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Secret Garden
Full and reduced orchestraion - conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-361668-4
07 January 1998
Price: Available on request
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for orchestra Forces or CategoryFull orchestraDuration15 minutesDifficultyModerately difficultOrchestrationFull: 3 fl (III+picc), 3 ob (III+ca), 3 cl (II+Ebcl, III+bcl), 3 bn (III+cbn), 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tba, timp, 3 perc (vib, sus cym, crotales, SD, clash cym, tam, thundersheet, BD, marac, 3 w blk), hp, str; Reduced version: 3 fl (III+picc), 2 ob, 2 cl (II+Ebcl), 2 bn, 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3
tbn (III+btbn), tba, timp, perc, strProgramme Notes"Jointly commissioned by Oxford University Press to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its Music Department and by The London Symphony Orchestra, with funds provided by the Arts Council.
Secret Garden opens by depicting the barrier that surrounds it - an impenetrable wall of sound from the brass and wind announced initially on the trumpet. The end of the wall is reached only to reveal the beginning once again. The very solidity and mass of this obstacle is both frustrating and exhilarating. For on the other side lies a magical but dangerous landscape. Touch an exotic piece of foliage and it becomes instantly transformed, rears up to
threaten ... or embrace. There is a bitter sweet atmosphere in the garden, a faint suggestion of melancholy. Here is found what has so far only been imagined but delight is tinged with fear, excitement. In one direction lies great stillness and space, in another, frantic movement and momentum. Which direction to take?
Secret Garden is closely related to its immediate forebears - Torque and Velocity for the Takács Quartet, and Fantastic Mind, a setting of the libertine poet the Earl of Rochester, for reciter and brass quintet. It is too a prelude, a brief glimpse into The Garden of Earthly Delights (very loosely inspired by the Hieronymous Bosch Triptych in Madrid), which the BBC have commissioned for the National Youth Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich. All of these pieces
then, explore facets of the imagination, that garden in the mind that so thrills and alarms but, alone amongst the workings of human beings, can never be completely conquered or stolen by another. This in turn seemed an appropriate tribute to the State of Israel (whose birthday I share) where the work is being toured as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations.
Thus Secret Garden, which lasts ten to twelve minutes, ends with a sense of triumph yet to be totally resolved and with an elliptical but organic reference to one of the most striking aspects of the recent and exhilarating partnership between the LSO and Sir Colin Davis.
© Michael Berkeley 1997
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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Michael Berkeley (b.1948) Michael Berkeley was born in 1948. He studied composition, singing, and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties, when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett, that Berkeley began to concentrate exclusively on composing. In 1977 he was awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Since then Michael's music has been played all over the globe and by some of the world's finest musicians. Most of Michael's significant orchestral work, much of his chamber music and his operas are available on CD as part of the Chandos Berkeley Edition. For ten years from 1995
Michael was artistic director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music. He currently presents Radio 3's Private Passions, which won the Broadcasting Press Guild's Radio Programme of the Year Award in 1996, and is Chairman of the Governors of The Royal Ballet.Michael Berkeley at the BBC
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"Berkeley's garden is surrounded by a barrier, vivdly depitced by an angry, pulsating brass figure. But eventually these yield and we see beyond;a micro-world of tiny, fascinating details alternating with broader perspectives..." - Stephen Johnson, The Independent
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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