for MacRae in this piece. Consequently, his writing for the ensemble is almost as virtuosic as the solo trumpeter’s part, which was devised after discussions with Wallace, who advised MacRae to write for the ideal trumpet in his head.
There are two movements, each of about ten minutes’ duration. The first, Presto, is fast and frenetic, a kind of game (almost certainly a contact sport) played out by the soloist and other members of the ensemble. A series of stratagems, bouts and counteractions is suggested, and at the movement’s close, as the ensemble brass return to their chairs, there is a sense of a hard-won, but perhaps only provisional, accord. The second movement, on the surface, is a complete contrast, and much slower. The composer describes it as a measured sequence of friezes, each of which presents a slightly different background to the central idea threading through its different sections. That thread, in part, is melodic, and heard in the lyrical writing for the solo trumpet, whose harmon-muted lament leads the ensemble into Interact’s powerfully affecting apotheosis, before the music slips away into silence.
