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After a well-received first season of work for the BBC Philharmonic I’ve really enjoyed working closely with them again for their new season which starts with Wagner's Götterdämmerung on Saturday 29 September at the Bridgewater Hall.
By day the orchestra are based at MediaCityUK (a stone’s throw from my studio at Islington Mill) where they will be busy rehearsing Wagner, Mozart, Mahler, Bach, Verdi, Haydn, Britten, Beethoven as well as many more for these concerts.
I documented their work, for the main programme brochure and the individual concert flyers with graphic layout by Raw.
To say I was looking forward to working on the Wagner Götterdämmerung picture is a bit of an understatement. I’d known for a long time I’d wanted create an apocalyptic view of mountains crumbling and castles falling after seeing the work of 19th century painter John Martin and this was the perfect opportunity.
The epic opera is based on Norse mythology and Götterdämmerung - the Twilight of the Gods - is the final and fourth part from The Ring, as the opera is popularly known. It tells the story of the last days of Valhalla and the eventual destruction of the Hall of the Gods. The power of the music is phenomenal, it overwhelmed and inspired me. Wagner didn’t just write operas he created new worlds. This really spoke to me because it is so central to what I also want to convey with my pictures.
The picture took ten separate photo-shoots and then three weeks to create using around five hundred images: some are from North Wales; some rocks are from the Peak District; the castle is from Monmouthshire, South Wales, and the sky is from a Manchester shoot on the moors on a beautiful night when I was driving back from my Mum and Dad’s.
There is a lone knight at the bottom of the picture. I slowly built up his armour from many different sources and used loads of old pots and metallic objects including an old gravy boat.
I set the scene as the sun was going down – twilight – and deliberately picked the clouds and the lighting and the feel of it to look like some strange disaster had happened but not to be too obvious about what that was. I wanted the tone to be magical yet still with a strong element of realism in it.
If you take a closer look with Zoom It you might just see some unexpected details. Can you see the men flying through the air?
After all that time spent working on it I think the result is a real epic. I hope you think so as well.
All the best,
Andrew.
This image is now available in my print shop alongside 90 of my other images and as a free screensaver.
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