Anna Clyne’s music blurred the line between seduction and unease, carried by magnetic performance and richly textured orchestral playing
Anna Clyne’s music has a fascinating habit of seducing the listener before quietly unsettling them. That duality sat at the centre of Sirens and Serenades at St Martin-in-the-Fields, an evening that explored not simply beauty in sound, but beauty carrying an undercurrent of danger. Across the programme, lyricism never felt entirely safe. Even at its most luminous, there was tension humming underneath, as though the music itself might suddenly shift shape. It made for a concert that felt emotionally immersive rather than merely elegant.
Clyne’s compositional voice thrives on contrast. Lines bloom into moments of warmth before darkening unexpectedly. The idea of the “siren” echoed throughout the evening not just as mythology, but as musical language for attraction tangled with threat, seduction edged with instability. There were passages where the strings created an almost cinematic glow, only for rhythmic surges to fracture the atmosphere moments later. But nothing felt abrupt for the sake of modernism. Clyne understands how to guide an audience through complexity without losing emotional immediacy, and that accessibility is part of what makes her work so compelling live.
The London Mozart Players handled these shifts with impressive fluidity. Under Jonathan Bloxham’s direction, the ensemble captured both the clarity and volatility within the programme. The playing had precision, but never at the expense of atmosphere. Strings moved from velvet softness to something far more urgent with remarkable control. Particularly striking was the orchestra’s ability to sustain momentum during quieter passages. Even moments of stillness felt charged with anticipation.
The programme’s inclusion of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 1 added an intriguing counterbalance to the contemporary works surrounding it. Written when the composer was still a teenager, the symphony already carries flashes of the confidence and dramatic instinct that would later define his music. Bloxham wisely resisted treating the piece as merely youthful or decorative. Instead, the orchestra leaned into its contrasts and its moments of almost reckless energy sitting beside passages of surprising delicacy and. The symphony felt alive rather than museum-like, reminding the audience just how bold Mendelssohn’s writing must have sounded at the time.
The evening’s soloists brought another layer of emotional depth entirely. Tenor Laurance Kilsby delivered a performance of extraordinary richness and intelligence, finding a balance between lyrical beauty and dramatic weight that felt genuinely transporting. His voice carried warmth and brightness, yet there was also an earthy depth beneath the surface that stopped the performance from becoming overly polished. What impressed most was his ability to sustain long melodic lines while still remaining textually vivid. Every phrase seemed carefully shaped without ever sounding calculated.
There was also something hypnotic about the way Kilsby approached the darker material. The programme repeatedly played with the idea that beauty can disarm as much as comfort, and his performance embodied that tension perfectly. Moments that might traditionally feel mournful instead became strangely seductive, drawing the audience deeper into the emotional atmosphere of the work.
Ben Goldscheider’s performance also carried an almost magnetic quality throughout the evening, drawing the audience into Anna Clyne’s eerie and seductive sound world with remarkable control and sensitivity. His horn playing moved effortlessly between velvet warmth and piercing intensity, capturing the sense of beauty and danger at the heart of Sirens while making the instrument feel unexpectedly vocal, intimate and alive.
Sirens and Serenades ultimately felt less like a concert and more like being pulled into a beautifully constructed emotional tide. It was luminous on the surface, but with darker currents always moving underneath.