American-born conductor and composer, Peter Ash, has always embraced ambitious classical music projects. With the Odyssey Festival Orchestra, an orchestra he founded, he has built up a huge following, presenting classical music in new, exciting ways. Last year, he packed out the Cadogan Hall with Astonish Me – Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

Karine Hetherington caught up with Peter, this time to talk about Every Tree Speaks to me which will be performed at the Cadogan on the 11th January.

I loved your Ballets Russes project last year with its beautiful ballet repertoire and fascinating readings – tell me now about your latest project Every Tree Speaks to me. How did it come about?

For this project, the initial idea of a concert related to sustainability came from one of our young players. We actively look to involve them in artistic decision making. From this, we evolved a programme exploring three different composers’ responses to nature. One early romantic, one middle romantic, and one whose musical language was more modern. 

Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony had to be in the programme. It is one of the truly great symphonies and a personal favourite of mine. Beethoven used to compose as he walked in the countryside.  “In the countryside,” he wrote, “every tree seems to speak to me. Tell me, who can ever give complete expression to the ecstasy of the woods?” 

That’s where we got the concert’s title. However instead of presenting the Pastoral at the end of a concert we thought we would put it first and see where other composers went from there.  

After the interval, we will perform ‘Forest Murmurs’ from Wagner’s opera Siegfried followed by a wonderful 22 minute suite Janáček’s masterpiece, The Cunning Little Vixen. 

Wagner’s Ring cycle is built on a very modern idea of sustainability:  the notion that the Earth has been violated by the extraction of gold from the Rhine. For Wagner, Nature represented something pure and unsullied. The Forest Murmurs from Siegfried evoke this magically. 

These are serious pieces of music – what can be their appeal to younger audiences or people with little knowledge of classical music?

Our aim is to create programmes that will appeal both to younger, less experienced listeners, who may be unused to concentrating on sound alone for 40 minutes,  by giving them a context of words and images that provide a lens through which to appreciate what is being evoked in sound. The poetry of John Clare is direct, simple and resonates perfectly with Beethoven’s Pastoral. Each of the symphony’s first three movements will be introduced with a short John Clare poem read by the wonderful Roger McGough, a fantastic advocate of poetry to a general audience. 

The programmes you produce for each project are works of art with beautiful visuals and lots of readable, interesting background notes on the composers’ works. Who designs them? 

I have had the privilege to work for over 30 years with my dear friend, the writer and director Donald Sturrock. He takes particular delight in devising the philosophical journey for the evening, a key part of which is the physical programme. 

The programme is very much a key part of what we do, as it provides a more serious cultural context to the narrated script as well as giving the opportunity to show a visual analogue to what is happening on stage.  The programmes are free, in colour and there are no adverts, only information and images. 

Many people take them home and read them at their leisure after the concert and we have received quite a few emails from audience members several days after a show saying how they are still enjoying reading them. 

I was struck by the amazing standard of your musicians with the Ballets Russes last year. How much time do you have with them to prepare a project?

Odyssey rehearses for approximately 30 hours over three weekends prior to the concert day. Because the members are a unique combination of vocational music students from all over the country (both at university and music college) and talented amateur players between 18 and 30, the rehearsals and concerts are scheduled to minimise clashes with school/conservatory/work commitments.  Every project is meticulously planned. But generally, we have a full orchestra session after which we rehearse in smaller groups, finally coming together at the end of the rehearsal period. 

What other personal projects are you working on? 

I am currently making some revisions to my opera ‘The Golden Ticket’ which is being performed again next year in the United States. I also have plans for a couple of other large-scale dramatic works. I love ambitious projects.

Do you have a dream project, even a slightly crazy musical project you would like to perform one day?

Odyssey is a small organisation, but one with big ideas, However sadly it’s always a bit of a struggle to fund each concert, so we’re not able to do some of the really ambitious things I would love to explore. I’d like the orchestra to play with a film, for example – maybe look at Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, with music by Prokofiev. Or indeed do a programme that brought art onto the stage in the form of projections, rather than merely in the programme. It would be wonderful to do an opera one day too…

 I’d also love to find the support and a beautiful venue for Odyssey Festival Orchestra to have its own summer festival, preferably somewhere warm, where the players could relax and connect with the music without having to deal with London Transport!

EVERY TREE SPEAKS TO ME!  ODYSSEY FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA are at the Cadogan Hall, January 11^th 2024 at 7.30pm.Narrators: Sir Thomas Allen Roger McGough. Conductor: Peter Ash .Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Pastoral Wagner: Forest Murmurs from Siegfried Janáček: Orchestra Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen.