These three pieces for cello and piano are meditations – personal secular and musical – on images from religious poetry. The title of No. 1 Angels bending near the earth comes from a carol which begins‘It came upon the midnight clear’ by the Massachusetts pastor and poet Edmund Sears. The full reference is to “angels bending near the earth/to touch their harps of gold” and this is the inspiration forthe music with piano arpeggios swooping down over the rich central band of sound produced by the cello. No. 2’s title In death’s dark vale is a brief paraphrase (from a Scottish hymnal) of Psalm 23; thefull quotation is “yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil”. The image here is of human life lived against the prospect of impending death. The cello plays a hasty self-absorbed continuo whilst around it piano motifs and chords of different height and depth create an evolving backdrop. No. 3 O sapientia is the only movement which quotes a musical original; Hildegard ofBingen’s hymn O virtus sapientiae –“O strength of wisdom”. This is a calm elegaic set of variations for the cello on Hildegard’s melody accompanied by mostly bright optimistic refl ections from thepiano. Commissioned by cellist Jonathan Miller of Boston MA. First performance on 23 September 2016 at Hamilton Hall Salem MA by Jonathan Miller (cello) and Randall Hodgkinson (piano)

Par BERLIN IRVING. Une collection des plus célèbres chansons d'Irving Berlin, arrangé pour piano et voix, complete avec les paroles et les symboles de la corde. / Date parution : 2005-05-27/ Recueil / Violoncelle et Piano

In memory of Christopher Rowland. Originally a concerto for Cello and chamber orchestra now for Cello with a Piano reduction of the orchestral part.The concerto is in four movements which are played without a break: Meditation Intermezzo Toccata-Scherzo and Song. The work lasts for some 18 minutes and was scored for two oboes two horns timpani (doubling tubular bells) and strings(found here in a Cello/Piano form). It is organised in one large arch-shaped structure with two fast inner movements flanked by two outer slow ones. The solo cello opens the work reflectively and introduces core melodic material which is continuously developed throughout theconcerto. Gradually the strings enter then wind and timpani and build a pyramid twelve-note chord at the peak of which there is a dramatic climax. The music then subsides (solo cello again) but links to the two faster middle movements. The second movement Intermezzo has an ABA structure and in its middle section quotes the opening of Shostakovich's Third String Quartet (written in the same year as Christopher Rowland was born!). Indeed the ghost of Shostakovich looms large throughout the concerto in more ways than one. The Toccata-Scherzo is energetic and rhythmically-charged again using an ABA structure. Here the writing for solo cello is quite virtuosic but not I hope in a shallow sense. The music builds inexorably towards a powerful climax underpinned by the opening twelve-note chord's re-appearance together with a violent outburst from the timpani at which point a tonal resolution (on G) arrives through a pianissimo held chord on strings which leads directly to the final movement - Song. And so the music arrives at its emotional heart through a simple melody (present in other forms throughout the work) announced by solo cello at the very top of its register against a quiet backdrop of horns and strings. A solo oboe enters with cello in canonic reply and all the time the music builds in texture and

Par KILLMAYER WILHELM. ‘Humour plays a role, and my pieces are also an attempt to entertain people.’ Words not often associated with contemporary music, but Wilhelm Killmayer wants to place fun and seriousness side by side. Different tonal spheres are found in the “Impromptu” and the jaunty “Scherzo lento” which uses tap tones for example. The “Chorale” that follows allows the music to drift seamlessly into atonality. In the fourth romance ‘Im Schumannschen Ton’ (‘The Schumann Sound’), a diatonic melody is complicated so much that the ending distorts to the beginning, ‘just like man combines many different qualities’. In the concluding “Capriccio”, shifting time signatures and dynamic ?uctuations are combined in a virtuoso manner. A humourous piece which demands the purest concentration from the players./ Répertoire / Violoncelle et Piano