Nigel Clarke’s `Outrageous Fortune’ Symphony No.2 for Trombone Soloist, Actor and Symphony Orchestra is to be rescheduled for August 2025. Originally the premiere was to have taken place in the summer of 2023, but was cancelled due to the Covid 19 pandemic.  The artists for 2025 will still be Trombonist Brett Baker and the Santa Fe Orchestra under the baton of Walter Hilgers. 

Clarke has reimagining the work for symphony orchestra, from his original symphonic wind orchestra version.

Here is a recent review from Music Web International of the Classical label Toccata Next Series CD entitled OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE [TOCN0003].

Outrageous Fortune (Symphony No 2) (2016) [24:00]
Brett Baker (trombone)
Natalie Grady (actor)
Middle Tennessee State University Wind Ensemble/Reed Thomas (conductor)
rec. 2016/18, Hinton Hall, Middle Tennessee State University, USA

[Other composers featured on the disc are Jan VAN DEN ROOST, Søren HYLDGAARD and James STEPHENSON]
The Toccata Next Series disc can be download from iTunes and heard on Spotify and other main streaming music services.

The concluding work on the new disc is Clarke’s follow-up Symphony No 2 – the composer characterises Outrageous Fortune as a ‘symphonic drama’ rather than as a concerto per se, and it makes use of the accomplished vocal acting skills of Natalie Grady as if to reinforce the point. Clarke identifies Berlioz’s Harold in Italy as a structural model, while, as the title suggests, the literary inspiration is Hamlet, who is portrayed simultaneously (and in turn) in the piece by the solo trombonist and the actor.

The work begins in the depths, with a ghostly hum, gongs, distorted bell and other atmospheric percussive sounds. It’s Elsinore again, and it’s tastefully filmic. It’s gloomily lit. Natalie Grady delivers Hamlet’s monologue “O that this too, too solid flesh would melt,” with true theatrical intensity, in a pleasing voice that’s musical in itself and flecked with the sound of Lancashire rather than RP. Brittenish chords emerge from the wind backcloth. Violent drum tattoos and ostinati blast and nag, while instrumental voices that by turn growl, bark, and sneer build to a tumult; yet at 4:40 the belated entry of solo trombone is assertive but stumbling. Clarke certainly knows how to draw the maximum in terms of garish colour and unusual texture from this ensemble. I caught some almost Sibelian figures in the flutes.

Clarke’s first section here is roughly half the length of the “To be or not to be” monologue that succeeds it. This ushers in the protagonist’s descent into madness, which is reflected in suitably manic and repetitive fanfares in the trombone. This extended section is basically a theatrical cadenza for trombone and actor. It is a striking and uncommonly ambitious device on the part of the composer and Baker’s playing is mesmerising. This clearly isn’t jolly band music; it’s neurotic and unsettling, and the exclusively blown or struck sounds take a bit of getting used to. Outrageous Fortune is a piece that needs a few listens to fully convince, (and to grasp the concept) especially as the pace is pretty slow for much of the first half. When the introspective turmoil and self-loathing takes over in the music, Clarke’s new symphony is thrilling and uncomfortably uncompromising. I couldn’t help re-visualising the extraordinarily energetic and bloody conclusion on stage at the conclusion of the Brett Dean operatic version of Hamlet I recently reviewed. The composer describes it as a ‘birth to death’ piece, and it moves for sure from brooding silence via inner conflict, violent psychosis and death to a more abruptly realised silence, a trajectory punctuated by creepy little distortions and dissonances towards its end. I loved it. Richard Hanlon

 

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Listen to `OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE’ Symphony No.2 for Trombone Soloist, Actor and Symphony Orchestra

Outrageous Fortune 
Symphony No.2 for Trombone Soloist, Actor and Symphony Orchestra [Part 1] – symphonic wind orchestra version

Outrageous Fortune
Symphony No.2 for Trombone Soloist, Actor and Symphony Orchestra [Part 2] – symphonic wind orchestra version

 

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Clarke designed his symphony `Outrageous Fortune’ as a melancholic drama, bleak and sardonic in style. It follows programmatically the story of William Shakespeare’s tragedy The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Hamlet) written between 1599 and 1601. The score is prefaced with the bard’s despairing words:

     “Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind”.

Hamlet is a tale of conspiracy, betrayal, suicide, revenge and murder, and also a ghost story. Both the trombone soloist and the actor take on the role of the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet. `Outrageous Fortune’ reflects the protagonist’s despair, his self-doubt and self-loathing and his advance towards mental breakdown. Hamlet’s character is full of bitterness, but alongside this he shows profound wisdom beyond his years.

The Danish castle of Elsinore is the setting for the drama. Clarke has set to music, two of Hamlet’s soliloquys:

  1. “O that this too too sullied flesh would melt”
  2. “To be, or not to be, – that is the question”.

Hamlet’s first monologue sees him longing to be dead and contemplating his own suicide although he is concerned that the Almighty has forbidden this option by sacred law. The cause of Hamlet’s malady is his distress that his mother has just remarried following the death of his father (the former King), less than two months ago. His mother’s suitor is his father’s own brother, Hamlet’s uncle! Hamlet rails against the rashness of his mother’s actions without apparent concern for his father’s death:

 “She married. O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”.

The second soliloquy “To be, or not to be, – that is the question” finds Hamlet near to mental breakdown, grappling with the choice between killing himself, or living on to avenge his father’s murder? To kill himself brings uncertainty as no one has ever returned from the afterlife – who knows what suffering awaits there?

     “But that the dread of something after death,
     The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
     No traveller returns – puzzles the will,
     And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
     Than fly to others that we know not of.
     Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”.

Hamlet’s release from his dilemma, comes in the final act after he has avenged his father’s death, with his subsequent murder.

Clarke selected various lines of dialogue from Shakespeare’s tragedy to help give the symphony structure and a sense of continuous and cohesive narrative throughout. These fifteen lines also serve as scene titles in the score, outlining the unfolding drama that is reflected in the music.

Solo soliloquies recited by the actor are found at the beginning and in the middle of the work. The trombone is the voice of Hamlet and represents both his inner thoughts and outward actions.  The trombone soloist is in an accompanying role during the actor’s rendition of `To be or not be’. This section is in effect a cadenza for both actor and trombone, with the trombone weaving in and out of Shakespeare’s immortal lines. The dialogues chosen from Shakespeare’s drama are highly descriptive, lending themselves particularly well to music-setting – for instance: `The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out’ or `The rest is silence’. `Outrageous Fortune’is a ‘birth to death’ piece – it grows from nothing, in this case a quiet and ominous atmosphere, to end in decay, despair and deathly silence.

`Outrageous Fortune’ scene-titles:

1. `O that this too too solid flesh would melt’
2. `Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’
3. `The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out’
4,.`Alas, poor ghost’
5. `Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder!’
6. `To be or not be’
7. `Get thee to a nunnery’
8. `The Mousetrap’
9. `What warlike noise is this’
10. `The King’s Jester’
11. `Revenge should have no bounds’
12. `Unbated and envenomed’
13. `Rapier and Danger’
14. `Now crack a noble heart’
15. `The rest is silence’

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Outrageous Fortune Text

Text 1. – “O that this too too solid flesh would melt”

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! ah, fie!, ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed: things rank and gross in nature
Process it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead – nay, not so much, not two –
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. O Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on. And yet within a month!
Let me not think on’t – Frailty, thy name is Woman.
A little month, or e’re those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears. Why, she, even she –
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer! married with mine uncle,
My father’s brother but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month!
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her galled eyes,
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, or I must hold my tongue!    

Text 2. – “To be, or not to be – that is the question” 

To be, or not to be – that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep –
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die: to sleep –
To sleep: perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns – puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn away
And lose the name of action.