Programme Notes
This composition explores difficult conversations using the nature of the solo parts within a sinfonietta. The piece is inspired by a childhood personal experience of receiving bad news about a loved one during a car journey. The start of the piece is the start of the conversation represented by the 2 violins, with a mature figure found within the bowed violin and a more unsure pizzicato violin with Bartok snaps and quick, uncertain lines in replies. The emotional undertones of the conversation are represented by woodwind doubling and providing harmony. These undertones start to take focus as the emotions of these conversations tend to engulf us. Further distractions come in and out of focus within the whirl wind of shifting and swirling emotion with quotation of Beethoven's bird song motif, from his pastoral symphony. The contrast between the piece and the distraction of the bird song from a pastoral piece that usually represents the simplistic beauty of nature, emphasises the intensity of the emotions felt. At the piece repetion of downward lines in the violin with shifting harmonies and piano cutting through show the climax of emotional overwhelm. As one and the piece regain composure emotional uncertainty is still obviously present as tonality vs atonality and external conversation and internal thoughts shift in and out. Eventually the conversation emerges out with the same uncertainity of the pizzicato part however with a new found positivity and support as shown by more stable harmonies.