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Balcony Scenes
This work was commissioned by Fenella Humphreys for her Bach to the Future project, and was premiered by her at Aldeburgh on 10th September 2014. It was commissioned with funds generously provided by the RVW Trust, the PRS Foundation For Music, the Nicholas Boas Trust, the Ida Carroll Trust and a large number of private backers through Kickstarter. Balcony Scenes is a set of four pieces that involve two pairings: the first and the last pieces are Fantasia i and Fantasia ii, while between them come Bicinium i and Bicinium ii. While the fantasia pieces present interlocking sections of contrasted music, the Bicinium pieces concentrate in each case on one idea - the pervading split-level dialogue that gives the work its name: ‘bicinium’ denotes a two-part exercise in contrapuntal dialogue (as worked by Lassus, for example). The two bicinia interpret this very loosely, however, and show contrasted behaviours: bicinium i contrasts a slow chorale with interpolated passages of a birdsong-like material, as if the music of two separate worlds is intercut without any relation between those worlds; bicinium ii is a virtuosic interplay between competing rising- and falling-scale ideas that prove too entangled for a set of variants to unravel. The idea of dialogue between ground-level and elevated (balcony) participants is also found in the outer, fantasia pieces, which try to maximize the register contrasts within the violin and, even, sometimes, to create the idea of a ‘bass register’ for the instrument. The opening gesture of Fantasia i, which recurs to open Fantasia ii, spells out the name ‘Fenella’. Piers Hellawell c 2014 |