Catalogue
Viola Concerto No 2: `The Seafarer' (2001)
Programme Note available | View performance history...
Commissioned by Swedish and Scottish Chamber Orchestras.
First performance: Tabea Zimmerman / Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Joseph Swensen, City Hall, Glasgow, 25 Jan 2002
Work Details
Category: concerto orchestral
Duration: 30
Instrumentation: Va / 2(1)22(1)2(1) 2200 Tp Perc Str
SMC Holdings
- Recording: Joseph Swensen, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Tabea Zimmerman [enquire]
- Recording (CD album): BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, Lawrence Power [enquire]
- Recording (CD album): Tabea Zimmerman, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Joseph Swensen [enquire]
- Recording (cassette track): Joseph Swensen, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Tabea Zimmerman [enquire]
- Recording (CD track): Lawrence Power, Ilan Volkov, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra [enquire]
- Recording (DVD) [enquire]
- Score, Norsk Musikforlag, ref library [buy]
- Score, unpublished, hard disk (sibelius file) [enquire]
- Score, unpublished, archive collection [buy]
- Part(s), unpublished, hard disk (sibelius file) [enquire]
- Part(s), unpublished, archive collection [enquire]
- Part(s), Norsk Musikforlag, hire library [enquire]
Programme Note
Andante irrequieto
Andante malevole
Andante riflessivo
When I first came across the 9th century Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, I was struck by its vivid imagery and wrote a short piece for solo violin inspired by the text. The poem explores the idea of life’s journey, using the metaphor of a sea voyage.
In 2000 I was asked by the ‘Summer on the Peninsula’ Festival to make a setting of the poem for narrator and piano trio, and in so doing I began to hear more orchestral textures and to want to explore the material further. The Viola Concerto is the third part in my ‘Seafarer’ Trilogy and is in three movements.
The first suggests wave shapes, seabirds, and ideas of conflict and exploration. The second is based on a two-note motif first heard on the bassoon – “The gowk repeats his plaintive geck” – mocking and ironic in character, with a fragile and transient middle section.
The last movement is essentially a set of cadenzas exploring material from the first two movements, set within a gentle string refrain and resolving into a simple hymn-like passage which ends the concerto.
The concerto is dedicated to Tabea Zimmerman, in memory of the conductor David Shallon. It was jointly commissioned by the Swedish and Scottish Chamber Orchestras, and first performed in Scotland in January 2002.
