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Concerto for Orchestra
Conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-362245-6
14 July 2005
Price: Available on request
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for full orchestra Forces or CategoryFull orchestraDuration20 minutesDifficultyModerately difficult to DifficultOrchestration3 fl (I&II+picc, III+afl), 2 ob (III+ca), 3 cl (III+bcl), 3 bn (III+cbn), 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tba, timp, 5 perc (glock, xylo, vib, cortales, tbells, SD, 3 TD, BD, sus cym, 2 Chinese cym, tam, roto-tom, mark tree, flex), pn (+cel), hp, org (opt)
strProgramme NotesBBC Proms Commission 2005
This is the second piece I wrote as associate composer to the BBNOW and is dedicated to the orchestra's principal conductor, Richard Hickox. The first, Tristessa, featured the viola and cor anglais but this new work requires a degree of virtuosity from the whole orchestra.
The Concerto is in three movements with the outer two having a fast-slow-fast design which indeed mirrors the overall structure of the piece.
In thinking about the music I was conscious that the finding of ideas is seldom the problem; it is how they are developed that matters. So, I deliberately began with a very simple motif: falling tones (think Three
Blind Mice!) and soon decided that the first two movements would be based on a downward progression while the third should invert the whole process and move constantly upwards.
If you extend three falling whole tones to a fourth you end up with the more angular sounding interval of an augmented (or sharpened fourth) - say C to F sharp. This led me to the second principal subject of the first movement, indeed the whole piece, and a slightly oriental pattern that was a prominent melodic figure in my first opera, Baa Baa Black Sheep.Each of the outer movements begins with a gaudy, scherzo like atmosphere but become increasingly serious, even desperate, as the music progresses. The first is marked Energico (energetic) and has a slow section in which quiet, held strings form a
background to the falling tones on the piano with gently lapping and overlapping woodwind (alto flute, clarinet in A and cor anglais). The somewhat driven conclusion to this opening movement sets up the still, beating heart of the piece, Threnody For A Sad Trumpet.
The principal trumpet of the orchestra, Phillippe Schartz, and I had previously had some interesting discussions about things like mutes when he had often suggested a piece featuring his instrument. This slow movement seemed the perfect opportunity and it unfolded so naturally that I did away with anything that would corrupt the natural open bore beauty of a quiet trumpet played with great control.
The falling scale is here put to a melancholy purpose and as I was working on the music on boxing day 2004 so
word of the Tsunami filtered through. We all deal with these world tragedies at a certain layer of consciousness but they hit deeper when we can put a face and a personality to the victims. When I heard that Jane Attenborough (who I had met through her work at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation) had perished, along with her daughter and mother-in-law, I was profoundly shocked.It seemed natural that this music which is both grief stricken and yet strangely tranquil should be an In Memoriam to some one who had worked so passionately to bring the arts to a wider cross section of society.
Rudely breaking the mood, the final movement, Con Fuoco (with fire), begins with splashy and metallic Chinese Cymbals that trigger waves of upward rushing sound in the the orchestra at a point where, in the
first movement the equivalent passage was racing downwards. This last third of the work is essentially a synthesis of what has passed and in the slow section the cor anglais and trumpet sadly remind us of where we have been. The music builds to a climax that pivots on the harmonic axis at the heart of the music and the upward striving scale. At its apex there is a moment of silence, an intake of breath, before a brief reflection on the Threnody is brutally curtailed by a final reordering of the opening; but now the thirds on the brass have inexorably and enharmonically (same notes, different context) moved from a bright and vaguely A major to the far more disquieting world of C sharp minor.
© Michael Berkeley
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's website
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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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