Programme Notes G - K

High Windows

1. The Trees
2. Solar
3. Dublinesque
4. Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel
5. Cut Grass

In writing some songs for Michael Chance I wanted to find texts that would avoid the associations of the counter-tenor voice with things strange and un-wordly. Larkin's poems, with their finely observed realities seemed ideal, and I chose five from his final (1974) collection High Windows.

There are three lyrics about the natural world (The Trees, Solar, Cut Grass) and two typically down-beat townscapes, one exterior and one interior, the whole sequence suggesting the cycle of the seasons and the transience of life. Framing and linking these five poems is a setting of the visionary final lines of the title poem. These short 'recitatives' provide a context for the whole work, and, perhaps appropriately, suggest a musical form as close to the Baroque cantata as to later song-cycles.

High Windows was written to a commission from Michael Chance, with funds from the Arts Council of England, in 1992.

© Anthony Powers, 1992
reproduced with permission of Oxford University Press

Texts available upon request from Repertoire Promotion Department

Horn Concerto

All concertos are about the relationship of the one to the many, an individual (soloist) to society (orchestra). In certain important ways no music can ever be 'about' anything specific, and its real value is diminished by such direct association. Nonetheless this concerto was a result of certain experiences and these inform it, however much the piece has to go, first and foremost, on its own musical way. This concerto is a response to visits I made to Czechoslovakia in 1986 and 1988. Whilst the music does not tell a story or dramatize a situation, the experience of an individual, at odds with his political context and attempting to subvert or transform it, is fundamental.

In the first part of the work, called "Madrigals of Love and War" the soloist is almost always in conflict with the orchestra and only able to 'sing' with other individuals or small groups. But his efforts are snuffed out by the increasingly aggressive orchestra, at first divided into two factions, finally united against him. The second part, "Winter Journeys", is a slow process of regaining lost ground and re-building a rapport. The soloist leads the orchestra from desolation towards a new and serene prospect and an exuberant close where the music which was extinguished by the first orchestral outburst of the work is now secure and confident.

The outlines of the piece were in place, and some of the music sketched, when I heard that Libor Pesek, music director of both the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Czech Philharmonic orchestras, would conduct the first performance in 1990. This was an auspicious and gratifying co-incidence! But, towards the end of the composing, the events of autumn 1989 in Prague (and of course elsewhere!) showed reality overtaking art and suddenly the 'scenario' of the work had become extremely topical. The concerto seemed to be, on one level at least, a history, in music, of Czechoslovakia from 1968 to 1989.

To learn, as it happened within minutes of making the final corrections to the full score, of cancellation of the premiere was bitterly disappointing. I can only hope that the piece will be heard soon for its impact can only be strengthened in the context of those recent dramatic events.

© Anthony Powers 1989
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

In Shadow

Six short movements, furtive or elegaic in mood, with a network of shadows and echoes cast between the instruments, across movements, in the lines and harmonies.

Commissioned by the Park Lane Group with funds made available by Greater London Arts, In Shadow was composed in November 1989.

© Anthony Powers 1989
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

In Sunlight (1993)

In this short piece I have tried to suggest both the dazzling brightness and the hazy langour of sunlight, its tendency to exaggerate details harshly or, equally, to dissolve it in shimmering blur.

The structure is a short set of double variations, the two themes following a short introduction. One is flamboyant and rhetorical, the other gentle and lyrical. The first develops rhythmically, through a toccata to a vigorous dance, the second becomes increasingly decorated so that the line is almost dissolved, but finally emerges in its clearest, simplest form. In a coda each musical character disappears into silence.

In Sunlight was written in May 1993 to a commission from Madeleine Mitchell, and I am grateful to her for technical advice about the violin part. She gave the first performance, with John Lenehan (piano), in the Purcell Room, London on 5 July 1993.

© Anthony Powers, 1993
reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press

In two minds

In two minds (a reference to the state of schizophrenia) is a virtuosic elegy for solo oboe. Its solo line is fractured into two opposing elements - lyrical elegance and angular neuroticism - between which there is constant conflict throughout the piece.

In two minds was commissioned by Sophia McKenna, in memory of her cousin Patrick, and first performed by Fiona Davies at University College, Cardiff, on 24 September 1991.

© Anthony Powers, 1993
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

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