These three pieces for cello and piano are meditations – personal secular and musical – on images from religious poetry. The title of No. 1 Angels bending near the earth comes from a carol which begins‘It came upon the midnight clear’ by the Massachusetts pastor and poet Edmund Sears. The full reference is to “angels bending near the earth/to touch their harps of gold” and this is the inspiration forthe music with piano arpeggios swooping down over the rich central band of sound produced by the cello. No. 2’s title In death’s dark vale is a brief paraphrase (from a Scottish hymnal) of Psalm 23; thefull quotation is “yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil”. The image here is of human life lived against the prospect of impending death. The cello plays a hasty self-absorbed continuo whilst around it piano motifs and chords of different height and depth create an evolving backdrop. No. 3 O sapientia is the only movement which quotes a musical original; Hildegard ofBingen’s hymn O virtus sapientiae –“O strength of wisdom”. This is a calm elegaic set of variations for the cello on Hildegard’s melody accompanied by mostly bright optimistic refl ections from thepiano. Commissioned by cellist Jonathan Miller of Boston MA. First performance on 23 September 2016 at Hamilton Hall Salem MA by Jonathan Miller (cello) and Randall Hodgkinson (piano)

Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. Cantata No. 211: Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be quiet, chatter not) BWV 211. The Coffee Cantata (BA 10211) and the Peasant Cantata (BA 10212) both on librettos by Picander, are among the best-known and most frequently performed of Bach's secular cantatas. Written in or around 1733, the Coffee Cantata deals humorously with the importance of the newly fashionable beverage. This is demonstrated in the soprano aria ; Ah, how sweet the coffee tastes, lovelier than a thousand kisses, milder than Muscatel. Both cantatas reveal Bach's mastery in their unusual subject-matter, formal design, andmusical workmanship. Now they appear in separate editions based on the ; New Bach Edition with straightforward and easy-to-play piano reductions by Andreas Köhs. - Urtext of the ; New Bach Edition. - Straightforward and easy-to-play piano reduction. - Vocal score (BA10211-90), performance material (BA10211) and study score (TP1211) available for sale/ Répertoire / Partition de Poche

At First Light was commissioned by Eric Bruskin a resident of Philadelphia USA in memory of his mother. Eric had a longstanding enthusiasm for my work and I was touched to be the person he approached for a task which is both a privilege and a daunting responsibility. In a sense no music can ever measure up to the weight of love or the hope of consolation vested in it under such circumstances – but in memory I carry the deaths of both my own parents and I was able to draw upon that. Eric’s fondness for my Cello Sonata (itself written in memoriam) led him to ask that I include a solo ‘cello part in the new work – but his attachment also to my polyphonic sacred choral writing meant that he wanted a centrepiece which would be both a showcase of that approach and the celebration of a life well lived. Therefore the seven movements of At First Light arrange themselves as a series of slow meditations surrounding an exuberant 9-minute motet in which the lamenting cello falls temporarily silent. Eric’s Jewish faith meant that approaching an agnostic humanist brought up within the Anglican tradition was hardly free of problems! Gradually though I was able to win his approval for a collated mosaic of texts. This embraces some liturgical Latin (necessary for the motet) as the shared preserve of broad western culture in general but balances it with a secular approach to loss celebration remembrance and the many shades of our mourning those whom we see no longer. Eric was adamant that he did not want the title Requiem; but what has emerged is still a form of semi-secular Requiem in all but name taking its title instead from a phrase in the poem by Thomas Blackburn set as the third movement. This seemed to suggest succinctly how the loss of one very close to us is an awakening into an unfamiliar world where everything is changed. Following the exuberant central movement the texts by the Lebanese-born Kahlil Gibran and the US Kentuckian poet Wendell Berry first address the departed loved one directly then place us within an imaginary funeral cortège where the perennial and universal in human experience become personal without subscribing explicitly to any particular faith (or lack of it). The final text of all is a translation of a Hebraic prayer requested and provided by Eric Bruskin which serves to mirror its Latin counterpart heard at the outset. Throughout the lamenting cello represents a commentary on the experience articulated in the text. It evokes and in a sense tries to embrace and sanctify the individual existential journeys of the bereft as they in turn seek to make their own sense of what the short-lived Second World War poet Alun Lewis called ‘the unbearable beauty of the dead’ (movement 5). In a modern world hostage to ever greater menace displacement bloodshed and anguish I hope fervently that this music not only brings a measure of solace to the person who commissioned it but also makes its own small contribu