Peter Lawson

Song of the Broad Helleborine

The Song of the Broad Helleborine, written in 1987 for Nicolas Kynaston and first performed by him in the Royal Festival Hall, London, was the fourteenth to be written in a projected series of musical portraits of the forty-eight wild orchids of Britain and Ireland, for various instruments, chamber and vocal combinations and orchestral forces.
The Broad or Broad-leaved or Common Helleborine, Epipcatis helleborine, has a wide distribution in Europe and can also be found as far apart as Siberia,the Himalayas and North Africa. It is a tall, somewhat luxuriant orchid and grows in both deciduous and coniferous woodland, flowering, in Britain, in August. It is easily recognisable from its broad, oval-shaped leaves and its dense flower-spike, which may contain as many as one hundred blooms. These are unspectacular from a distance, but on closer inspection, reveal exciting combinations of green, red, pink and purple.
The music begins with an evocation of this - apparently - somewhat subdued, hardly flamboyant orchid growing in shade. There then follows an Allegro giocoso, the 'song' of the orchid, as it were, from its own point of view, depicting the riot of kaleidoscopic colour in its inflorescence and the dappling interplay of shafts of sunlight and the shadows caused by the rich overhead canopy of trees.
Duration c.8 minutes