''Twice Through the Heart'' is a musical work by the English composer
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 10 June 1960) is a British composer of classical music.
Biography
Turnage was born in Corringham, Essex. He began composing at age nine and at fourteen began studying a ...
, variously described as a dramatic ''
scena'',
[Twice Through the Heart]
Schott & Co. Retrieved 9 December 2009. as a
monodrama
A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.
In opera
In opera, a monodrama was originally a melodrama with one role such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ''Pygmalion'', which wa ...
,
[Philip Reed (ed.) (1997), Programme for ''From the House of the Dead'' and ''Twice Through the Heart'', London, English National Opera, unnumbered title page.] as a
song cycle
A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online''
The songs are either for solo voice ...
,
as a
chamber opera Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's ''Cardillac'' (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergoles ...
or even as a "dramatic song-cycle-cum-scena".
It is scored for
mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (; ; meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middle C ...
and 16 instrumentalists and sets an English-language
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
by the Scottish poet
Jackie Kay
Jacqueline Margaret Kay, (born 9 November 1961), is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works ''Other Lovers'' (1993), ''Trumpet'' (1998) and ''Red Dust Road'' (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Guardian Fictio ...
based on her script for a television programme about a woman jailed for killing her violent husband.
Originally intended to be a full-length
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
, ''Twice'' was composed between 1994 and 1996, undergoing substantial reworking before Turnage found a form with which he was satisfied. It was first performed in 1997 when it was put on both in the concert hall and in the opera house. The critical reception has been generally favourable, with several authors commenting positively about the instrumental writing and emotional impact of the work, though some critics see limitations in the libretto, find the mood of the work too unrelenting or note the great demands that the vocal writing provides for the soloist.
Background and composition
''Twice Through the Heart'' is based on a 1992 poetry documentary of the same name that Kay had written for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
television series ''Words on Film''. Kay was concerned by inequalities in how the legal system treats men and women who kill their spouses and, in particular, in how the law on
provocation
Provocation, provoke or provoked may refer to:
* Provocation (legal), a type of legal defense in court which claims the "victim" provoked the accused's actions
* Agent provocateur, a (generally political) group that tries to goad a desired res ...
in the United Kingdom was then interpreted, allowing a defence to murder only in the context of what happened immediately before a homicide and excluding the
battered woman defence
Battered woman syndrome (BWS) is a pattern of signs and symptoms displayed by a woman who has suffered persistent intimate partner violence: whether psychological, physical, or sexual, from her male partner. It is classified in the ICD-9 (code ) a ...
which considers the broader context which may have involved years of violent abuse.
[Jackie Kay, "Twice Through the Heart" in Philip Reed (ed.) (1997), Programme for ''From the House of the Dead'' and ''Twice Through the Heart'', London, English National Opera. Two pages in publication without page numbering.] She chose to base the poems on a specific true case, that of
Amelia Rossiter, a woman in her sixties who refused to give evidence in court about the years of violence from her husband that eventually led to her stabbing him twice through the heart with a kitchen knife.
[Laura Severin (2004), ''Poetry off the Page: Twentieth Century British Women Poets in Performance'', Aldershot, Ashgate, p. 93.] By the time Kay's programme was broadcast, Rossiter had been freed, her conviction reduced to manslaughter
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th cen ...
after her plea of provocation was accepted.
Turnage, who had previously composed one full-length opera, ''Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
'', worked on the musical version of ''Twice'' between 1994 and 1996. It was commissioned by the John S. Cohen Foundation. He had learnt of Kay's original work after he was shown a copy of the BBC video by poet and artistic director Maura Dooley
Maura Dooley (born 18 May 1957) is a British poet and writer. She has published five collections of poetry and edited several anthologies. She is the winner of the Eric Gregory Award in 1987 and the Cholmondeley Award in 2016, and was shortlis ...
. It was a difficult development with Turnage at one point abandoning the work in favour of other pieces. Composer and librettist had started out with the intention of developing a full-length opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
including both soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...
and baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...
narrators.[Nick Kimberley,]
Two from the Heart"
''The Independent'', Tuesday, 17 June 1997. Retrieved 11 December 2009. (The original television script had included poems for the judge as well as for the woman.)[ However, the creators felt that their attempts at redeveloping and expanding the original work "water ddown its impact" and they eventually cut everything apart from the woman's words.] Both text and setting also underwent repeated changes in detail. Kay changed some of the wording to make it easier to sing. Similarly, Turnage revised the music after trying it out with Sally Burgess
Sally Burgess FRCM (born 9 October 1953) is a South African-born British operatic lyric mezzo-soprano, opera director, and educator. She has been a Fellow and Professor of Vocal Studies at the Royal College of Music since 2004, as well as teachi ...
who was to give the first performance. He had become Composer in Association with English National Opera
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English ...
(ENO) in 1995 and was able to thoroughly workshop ''Twice'' and its companion piece with ENO's Contemporary Opera Studio before arriving at their respective final versions.
Description
''Twice Through the Heart'' lasts for approximately 30 minutes. It consists of nine musical numbers
In music, number refers to an individual song, dance, or instrumental piece which is part of a larger work of musical theatre, opera, or oratorio. It can also refer either to an individual song in a published collection or an individual song or d ...
arranged in three sections. It is narrated by a woman in the prison cell where she has been sent for the murder of her husband. To express the woman's feelings, Kay deliberately chose a voice that was unpoetic: "I wanted the voice to be so everyday, it would be banal." Turnage's music too includes similarly basic material, what critic Tom Service
Tom Service (born 8 March 1976) is a British writer, music journalist and television and radio presenter, who has written regularly for ''The Guardian'' since 1999 and presented on BBC Radio 3 since 2001. He is a regular presenter of The Proms f ...
describes as "simple hummable tunes", but these are transformed and distorted, a metaphor for how initial loving intimacy is destroyed and distorted by years of violence and abuse. Turnage's musical language is modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
but influenced by jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, an area of musical interest he shared with Kay.
The instrumental scoring is for flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
(doubling alto flute), oboe
The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range.
A ...
(doubling cor anglais
The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn in North America, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially an alto ...
), 2 clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
s (one doubling bass clarinet), horn
Horn most often refers to:
*Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound
** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments
*Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...
, trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
, trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...
, one percussionist
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...
, harp
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...
, piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
(doubling celeste
Celeste may refer to:
Geography
* Mount Celeste, unofficial name of a mountain on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
* Celeste, Texas, a rural city in North Texas
** Celeste High School, public high school located in the city of Celeste, ...
), violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
, 2 viola
The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...
s, 2 cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
s and double bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...
. The percussion consists of 8 crotales
Crotales (, ), sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly played by being struck ...
, vibraphone
The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...
, marimba
The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...
, suspended cymbal
Classical suspended cymbal
A suspended cymbal is any single cymbal played with a stick or beater rather than struck against another cymbal. Common abbreviations used are "sus. cym.," or "sus. cymb." (with or without the period).
Most drum kit ...
, 3 gong
A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs ...
s, tam-tam
A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs ...
, bass drum
The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. Th ...
, pedal bass drum, ratchet
Ratchet may refer to:
Devices
* Ratchet (device), a mechanical device that allows movement in only one direction
* Ratchet, metonomic name for a socket wrench incorporating a ratcheting device
* Ratchet (instrument), a music instrument and a ...
, claves
Claves (; ) are a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of short, wooden sticks about 20–25 centimeters (8–10 inches) long and about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in diameter. Although traditionally made of wood (typically rosewood, ebony o ...
and whip
A whip is a tool or weapon designed to strike humans or other animals to exert control through pain compliance or fear of pain. They can also be used without inflicting pain, for audiovisual cues, such as in equestrianism. They are generally e ...
.
The work
Part One
1. ''No Way Out'' — The woman tells of how her husband beat her and threatened to garotte her with a towel and of how she picked up a kitchen knife to defend herself.
2. ''Inside (part 1)'' — The woman is in jail thinking of how she failed to take her lawyer's advice to give evidence about her husband's violence, because she did not want to be disloyal.
3. ''Love'' — She remembers how she and her husband once loved each other and how things went wrong after their child was born.
Part Two
4. ''By the Sea'' — She thinks of how she felt trapped in their house by the sea because she could not talk of his violence.
5. ''Inside (part 2)'' — She thinks of her husband and of her "heart, broken like bones".
6. ''Four Walls'' — She is trapped within the four walls of her house, her husband turning down suggestions of holidays and writing instructions for her in notes.
Part Three
7. ''Interlude'' — Instrumental section.
8. ''Landslide'' — Her husband is buried in land, she in prison.
9. ''China Cup'' — She is locked in with only the decorated china cup which she has taken from home to prison.
Performance and recording history
''Twice Through the Heart'' was first performed on 13 June 1997 at the Snape Maltings
Snape Maltings is an arts complex on the banks of the River Alde at Snape, Suffolk, England. It is best known for its concert hall, which is one of the main sites of the annual Aldeburgh Festival.
The original purpose of the Maltings was the ma ...
Concert Hall during the 50th Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall.
History of the Aldeburgh Festival
Th ...
.[ Sally Burgess was accompanied by the ENO Contemporary Opera Studio conducted by ]Nicholas Kok
Nicholas is a male given name and a surname.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Churches celebrate Saint Nicholas every year on December 6, which is the name day for "Nicholas". In Greece, the name and its d ...
. The companion piece was the chamber opera Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's ''Cardillac'' (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergoles ...
''The Country of the Blind
"The Country of the Blind" is a short story by English writer H. G. Wells. It was first published in the April 1904 issue of ''The Strand Magazine'' and included in a 1911 collection of Wells's short stories, ''The Country of the Blind and Ot ...
'' which Turnage had composed relatively quickly in order to make up a full programme after ''Twice'' had turned out much shorter than originally intended. To Turnage's surprise, ENO decided to follow up the original four performances, split between Snape Maltings and the Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten.
The ...
, with a staging at its main home in the London Coliseum
The London Coliseum (also known as the Coliseum Theatre) is a theatre in St Martin's Lane, Westminster, built as one of London's largest and most luxurious "family" variety theatres. Opened on 24 December 1904 as the London Coliseum Theatre ...
. This production was premiered on 20 October 1997 with Susan Bickley
Susan Bickley is a British mezzo-soprano singer who performs in opera, Baroque and contemporary classical music.
Personal life and education
Susan Rochford Bickley was born into a Welsh family in Liverpool, England. Her father was a primary sch ...
as the soloist and with Kok again conducting.[Philip Reed (ed.) (1997), Programme for ''From the House of the Dead'' and ''Twice Through the Heart'', London, English National Opera, unnumbered page with cast list.] In this context it was a companion piece for ''From the House of the Dead
''From the House of the Dead'' () is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček. The libretto was translated and adapted by the composer from the 1862 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was the composer's last opera, premiered on 12 April 1930 at ...
'', an opera set in a Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
n prison camp.
''Twice'' had received its mainland European premiere a day earlier than the first Coliseum performance, when it was given by the State Opera in Gießen
Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...
, Germany. In 1998, ''Twice'' received its North American premiere in Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...
, Manitoba
Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
, Canada and was also given in the United States, (by the New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic, officially the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., globally known as New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, is a symphony orchestra based in New York City. It is ...
,) Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. In these last two countries composer Oliver Knussen
Stuart Oliver Knussen (12 June 1952 – 8 July 2018) was a British composer and conductor.
Early life
Oliver Knussen was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, Stuart Knussen, was principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra, and a ...
conducted. The work has continued to receive international performances, for example by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure ...
in 2009.[John von Rhein,]
Mark-Anthony Turnage's poignant ''Twice Through the Heart'' suggests why Chicago Symphony Orchestra's composer in residence will be missed"
''Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'', 26 November 2009. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
A commercial recording was made in 2007 with Sarah Connolly
Dame Sarah Patricia Connolly (born 13 June 1963) is an English mezzo-soprano. Although best known for her Baroque music, baroque and Classical period (music), classical roles, Connolly has a wide-ranging repertoire which has included works by ...
singing and Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop ( mɛər.ɪn ˈæːl.sɑːp born October 16, 1956) is an American conductor, the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate ...
conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony ...
. Some live performances have been recorded for broadcast, including one at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with the original performers, and the Winnipeg performance.
Reception
In reviewing the first performance for ''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', Nick Kimberley felt that the ''Twice Through the Heart'' "w rethe scars of a difficult birth" with Sally Burgess "strain ngto find specific expression in the sharp angles and steep slides Turnage provided" in a work that Kimberley considered less natural than its relatively quickly written companion piece. For this critic, the instrumental writing came over far more successfully than the vocal part with Kimberley praising the use of colour and finding the "draining" final climax particularly effective. Michael Kennedy, in contrast to Kimberley, found the ''scena'' "the more dramatic and musically more inventive" of the two works performed that night.
Bernard Holland
Bernard Holland (born 1933) is an American music critic. He served on the staff of ''The New York Times'' from 1981 until 2008 and held the post of chief music critic from 1995, contributing 4,575 articles to the newspaper. He then became the Nati ...
, of ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' heard both the Aldeburgh and New York premieres. He noted the influence both of Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
and, in the strings and percussion, of rock music and appreciated a musical language that makes modernism easier on the ears. However, he felt a degree of ambivalence about a composer he described as "theatrical... in both the good and bad senses of the word."
Geoff Brown, reviewing Marin Alsop and Sarah Connolly's recording in ''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', praised the directness of both Kay's and Turnage's writing and described ''Twice Through the Heart'' and its "awful clarity" as "among the best in Turnage's recent output". David Gutman suggested in ''Gramophone
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
'' that "if listeners feel uncomfortable with the mix of artful delivery and documentary realism, that may be part of the intended effect."[David Gutma]
"Turnage"
''Gramophone'', April 2008, p.91. Retrieved 27 December 2009. The critics of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was fo ...
'' were later to list this disc among the hundred best classical recordings.
John von Rhein of the ''Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' noted the trickiness of the solo part and criticised the "banality" of Kay's verse but reported that he "was held by the sensitive lyrical, rather Bergian vocal writing and often translucent scoring". "The woman's suppressed anger and fear rise to the surface through Turnage's music – poignant gritty yet always compassionate." Considering the same Chicago performance, freelance music critic Lawrence A. Johnson, was taken by the use of instrumental colour and also by Turnage's "whipcrack rhythmic vitality", but "If ''Twice through the Heart'' icjust misses being one of Turnage's top-drawer works, it's because of the somewhat unvaried air of doleful melancholy as well as the text's more pedestrian moments and repetition."[Lawrence A. Johnson,]
MusicNOW's British program offers spirited jazz and a tragic song cycle"
''Chicago Classical Review'', Monday, 23 November 2009. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
Not all critics have been hostile to Kay's poetry: reviewing a concert by the London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London.
The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert in 1968—givi ...
, Nicholas Williams refers to her "arresting text".[Nicholas Williams]
Classical review: London Sinfonietta, QEH: Farewells with violence"
''The Independent'', 25 May 1998. Retrieved 26 January 2010. Whether positive or negative, the music critics only assessed part of Kay's original work. In considering the original television version of ''Twice'', the literary critic Laura Severin, praised the contrasted voices and the use of repetition as an adaptation to a medium where listeners would be less attentive to the words than if they were attending a conventional poetry reading. She also saw Kay's portrayal of Rossiter as one that avoided both a conventional masculine representation of her as a ruthless murderer and an overly simplistic feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
one of her as a passive victim.
References
{{good article
English-language operas
1997 operas
Operas by Mark-Anthony Turnage
Operas
Song cycles by Mark-Anthony Turnage
Classical song cycles in English
Chamber operas
Monodrama