New York. She is also a member of Musicians for Human Rights, a worldwide network of musicians and people working in the field of music to promote a culture of human rights and social change.

Hélène Grimaud last appeared with the BSO in September 2004, performing Schumann ' s Piano Concerto, Yuri Temirkanov, conductor.

About the concert:

Within Her Arms

Anna Clyne

Born in London, England, March 9, 1980; now living in Brooklyn, New York

Last season, Marin Alsop introduced Baltimore Symphony Orchestra audiences to the music of the London-born composer Anna Clyne with her scintillating overture Masquerade and the world premiere of her Abstractions, inspired by five paintings in Baltimore collections. For this season’ s concerts, Maestra Alsop has chosen a very different Clyne work: her deeply moving elegy Within Her Arms, composed in 2009, soon after the death of the composer’ s mother.

From 2010 to 2015, Clyne served as the Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony. Its music director, Riccardo Muti describes her as“ an artist who writes from the heart, who defies categorization and who reaches across all barriers and boundaries.” In 2015, Clyne was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Anna Clyne draws her ideas from sources beyond the purely musical. She launches many compositions not by experimenting on the piano but instead by creating a collage painting for her studio wall, embodying visually what she wants her new piece to say sonically.“ My passion is collaboration,” she explains.“ Creating new works through a fluid artistic dialogue has consistently fueled my music from new perspectives and has maintained a fresh and creative environment.”

A concrete inspiration for Within Her Arms was a Baroque-style violin with a carved scroll in the shape of a gargoyle that Clyne saw in the window of a thrift shop in Oxford, England shortly after her mother’ s death in 2008. That violin, purchased for six pounds, generated a series of string pieces in which Clyne meditated on her loss. Written for 15 string players, Within Her Arms speaks eloquently and powerfully to anyone who has lost someone they love deeply.

Clyne prefaced the score with verse by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

“ Earth will keep you tight within her arms, dear one—

So that tomorrow you will be transformed into flowers—

This flower smiling quietly in this morning field—

This morning you will weep no more, dear one—

For we have gone through too deep a night.

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