SKU: HL.48025142

UPC: 196288096016.

Hopes and worries in the face of a social situation in Germany that the composer found disturbing find expression in this character piece in the Schumann tradition. Past and present enter into dialogue. The text quotation from Heine in the subtitle corresponds to the musical Schubert quotation at the end. The variative figures are reminiscent of a passacaglia. A diabolical dance in the middle section is framed by two parts based on the same material and illustrating nocturnal calm. The work is available as a recording with Felix Brucklacher, clarinet, and Hiroko Arimoto, piano, on the portrait CD released in 2022 on the Genuin Classics label (GEN 22760) on the occasion of the composer's 75th birthday.

SKU: BT.MUSM570366231

English.

Uhtceare for Flute, Percussion, Violin and Cello. Composed 2014, published 2016. Score included in UYMP's Firewheel Anthology (ISMN M-57036-615-6), recorded by Dark Inventions. Duration: 8'30. Uhtceare is an Old English word meaning ‘anxiety before dawn’ surely a familiar experience to many, not just the Anglo-Saxons. I particularly associate it with the half-awake, early-morning asthma attacks that I had as a child. The piece starts in a nocturnal, dreamlike state with chords that pulse gently, like the rise and fall of breaths. These swelling patterns become increasingly fraught, while soloists sporadically emerge with a sense of urgency, and culminate in a loud, chaoticpassage where the percussionist moves from tuned Percussion to Drums. Following this, the Flute plays agile, looping figures that are soon mimicked by the Violin and then the Vibraphone. These figures are frenetic but harmonically static, so that when all three instruments are playing them simultaneously, there is a whirlwind of activity that paradoxically seems to remain stationary. I thought this was a fitting musical analogue for the fruitless but insistent circling of anxious early-morning thoughts. A dramatic Cello solo interrupts these imitative cycles and leads the ensemble in a cacophonous final crescendo. Commissioned by Dark Inventions and first performed by them on 8th May 2014 at The Engine House, Manchester.

SKU: ST.CN3P

ISBN 9790220224607.

Philip Moore draws on a lifetime's experience of music for Anglican worship to present Bishop Ken's classic evening hymn in darker, more subjective hues than those of Tallis's Canon, to which it is usually sung congregationally. In particular, a penitential note of strained serenity is struck in this nocturnal plea for repose of body and soul. The voices move quietly in comfortable thirds and sixths to the accompaniment of a questioning five-note figure, a phrase which is rarely absent from the organ part and which subtly questions their prayer for peace in its edgy harmonic and metric ambiguity.

SKU: BT.MUSM570366224

English.

Uhtceare for Flute, Percussion, Violin and Cello. Composed 2014, published 2016. Score included in UYMP's Firewheel Anthology (ISMN M-57036-615-6), recorded by Dark Inventions. Duration: 8'30. Uhtceare is an Old English word meaning ‘anxiety before dawn’ surely a familiar experience to many, not just the Anglo-Saxons. I particularly associate it with the half-awake, early-morning asthma attacks that I had as a child. The piece starts in a nocturnal, dreamlike state with chords that pulse gently, like the rise and fall of breaths. These swelling patterns become increasingly fraught, while soloists sporadically emerge with a sense of urgency, and culminate in a loud, chaoticpassage where the percussionist moves from tuned Percussion to Drums. Following this, the Flute plays agile, looping figures that are soon mimicked by the Violin and then the Vibraphone. These figures are frenetic but harmonically static, so that when all three instruments are playing them simultaneously, there is a whirlwind of activity that paradoxically seems to remain stationary. I thought this was a fitting musical analogue for the fruitless but insistent circling of anxious early-morning thoughts. A dramatic Cello solo interrupts these imitative cycles and leads the ensemble in a cacophonous final crescendo. Commissioned by Dark Inventions and first performed by them on 8th May 2014 at The Engine House, Manchester.