Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.For this digital-only release, the composer Anna Clyne has invited friends and colleagues from 20 years of musical collaborations to join her. The recordings took place over a two-year period, sometimes with lapses of months at a time, so this has been a slow-burn project.The guest list is starry. New York-based chamber orchestra The Knights is the major presence, together with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolin-player Avi Avital and violinists Colin Jacobsen, joint artistic director of The Knights, and Pekka Kuusisto.All four of Clyne’s chosen works focus on string orchestra. This is territory familiar from Tchaikovsky and Dvořák, and Clyne’s Shorthand uses quotations from the “Kreutzer” violin sonatas of Beethoven and Janáček to similarly heartwarming, near-romantic effect. Two versions of Shorthand are included, both with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist, the “Redux” version being shorter.The earliest work, Within her Arms from 2008, dates back to the unexpected death of Clyne’s mother. Sitting in her childhood home, with a candle and recent photo of her mother, she wrote her most personal music — a moving elegy for 15 solo strings that reaches out to a spirit of peacefulness.Also included are Three Sisters, which gives Avital an opportunity to show off his virtuosity on the mandolin, and Prince of Clouds, with Jacobsen and Kuusisto. This last is perhaps the most wide-ranging in spirit, exploring some of the more extreme contrasts in how to write for strings.★★★★☆‘Shorthand’ is released by Sony Classical
