Name: Feather - Headed Frail Summoning by Jane O'Leary
Duration: 10 min 27 s
Description: Debussy Tombeau 2018 - Madeleine Staunton, flute and Therese Fahy, piano

Commissioned by Music Network and performed in Dublin, Birr, Clifden, Dún Laoghaire, Waterford and Listowel between 16th and 22nd February 2019 by baroque violinist Claire Duff and harpsichord player Benjamin Alard.

Recorded in Station House Theatre, Clifden on Tuesday 19th February 2019.

Composer's Notes:
Commissioned by Music Network for Baroque violin and harpsichord, this piece was first performed in a programme surrounded by the music of Bach. I drew on some general impressions of Bach's music, the style of the period, and also the particular qualities of sound inherent in these two contrasting instruments from another era. Open strings, harmonics and arpeggiations create stretches of rich sonority from the violin, while the harpsichord's plucked strings make sharp incisions into these lines. Alongside rhythmic passages there are free sections where the music escapes into a timeless space.

'Fantasia' was a form often used by Bach, described as 'the play of imaginative invention'; the term implies freedom, unpredictability, an element of surprise. As the music flows, moving forward and reaching upward, it takes some twists and turns, and a resonance from the past filters through.

- Jane O'Leary

Jane O'Leary: Fantasia (homage to J.S. Bach) for Baroque Violin and Harpsichord

Debussy Tombeau 2018 - Madeleine Staunton, flute and Therese Fahy, piano

Feather - Headed Frail Summoning

First violin of ConTempo String Quartet Bogdan introduces us to one of his favourite pieces of music - Schubert's Death and the Maiden.

Feather - Headed Frail Summoning

Jane O'Leary

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