Through the Lens: Grisey - Quatre Chants

Queen Elizabeth Hall fell into a rare and extraordinary stillness on Friday evening as the London Sinfonietta returned to one of the most profound works in its history: Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil. Commissioned by the ensemble and premiered shortly after the composer’s untimely death, the piece remains a defining milestone — a meditation on mortality, transformation, and the fragile edge between sound and silence.

The evening traced a journey through transformation: from the volatile luminosity of Cassandra Miller’s for mira to the spectral stillness of Rebecca Saunders’ stirrings still ii, and the wry, breath-driven ritual of John White’s Drinking and Hooting Machine.

But it was Grisey’s final work that transformed the room into something close to sacred. Under Jack Sheen’s poised direction and through Nina Guo’s luminous and exquisitely controlled performance, the four movements unfolded like shifting strata of civilisation. For over an hour the audience barely breathed — an hour of total concentration broken only by an eruption of applause as the final notes faded, a release equal to the intensity of what had been shared.

An evening of deep listening, transformation, and rare collective focus, this performance reaffirmed the London Sinfonietta’s enduring commitment to creating space for bold, boundary-shifting work.

c Sian O’Connor

Published: 4 Dec 2025