The main entrance of the New Wing of Somerset House has been filled with a colourful grove of elm trees beyond which, through an open door, sits a grand piano on its side, both entirely unexpected within the controlled classical architecture of this historic building. These installations at Somerset House celebrate the elm tree and the work of the composer Horatio Radulescu.
Within the grove of trees designed by Stables & Lucraft, the branches have been replaced with a lively jumbled collection of different cut-outs, objects and pieces of furniture which are carved from elm or use elm in their construction from chairs and wheels to churches and boats. Once a prolific tree across Europe’s landscapes and parks, huge numbers of these majestic trees were lost in the 1970’s to Dutch elm disease, changing the landscape for a generation. The scale of the loss was immense – more than 25 million trees died in the UK alone, while France lost over 90% of its elm trees.
As a wood, elm is valued for its interlocking grain and resistance to splitting which made it a good wood for wagon wheel hubs, chair seats and coffins. It is also pliant which makes it suitable for bows and, because of the long log lengths, it was also used to construct the keels of timber ships, the first water pipes in London and the wooden piles for the first London Bridge.
London still has a number of mature healthy trees, which originally came from different parts of the world and some of which have resistance to the disease. They are important for biodiversity, being the sole source of food for some rare species such as the white-letter hairstreak butterfly. The installation at Somerset House celebrates the elm tree and draws attention to its importance to London, as part of the Conservation Foundation’s project “Ulmus Londinium” which records the location and species of existing elms and supports planting of new ones. Given that there are other families of trees which are so much part of the London landscape such as the plane tree, it also reinforces the need to care for these trees, monitor them for disease and achieve diversity in future planting.
Beyond the elm grove, the upended pianos are part of an interactive installation that explores Horatiu Radulescu’s instruments “Sound Icons“. Radulescu (1942-2008) was a Romanian-French composer best known for the spectral technique of composition. Drawing upon Eastern and contemporary spectral music, Radulescu upended grand pianos, stripped out the mechanical components and retuned the strings to create different instruments with a unique new sound.
Filthy Lucre commissioned sculptor Peter Shenai to build two of his interpretation of the “Sound Icons,” which the public can experiment and play on, linking with Shenai’s belief that that art should not be elitist but should appeal to a diversity of people without compromising its integrity and philosophical meaning, and can be enjoyable and interactive. Also on display are some of Radulescu’s colourful and artistic scores and theoretical works.
