for piano and chamber orchestra (2017)
8 minutes
Instrumentation
Piano solo
0200 / 2000 / strings
2 Oboes
2 Horns in F
Strings
Description
Ancient Greek legend tells that musician and poet Orpheus was able to charm all living things, and even stones, with his music. On failing to bring his wife Eurydice back from the underworld, he fell into a period of deep mourning and renounced all gods except the sun, whom he called Apollo. Enraged by his rejection of their patron Dionysus, a band of Maenads ripped him to shreds.
Samy Moussa cites Ovid’s Metamorphosis, recounting nature’s grief at the poet’s death:
The mourning birds wept for thee, Orpheus, the throng of beasts, the flinty rocks, and the trees which had so often gathered to thy songs; yes, the trees shed their leaves as if so tearing their hair in grief for thee. They say that the rivers also were swollen with their own tears, and that naiads and dryads alike mourned with dishevelled hair and with dark-bordered garments.
The work is scored for the same orchestral formation as the early Mozart concertos and is both intimate and breathtakingly atmospheric. The opening is spacious, with brooding, muted horns, and expands into a more tense central section. Repeated tremolo notes in the highest range of the piano, and rumbling bass scales, lead us to a climax which retracts immediately. A brief, musing cadenza in the piano precedes a sustained crescendo with rushing scales in the strings. As this dissipates, the oboe restates the opening theme then the piece stills. The final few bars are static, paralysed by shock.
— Clare Hammond
Recording
Commission
Jointly commissioned by Staatstheater Cottbus and Sudbury Symphony Orchestra
First performance
October 20, 2017
Cottbus, Germany
Staatstheater Cottbus
Cottbus Philharmonic Orchestra
Tzimon Barto, piano / Evan Christ, conductor
Pairing suggestions
Wolfgang A. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 9 in E♭ “Jenamy”, K. 271
Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto in G
Joseph Haydn: Piano Concerto No. 11
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Concertos
Igor Stravinsky: Orpheus; Persephone
Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Carl Nielsen: Pan and Syrinx
Access
Available for hire.
Contact Durand-Salabert-Eschig