Premiere: 17 September 2026 by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle
Duration: 15 minutes
Cathy Milliken has a close relationship with the Berliner Philharmoniker: after all, she directed the orchestra’s Education programme from 2005 to 2012. And the versatile composer, musician, and educator – born in Brisbane, Australia, and now based in Berlin – has an equally intimate bond with the instrument for which she has now written a commissioned concerto. Milliken is an oboist and studied, among others, with the legendary Heinz Holliger. A long-time member of Ensemble Modern, she played both oboe and cor anglais there. Cathy Milliken regards Dominik Wollenweber, the Berliner Philharmoniker’s cor anglais player, as “one of the most wonderful and most renowned cor anglais players of our time”. The new work emerged through close collegial exchange. Technical questions were addressed as well: “For example, she asked me which multiphonics – that is, multiple sounds produced by special fingerings – are possible on my instrument. That actually differs from one instrument maker to another,” Dominik Wollenweber explains.
Milliken deliberately wanted to keep the poetic, enigmatic title why feather yellow open to association. The “feather-light” tone production of the Armenian duduk, which – like the oboe and cor anglais – belongs to the double-reed family, inspired her because it is so “archaic, soft, and microtonal”.
Milliken’s concerto explores “the role of the cor anglais along a continuum from solo to collective, from solitude to togetherness.” From the orchestra’s quiet, mysterious unison opening, the solo line breaks free, searching and repetitive, claiming a space that gradually fans out in the smallest steps of sound. The harmony grows out of the tension of intervals. Arabic maqām scales and spectral harmony derived from overtone series enrich it with subtle modifications.
The concerto’s central section explores the lower register of the cor anglais through tremolos and trills; the contrabassoon is its dialogue partner as the music hovers between light and darkness. Milliken is fascinated by what she calls the cor anglais’s “reedy” sound, which also migrates into other instrumental groups: “The percussionists play with bamboo sticks. Bamboo is what you cut the reed for oboe and cor anglais from,” she explains. In the third section, greater mobility – indeed, sparkle – is required, with fast runs and garlands.
While working on why feather yellow, the composer read Rebecca Solnit’s book No Straight Road Takes You There – Essays for Uneven Terrain, a tribute to unpredictability and slowness in political and ecological processes. “Reading these essays,” Milliken says, “reminded me of the uncertainty and instability of these times, of a felt loss of balance. Translated into the composing process, it often felt like standing at a fork in the road.” She thus understands her piece as “a mixture of sounds, or microtonal colours and textures, that change slowly within a continuum, rather than creating perspectival oppositions.”