Michael Nyman's Musique A Grande Vitesse (MGV) translates as ‘high speed music’ and was commissioned by the Festival de Lille for the inauguration of the TGV North EuropeanParis-Lille line in 1993. This piece of sheet music runs continuously but was conceived as an abstract imaginary journey; or rather five inter-connected journeys each ending with a slow mainly stepwise melody which isonly heard in its 'genuine' form when the piece reaches its destination. Thematic 'transformation' is a key to MGV as a whole. Throughout the piece ideas - rhythmic melodic harmonic motivic textural -constantly change their identity as they pass through different musical 'environments'. The opening bars establish both a recurrent rhythmic principle - 9 11 or 13-beat rhythmic cycles heard against a regular 8 - and aharmonic process - chord sequences (mainly over C and E) which have the note E in common. (Coincidentally MGV begins in C and ends in E). A later scalic syncopated figure (again first heard over C E and A)begins the second section featuring Brass in D flat. The topography of MGV should be experienced without reference to planning description or timetables. Its tempo changes and unpredictable slowings downbear no logical relation to the high speed of the Paris-Lille journey while the temptation to treat MGV as a concerto grosso with the Michael Nyman band as the ripeno was resisted: more suitably theband (amplified in live performance) lays down the tracks on which MGV runs.

Moving Parts is the music for Benjamin Millepied’s ballet of the same name. Scored for Violin Clarinet and Pipe Organ the piece is a series of rhythmic etudes. The slow movement is a very slow passacaglia with I hope unexpected lyrical melodies in the violin. After an extended Organ toccata built over a drone a brief slow movement creates a natural midpoint. The violin aggressively plucking builds up to form a canon with a clarinet and after a loud outburst from the organ the piece ends quietly. Moving Parts written in 2012 is dedicated to Benjamin and the Los Angeles Dance Project. 

Par ADES THOMAS. In Three Studies from Couperin, Thomas Adès empathetically reworks three pieces by the Baroque composer into music that is distinctively Adès without dismissing the source material. The basic structures of harmony and duration in ?Les Amusemens?, ?Les Tours de Passe-passe?, and ?L?Âme-en-Peine? remain unchanged, but the retouching of rhythm, texture and orchestral colours reveals an enthralling music that could be no other composer. The Three Studies has earned critical praise and popularity, having received over 200 public performances in more than 20 countries since its 2006 premiere. ?Three Studies from Couperin, looks at the music as if through a kaleidoscope, the shattered pieces of the original tumbling around like glinting fragments of coloured glass.? Financial Times / Date parution : 2022-06-14/ Répertoire / Orchestre de Chambre

Work for High Voice Alto Flute Horn Harp and Viola. Text: TS Eliot.Quoting Wood: 'I had for many years wanted to set Marina and the opportunity came to start work on it in mid August 1988. About a year later havingcompleted in the meantime the Horn Trio Opus 29 and the Cantata Opus 30 I turned back to the drafts of Marina and completed it on 10 September 1989. It is dedicated to the memory of my daughter who was murdered in Bavaria on 10September 1988.Marina is the heroine of Shakespeare’s Pericles a play remarkable for one of the most moving of all Shakespeare’s recognition scenes a dramatic situation which never failed to draw out his deepest expressionof feeling. This is the re-meeting of an ageing father with his long-lost daughter born at sea during the storm in which her mother is thought to have died and long believed to be dead herself. Eliot transforms the twocharacter’s mutual recognition into a transfigured mediation and surrounds it with a wealth of mainly marine imagery. In the words of Helen Gardener these images are: The prelude to a moment of ecstatic recognition. The voyagein Marina discovers in the ocean anisland and sees again a beloved face. Its theme is not the immortality of the soul but resurrection.