The Unknown Friend by Luis Serrano Alarcon, dedicated to Matthew Reynish

The Unknown Friend.WAV

My first orchestral commission, for the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, premiered in 1970, transcribed by Derek for wind band 1999.

Overture Greendragon op 32 by Derek Bourgeois

Entrance: Carousing: Embarkation
 op. 71 (1990)
Robin Holloway b. 19 October 1943
for symphonic band  Duration: 22'
Publisher  Boosey & Hawkes

4(I,II,III,IV=picc).2.corA.8.Ebcl.altocl.2bcl.dbcl.ssax(=sopraninosax).asax(=ssax).tsax.
barsax.2.dbn-4.4.4.2euph.2-timp-perc(6:5/6 ad lib):SD/glsp/ratchet/large cyms/TD/marimba/xyl/
2Chin.bl/tamb/2tgl/BD/vib/t.bells/claves/whip/2susp.cym/maracas/jingles/wdbl/tam-t/2klaxons/
bell tree-double basses

World Premiere  11/5/1992
Opperman Music Hall, Tallahassee, Florida
Florida State University Wind Orchestra / James Croft

This work was commissioned by a consortium of five American wind bands. It was sketched intermittently from 1988 but the main composing was done Summer 1990. Though large in scale it is simple in shape – an introduction and allegro with coda. The introduction is of course the Entrance. The Carousing is the rondo allegro opened up by the entrance; its episodes, variously riotous or plangent, form islands within an overall loosely fugal texture. At the climax the opening is regained, its elements reordered and drastically curtailed. It leads this time into a rough drinking song which expands into a final grandiose apotheosis – as if the Viking longboats were tunnelling out into stormy Northern seas, then receding into the distance over the horizon.
Entrance:Carousing:Embarcation is dedicated to Malcolm Williamson in the year of his 60th birthday.
Robin Holloway

Robin Holloway: Entrance; Carousing; Embarcation.WAV

Ito As Time Is Passing.WAV

This describes a full revolution of the Earth, from Sunrise to Sunset, through the day and dark night. Premiered at Manchester RNCM 23rd September 1983. S short introduction of violent chords set against free cadenza-like passages of birdsong , leads to a fast scherzo, again punctuated by jabbing interruptions and ending in a cadenza. Here percussion and upper woodwind improvise on set pitches, marked by clusters on the piano.

Wilby Firestar.WAV

Theofanides writes:   I first encountered Jalal ad-Din Rumi’s poetry in Rome seven years ago when I went to hear Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Monsters of Grace.  I enjoyed the music enormously, but the thing that really moved me was Rumi’s poetry as translated by the great poet, Coleman Barks.  It was at once immediate and vivid, and it had a way of seeing things in which joy, love, and gratitude mingled with an underlying sense of longing and restlessness to return to the divine.  The density of wisdom in this poetry really struck me, and I found myself focusing on particular lines in an almost mantra-like way, repeating them aloud over and over and writing musical responses to them.

The Here And Now  Theofanides

Hesketh writes: title is taken from an anonymous Middle English guide to mystical experience, exploring the notion that unknowing may lead to a form of resignation, knowledge and a concomitant ' cloud of forgetting'.  Tim Reynish writes "In my opinion this is a major contribution to the Wind Ensemble repertoire, not easy, and in my view the construction is similar to that of Schoenberg's Erwartung, "a continuous stream of consciousness",

Hesketh The Cloud Of Unknowing.WAV

The Norwegian military commissioned 21 composers to write a march to be played for the New Century by the seven Norwegian Military Bands. This is my favorite but a lot of them are great.

charM  by  Helge Sunde.WAV

From a concert at the Kharkiv I P Kotlyarevsky State University of Arts April 2010, conductor Tim Reynish.

02 Elgar Enigma In Kharkov

Adam writes: This short work is dedicated to Timothy Reynish and is a study in restraint, with the dynamic rarely above piano. This seven minute work projects a sense of loss but never descends into despair. At one point the members of the ensemble hum a canon based on the opening theme. The work ends with a sudden burst of birdsong that dies away with a repetition of two brass chords over which is written ‘Rest in Peace.’

Tranquility by Adam Gorb

Norther Lament (1967)  by Derek Bourgeois written for my sixtieth birthday, bases on the slow movement of his Brass Quintet written for the Halle Brass.

02 Northern Lament

Anthony Burgess was invited to write this work by the American double bassist, Jonathan Haskell, in the Suisse Romande Orchestra, and Haskell conducted the premiere on 11th April 1988. Powell writes:  But the title is a trick. The calendar and the chromatic scale have in common a division into twelve. As the year moves from January to December, so in my work the musical intervals I exploit harmonically run from the minor second to the octave.” Scored for double wind quartet;trumpet, horn, timps, percussion and piano

Anthony Burgess/Mr Burgess’s Almanack  25.03.2018.edited

This was written originally for brass quintet for the Halle Brass, and re-scored for wind band in 1997 to celebrate my 60th birthday. There are two contrasted ideas, a yearning lyrical theme and a series of fanfares which might remind us of similar passages in works by Britten or Shostakovich.

Northern Lament/Derek Bourgeois

The Suite 1984 was composed for the National Youth Wind Orchestra of Great Britain and conducted by Harry Legge. The work is drawn from the composer's music for the film and is scored for a large wind orchestra. The Suite is in one continuous movement; it begins with a setting of the old poem which Winston recalls while sitting in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. This is followed by a march, The march alternates with varied reflective treatments of "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" until a final hymn to Oceania leads into a peaceful coda. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of a smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. But it was all right, everything was all right, the
struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

Tim Reynish MBE, Conductor

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