Andalag # 1 - Duo for Flute and Clarinet (2011). Part of Andalag - Suite in 11 movements. Programme note Some years ago I was asked by the Faroese ensemble Aldubáran to compose duets for the woodwinds within the ensemble. The idea then came to me to write a Suite with the name “Andalag” in 11 movements. 8 movements are duets and are approximately 4 min. long. 2 movements are quartets and are approximately 8 min. long and 1 movement is an octet which is approximately 16 min. long. In other words the Suite will last approximately 60 min.   The (octet) instrumentation is2 flutes 2 clarinets 2 horns and 2 bassoons. The Faroese word “andalag” has a multilayerd meaning. The first half of the word is “anda” and means to breath or spirit and the second half of the word “lag” means melodi mood or layer. I use two small ideas in this Suite. One idea is in a sort of major mood and the other in a sort of minor mood. Sunleif Rasmussen May 2013

Dieter Ammann was born in Aarau Switzerland in 1962. He grew up in a very musical family. After secondary school he began a course in school music at the Akademie für Schul- und Kirchenmusik in Lucerne. At the same time he studied for several semesters at the Swiss Jazz School in Bern. After this he worked for a period as a musician in improvised music and jazz. He has performed at international festivals including Cologne Willisau Antwerp and Lugano. Recordings and studio sessions brought him into contact with diverse artists such as Eddie Harris and Udo Lindenberg. He then took a degree in theory and composition at the Musikakademie Basel and attended master classeswith Wolfgang Rihm and Witold Lutoslawski.In the 1990s the main focus of Ammann?s work changed to composition. He has received numerous national and international prizes for his orchestral and chamber music works (including from the Aargauer Kuratorium the main prize in the International Composition Competition of the IBLA Foundation New York the Franz Liszt Scholarship awarded by the European Capital of Culture Weimar first prize in the Young Composers in Europe Competition Leipzig and Composers? Prize for Composition from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Munich 2008). In 2010 he was composer-in-residence at the Lucerne Festival and in 2013 at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik and the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker as well as 2015 at the Festival reMusic in St. Petersburg. His orchestral works have been conducted by Pierre Boulez Valery Gergiev Jonathan Nott Peter Rundel Peter Hirsch and Jürg Henneberger. Ammann is Professor of Theory and Composition at the Lucerne School of Music and a lecturer at the Bern University of the Arts.

Malcolm Arnold wrote this little fantasy in the early 1960s as a present for his children Katherine and Robert to play together. Even as a miniature it has many of the hallmarks of the Arnold style such as the evocative melodic writing together with the occasional dark dissonance. It was written at a time when Arnold was deeply into film music. Perhaps this is why in the famous film Whistle Down the Wind the main theme is for flute/piccolo and turns out to be not entirely dissimilar to the theme found in this fantasy.