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Programme Notes

Doppelgänger

The word ‘Doppelgänger’ means an alter-ego or wraith of a living person. This impressionistic piece, works on two clear levels of light and dark. On the one side, the rippling trills enhance the shimmering nature of the line and dominate the music, but there are more menacing undertones. The contrasting chordal line winds unceasingly around the constant trills providing a feeling of unease using the full dramatic range of the piano.

Doppelgänger was written in 1984 for the pianist Pola Baytelman who performed it on the Society of Composers recording `View from the Keyboard' (Capistone Records CPS-8606 CD).

From Afar (1996)

The title, From Afar, most immediately refers to the composer’s memory of the four months she spent studying Japanese music near Kyoto in Fall, 1990. Other senses of distance are found in the temporal distances of the few direct references to Japanese music (for example, to the ancient honkyoku for the Japanese vertical bamboo flute, the shakuhachi) and to near and distant spatial densities in the orchestra (echoings and shadowings).

The piece opens with a slow, meditative, introduction (andante declamato) which is dominated by a single line in the trumpets. It then divides into two large wave-shaped sections, each of which begins with propulsive rhythms in the percussion (energico). Each of the large sections is transformed at its climax, somewhat in the manner of the Japanese jo-ha-kyu aesthetic. The first climax dissolves into a lighter interlude (danza), while the second retrieves a previous woodwind-dominated solo line and presents it, ardente e cantabile, with all the warmth of the strings before echoes of the meditative opening return to close the piece.

In writing From Afar the composer’s intent was not to transpose Japanese sonorities directly onto the orchestra, rather her concern was to contrast meditative times (as in the opening) with narrative times (as in the danza) and propulsive time (as in the energico sections). A second concern was to contrast more traditional Western orchestral sonorities with a single “landscaped” line inspired by the solo instrumental traditions of Japan.

From Afar is in one movement, approximately twenty minutes long. The piece was commissioned by a consortium of orchestras consisting of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Women’s Philharmonic Orchestra, Augusta Symphony Orchestra, University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, and Colmbus Pro Musica. Commissioning of From Afar was made possible by a grant from the Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace - Reader’s Digest Fund. The first performance is scheduled for 14 and 15 November 1996, by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kirk Trevor.

Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

From the Song of Amergin

From the Song of Amergin, for flute, viola, and harp, is in five sections, played without a break. Three lines from Robert Graves' restoration of the text of an ancient Celtic calendar-alphabet, the "Song of Amergin", directly inspired the piece:
I am a wind: on a deep lake,
I am a tear: the Sun lets fall,
I am a hawk: above the cliff.

The inner sections of From the Song of Amergin are shaped by the twinned images of wind/deep lake, tear/Sun, and hawk/cliff. The piece begins and ends with an invocation of "I am". The inner sections also reflect the subtitle - In memoriam Alberta Todd Jones - respectively, Alberta's wisdom (with echoes of the hymn, Crimond), Alberta's joy (a "rainbow dance"), and Alberta's strength.

Commissioned by the Criccieth Festival with funds provided in part by the Welsh Arts Council, From the Song of Amergin was premièred in Port Meirion, North Wales, June 26th 1995, by harpist Elinor Bennett with members of the Lontano Ensemble.

The Grey Tide and the Green

In late autumn 2000, the composer received a commission from Owain Arwel Hughes to compose an "exciting piece" for The Last Night of the Welsh Proms. Traditionally, The Last Night is a time of celebration; however, the composer also wanted to pay homage to the compelling voice of Welsh poet, R S Thomas (1913-2000).

In his short poem "Boundaries" Thomas wrights, "Where does the town end / and the country begin? / Where is the high-water mark / between the grey tide and the green?" (No Truce with the Furies, 1995). These lines led the composer to recall the ancient, lichen-covered, low stone walls which crisscross the high mountain moorland behind her childhood home in Ferndale, Rhondda. In turn, the local image suggested the textural contrasts which underlie the piece as a whole - contrasts between fast string-dominated passages ("moorland") and resonant brass-dominated passages ("stone boundaries"). The presence throughout the piece of the bell-like sections is again inspired by the poem. When Thomas writes of farming within "the sound of the bell / of the worshipping cathedral" he evokes the time when the mountain-top walls were monastic boundaries.

The Grey Tide and the Green was commissioned by St David's Hall, Cardiff with financial assistance from the Arts Council of Wales.

Here, the Cliffs

The first ideas for Here, the Cliffs were inspired by a striking rock formation near my home in South Wales. ‘Craig Cerrig-gleisiad’ is an ancient glacial basin, replet with rugged steep walls, scree slopes, and a delicate mossy area beneath the cliff face. It seemed to me that the lone violinist in front of the orchestra was not unlike a lone traveller standing before the massiveness of such a rock formation.

Here, the Cliffs was commissioned by Corine Cook, violinist, and the North Carolina Symphony, Winston-Salem Piedmont Triad Symphony, Canton Symphony, Western Piedmont Symphony and Salisbury Symphony Orchestras as part of the national series of works from the Meet the Composer/Arts endowment Commissioning Music/USA, with support from the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. Other funding includes an Emerging Artsist Grant from the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Arts Council.

The Open Field

The Open Field was commissioned by the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra, with funds provided by the New York State Council on the Arts. The première was scheduled for Spring 1990. The commissioning body had asked for a piece, approximately ten minutes long, which featured the brass. I was already at work on the fanfare-like figures of the opening and closing sections when news came, first of the incredible, the of the terrible events in Tiananmen Square, June 1989. The freedom of mind which I had been celebrating in the opening of the piece seemed called into question and this questioning is reflected in the darker inner sections of the piece. When I first received this commission, I did not set out to write any kind of `documentary'. In fact, the earliest `field' was from a poem by Robert Duncan, the first in his 1960 collection called The Opening of the Field which begins
`Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
As if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
That is not mine, but is a made place...'.
However, I think it was inevitable that the piece became caught up in that unbelievable year which ultimately led to the breaking down of the Berlin Wall. It is for this reason, with deep respect, the piece is subtitled `In memoriam Tiananmen Square, June 1989'.

Water’s Edge

Water’s Edge is in three movements, played without a break. The ‘edge’ of the title refers to the upper surface of the water as it reflects or refracts light. In the first movement, Dawn Light, the light is held at the surface, while in the second movement, From the Riverbed, the light dances through the upper surface of the water to the riverbed below. During the final movement, which contains echoes of the previous two, the light fades from view (Toward Dusk). Water’s Edge was originally composed as a piano duet for advanced students commissioned by the New York State Music Teacher’s Association. The first performance was on October 30, 1993. There is also a version for string orchestra which was premièred at the Presteigne Festival in Wales in August 1994.

Winter sun, Summer rain

Winter sun, Summer rain was composed during Spring, 1986, in response to a Vale of Glamorgan Festival commission with funds provided by the Welsh Arts Council. It is in one movement. Three visual images underlie the musical continuity. The first is of forms whose outlines are blurred (snow-covered); the second is of forms cross-hatched by a gentle rhythmic pulse (rain-patterned). The third (sun-bathed) is drawn from the composer's recollection of that very special light which illuminated the Welsh countryside in the aftermath of a rainfall.

With the heather and small birds

With the heather and small birds, a celebratory overture for chamber orchestra, takes its title from a translation of the last phrase of a well known poem by Welsh bard, John Ceiriog Hughes (1833 - 1887) - in Welsh, "efo'r grug a'r adar mân" from Nant y Mynydd. For the composer, the image is of the high plateau of central Wales, within walking distance of the coal-mining valley of her childhood. It is a place of freedom, ancientness, and song (songs of the valley, and song of the skylark.) The piece was commissioned by the 1994 Cardiff Festival, with funds provided by the Welsh Arts Council.