Work of the Week - Kenneth Hesketh: Graven Image

The culmination of Kenneth Hesketh's tenure as Composer in the House with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic comes on August 1 with the premiere of Graven Image at the BBC Proms. Principal conductor Vasily Petrenko leads the orchestra through this 15 minute work, a joint commission with the BBC, before taking it to Prague and the orchestra's home city, Liverpool.

Hesketh writes that as well as the idea of a marker or stele the work was inspired by ‘the medieval Memento Mori, a painting or sculpture which seeks to remind its owner
of the brevity of life (portraying, for example, a living head opposite a cadaver’s head or skull). There are many allegorical symbols connected with the Memento Mori; guttering candles, clocks, and bells being some of the most potent and all are markers of time. Images and memories of experience, some lingering, some fleeting, may have crept in to the musical fabric of the work, permeating cyclical structures based on resolution and opposites, rises and falls.’

_{Painting: Pieter Claesz, Vanitas Still Life (1630) oil on canvas 39,5 x 56 cm - Mauritshuis, The Hague

Photo Kenneth Hesketh: Pete Jones}