Britten Sinfonia / Gourlay review – Turnage and Clayton sing out for refugees

Milton Court, London
Poems on displacement by Benjamin Zephaniah, Brian Bilston, Dickinson and Auden drive a weighty new song cycle by Mark-Anthony Turnage, delivered masterfully by Allan Clayton

Refugee, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s song cycle for tenor and chamber orchestra, received its first performance at the Enescu festival in Bucharest with Allan Clayton and the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Andrew Gourlay. The following night they brought it to London, as the centrepiece of a programme devised by Turnage himself, which surrounded his new work with music by three composers whom he admires: Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten and Oliver Knussen.