[concert] Conquering the Antarctic (Cambridge Corn Exchange, 4.2.12)

City of London Sinfonia - Conquering the Antarctic

It's the centenary year of Robert Falcon Scott's death on the way back from the South Pole: this concert programme (with performances in Cardiff, Cheltenham and London still to come) commemorates his life and death.

The concert opens and closes with the music of Vaughan Williams -- first his score for Scott of the Antarctic, and finally the Antarctic Symphony, which builds on and expands the earlier work -- and excerpts from Scott's journals, read by Hugh Bonneville. There's also Seventy Degrees Below Zero, a new work for orchestra and tenor by Cecilia McDowall, who was present at the Corn Exchange last night and took a bow. (I engaged with this one differently to the Vaughan Williams: it's more challenging listening but blends Scott's words -- transformed and reordered by poet Sean Street -- beautifully with McDowall's orchestration.) And there was a slideshow of photos from the expedition, not always well-synchronised to the music: Oates and his ponies to the music of wide open spaces, penguins looking dapper ...

Scott's determination to die, if not live, a hero -- and his sharp disappointment at being 'beaten' by Amundsen -- still bothers me. But now I want to reread my favourite books about the Antarctic: Below the Convergence, Antarctic Navigation, The Birthday Boys, Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica, Ursula Le Guin's South.

When anef and I arrived at the Corn Exchange it was snowing lightly. When we emerged there were several inches of snow on the ground, and a miniature blizzard through which we battled back to base camp our homes. It was dead authentic, though I bet Scott didn't have to contend with young women in short skirts and sparkly stilettos negotiating icy pavements.