SKU: HL.49045520

ISBN 9790220137198. UPC: 841886028876. 8.25x11.75x0.2 inches.

Locke's Theatre, an orchestral work in three short movements, takes as its departure point incidental music written for Shakespeare's The Tempest by the seventeenth-century English composer Matthew Locke. Aspects of Locke's idiosyncratic and daringly advanced harmonic and rhythmic language were to be adopted (some might say perfected) by his younger friend and protege Henry Purcell. But it is the very rawness and directness of Locke's theatre music that I wished to acknowledge and emulate. In each of my work's three movements - entitled respectively 'The First Music', 'Rustic Music', and 'Curtain Music (with Storm)' - the baroque originals, though very often submerged, remain a constant, shadowy presence. Locke's Theatre was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival to mark the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth. -Ryan Wigglesworth.

SKU: HL.49044548

ISBN 9790220135545. UPC: 841886024786. 8.5x12.0x0.061 inches. English.

Text by George Herbert.

SKU: HL.49045166

ISBN 9790220135002. UPC: 888680724214. 8.25x11.75x0.276 inches.

Violin Concerto is scored for a Classical-sized orchestra, with the addition of a harp and celeste, and lasts around 17 minutes. Although the work sets out to explore the lyrical characteristics of the solo instrument, it is only gradually that the violin finds its full, lyric voice, and thence, as the work progresses, a more dominant role. This, in one sense, is the 'journey' of the piece. The work's straightforward formal scheme consists of three movements (roughly fast-slow-fast) framed by a reflective introduction and epilogue. However, these formal divisions exist within a single, unbroken arc. Such an overall symmetrical shape places the slow Arioso (itself divided into three subsections) at the midpoint, sandwiched between the two Allegro movements. The dramaturgy of the piece centers on a twofold search. First there is the ongoing pursuit to recapture the simple melodic material stated by the solo violin - accompanied by thar harp's bass register - during the opening bars. Whilst aspects of this melody are invoked frequently throughout (especially in the violin cadenza which closes the Arioso movement), it is only with the final and most important climax of the work that the melody appears again in its complete form, now accompanied by violent, orchestral stabs. The second search is for a tonal resting place, the arrival of which is delayed until the close of the epilogue. The original version of the Violin Concerto, commissioned by the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, was premiered in Amsterdam in February 2012 with Gordan Nikolic as soloist. The present, revised version was created for Barnabas Kelemen and the Halle.