A Song for Chris – concerto for cello and chamber orchestra
This work has a two-fold personal significance for me in that it is dedicated to Christopher Rowland, Director of Chamber Music at the RNCM, a dear friend and colleague for many years and someone who has established the chamber music programme at the College as one of the finest in the world. Additionally, the concerto was written for Li-Wei, who was an undergraduate student at the RNCM when I came into post as Principal in 1996, and who has since established a highly successful international performing career.
The concerto is in four movements which are played without a break: Meditation…
Read MoreShadow of Paradise
This work was completed in July 2005 and was written specially for Melinda Maxwell and Richard Benjafield. The music is based on the well-known poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in it I have attempted to capture some of the spirit of his highly evocative text.
The work lasts for some ten minutes and is structured in three main sections. The opening section(and ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war) is dramatic with the oboe announcing two ideas – the first a high repeated note rhythmic pattern (later with multi-phonics) which is answered …
Read MoreSonata for Four Trombones
My Sonata for Four Trombones was commissioned by the Marini Trombone Ensemble with funds provided by North West Arts. It was first performed by them at the Purcell Room, London, in 1985. The work is in one long, but continuous, movement and takes as its starting point the dramatic nature of sonata form. It consists of five alternating and varied blocks of music which are constantly juxtaposed in different ways. I was influenced here by Tippett’s use of this structural device in his Second Piano Sonata and Sonata for Four Horns. In my Sonata, the contrasting ideas (or musics) are …
Read MoreEquale Dances
Equale Dances for brass quintet (which is really my second quintet for brass) was commissioned by Equale Brass, with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and was first performed by them in 1983. The structure of the piece is similar to that of another work of the same period scored for brass band, namely Dances and Arias. It uses alternating fast (Dances) and slow music (Arias):
The opening Toccata (a fast but majestic dance with changing time patterns) is followed by Aria 1 (a horn solo over an ostinato accompaniment for trombone and tuba), with …
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