Northern light

From her first piano lesson, composer Errollyn Wallen has lived and breathed music; and though inspired by a range of styles, her composing is a deeply personal expression, as she tells Kate Wakeling

- Kate Wakeling

‘It can be very irritating, being a composer,’ laughs Errollyn Wallen. ‘You’re always trying to solve these ridiculous problems that you’ve set yourself. And sometimes you just want a day off, but the music won’t let you.’ Be it going for a walk or doing the washing up, Wallen somehow always finds herself lost in composition: ‘I’m obsessed by music. I can’t help it. So, I’ll try doing something else but I find I’m still thinking about whatever it is I’m working on. I’m an untidy person so at least washing up fulfils two functions: I feel good that I’m actually tidying something, and I’m also thinking.’

Wallen’s obsession with music is borne out in her extraordinary catalogue of works and accolades. Her music is beautiful, communicative and instinctive, yet always underpinned by a sense of profound technical mastery. A recipient of an Ivor Novello Award for her body of work, Wallen has written some 22 operas alongside a dizzying array of orchestral, chamber and vocal works. Her music was commissioned for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games and the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, while her bold re-imagining of Jerusalem took the BBC Last Night of the Proms by storm in 2020. As evidenced by her remarkable output, for Wallen composing is ‘as natural as breathing’.

In person, she is terrifically warm and open, overflowing with words and ideas – she laughs at how ‘I never finish my sentences; you might have noticed’. Last year she had to finish a great deal of sentences, completing a memoir,