Day Of Desolation

Joby Talbot's Trumpet Concerto Desolation Wilderness was commissioned by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. First performed on 28th October 2006 by the Royal LiverpoolPhilharmonic Orchestra at The Philharmonic Hall Liverpool with Alison Balsom (to whom the work is dedicated) as soloist and JoAnn Falletta conductor. The Turku Philharmonic Orchestra gave the Finnish premiére performances on23rd and 24th November 2006.The Piano reduction of Desolation Wilderness includes Trumpet parts in B flat and C. (Suitable for advanced players).'In Early November 2005 my family and some friends visited thehigh Sierra Nevada in Northern California. As on former trips to the area I was struck by the strange and disarming contrast between the bright sunshine perfect blue sky and warm mountain air of the Sierran autumn; and theoccasional icy chill - sudden drops of temperature when the sun vanished behind the mountains momentary glimpses through the trees of distant snow clouds over the highest peaks. Nowhere was this dichotomy more apparent than inthe vast area of forests lakes and mountains known as Desolation Wilderness. Here the twisted shapes of the aspens are testament to the destructive power of winter. Sure enough that night the first snows fell and the highmountain passes we'd just crossed were closed till spring.

Par VAN NUETEN GUY. Contact by Guy Van Nueten originated from the feeling of being abandoned, such as a person who treks through a barren desert following a great disaster and asks himself if there's any point in carrying on when every day brings just more of the same - still more desert. I suspect that each of us has such a desert within himself, but that it depends on circumstances whether or not we choose to make the journey through it. Contact lays out a path that we can share. This music seems especially romantic to me, in the sense that the sounds have much to say about loneliness. There are moments where this album emphasises its own seriousness, then immediately afterwards invites us todance. Contact sticks out a hand, sometimes two, mostly to show the internal process of the composer - firstly the lack of fire and the abandoned longing for this, followed by the bewilderment that there is something that is still smouldering and that can be fanned into a blazing forest fire to burn away all the pain of desolation. For this reason it is also moving music - because it wants the recognition of the listener, wants us to feel our own desolation while the piano explores further depths and heights. At times a composition is almost carelessly abandoned and another one begun. Whoever looks closely at feelings and is honest with himself and the world is always a little cruel. But finally there is an end to that desert - he sees an oasis and also a beautiful hotel. Upon entering, he sees no-one, not even at the desk, but the reigning play of light and colour is of an otherworldly power. Maybe no other people are needed here and the beauty that prevails is enough. Then sounds of music arise and some people move across to the immense hall where a wing has been set up, behind which a man is sitting, his fingers moving across the keyboard. And only one thing is real: after desolation comes comfort. That person is you and that person is me. And that music is called Contact, directly from the soul of Van Nueten. Contact by Guy Van Nueten originated from the feeling of being abandoned, such as a person who treks through a barren desert following a great disaster and asks himself if there's any point in carrying on when every day brings just more of the same - still more desert. I suspect that each of us has such a desert within himself, but that it depends on circumstances whether or not we choose to make the journey through it. Contact lays out a path that we can share. This music seems especially romantic to me, in the sense that the sounds have much to say about loneliness. There are moments where this album emphasises its own seriousness, then immediately afterwards invites us todance. Contact sticks out a hand, sometimes two, mostly to show the internal process of the composer - firstly the lack of fire and the abandoned longing for this, followed by the bewilderment that there is something that is still smouldering and that can be fanned into a blazing forest fire to burn away all the pain of desolation. For this reason it is also moving music - because it wants the recognition of the listener, wants us to feel our own desolation while the piano explores further depths and heights. At times a composition is almost carelessly abandoned and another one begun. Whoever looks closely at feelings and is honest with himself and the world is always a little cruel. But finally there is an end to that desert - he sees an oasis and also a beautiful hotel. Upon entering, he sees no-one, not even at the desk, but the reigning play of light and colour is of an otherworldly power. Maybe no other people are needed here and the beauty that prevails is enough. Then sounds of music arise and some people move across to the immense hall where a wing has been set up, behind which a man is sitting, his fingers moving across the keyboard. And only one thing is real: after desolation comes comfort. That person is you and that person is me. And that music is called Contact, directly from the soul of Van Nueten./ Répertoire / Piano

For Clarinet solo with wind quartet and string quartet. Score OnlyFirst performed by Michael Collins Clarinet London Winds and the Endellion String Quartet on 27th January 2011 at the Wigmore Hall London.Scoring:Solo ClarinetFluteOboeBassoonFrench Horn2 ViolinsViolaCelloDuration:circa 13 minutes'During a visit to the exhibition of Francis Bacon at the Tate Gallery in December 2008my eye fell on Figure in a Landscape 1945 which resonated in me powerfully. It is a sceneof devastation and despair and also it seemed to me of latent anger and hostility... butabove it all a serene blue sky beckons. So perhaps even in the darkest moments there is aglimmer of hope - the possibility of change.This idea became the starting point for this work - Towards the Blue - a mini concerto forclarinet who eventually becomes the leader of the group.The work starts without the clarinet and all is desolate yet fiercely argumentative discordant and uncomfortable. Suddenly the offstage clarinet is heard and the players insurprise are quietened. However when the clarinet enters and approaches with a lyricalmusical motif some of the players respond others resist. Gradually the clarinetpersuades the dissident voices to join him in a spirit of co-operation and harmony.A brief memory of the opening desolation casts a momentary shadow which is quicklydispelled by the coda marked Gioioso.'Thea Musgrave (May 13th 2010)Parts available for hire separately

Scored for chamber orchestra and dating from 1999 this work is built on MacMillan’s /i> shorter Piano Sonata of 1985. That work was composed during a bitter Ayrshire winter: the composer recalls the barren trees and hard frozen ground of a landscape that was empty and silent but for the harsh hollow cry from the rookeries. Throughout the three movements the music conveys a mood of elegy despair and desolation. In Symphony no 2 the original has been ‘opened up’ to new forms of expansion sometimes according to colouristic potential at other times to dramatic or even originally unseen potential. The first movement is short and preparatory to the moreextended second movement. The third movement is a brief postlude almost an afterthought to what has been heard during which some of the principal memories of the earlier movements are stated over some quotations from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

This work for soprano solo and SATB chorus was commissioned by the Norwich Festival of Contemporary Church Music.Tavener:'In the Orthodox Church the Lament of the Mother of God is normally sung on Holy and Great Friday. Inits full length it lasts about half and hour and it is intoned by the Priest or Bishop while the people venerate the Epitaphios (or Shroud of the Dead Christ) which is in the centre of the church and decorated withflowers.The Lament must be sung with an ikon-like stillness and great purity. It grows in intensity as it climbs in tessitura but without anything sudden or remotely melodramatic.For the Orthodox Church there is never thesense of absolute desolation felt by the Western Church on Good Friday. Hence the cry of the Mother of God 'Dost thou change my grief to gladness by thy Resurrection?' followed by the full forces: 'Rise O God and judge theearth.'Mother of God also features in the film Philomena starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan and directed by Stephen Frears.

Score and Parts (8-8-4-4-4)-An orchestration of Serebrier's 1964 choral work Vocalise Adagio paints a portrait of desolation with the composer's characteristic Slavic dark touch and elegiac and nostalgic mood. Recording credit: St. Michel Strings José Serebrier conducting. Alba Records ABCD 341

Ian Venables' The Song Of The Severn is a cycle of songs in celebration of Worcestershire scored for Baritone Voice String Quartet and Piano. “The Song of the Severn…clothes poems by Masefield Housman John Drinkwater and Philip Worner in sharply memorable music of bewitching lyricism idiomatic grace and rapt instinct…No lover of the early-20th-century English art song or pastoral tradition should fail to investigate this notable issue.” - Andrew Achenbach Gramophone “These five songs for voice with piano and string quartet accompaniment take the Severn Riverand its historical and natural associations as a common theme. They are absolutely stunning in their poignant beauty their profoundly noble and moving sense of tragedy and desolation that never turns sentimental or lachrymose and their perfect union of text and music to a level that rivals Schubert and Mahler.” - James A. Altena Fanfare Magazine

Bill Zakariasen of the New York Daily News says 'The program included one bona fide masterpiece written in 1967 by Peter Sculthorpe. . .Sun Music III (Nos. I II and IV are equally imposing) could have been written only in Australia. The sounds of the Far East - notably the Balinese gamelan - are juxtaposed with wild string harmonics and incredibly subtle use of percussion while long-breathed themes of utmost desolation place us square in the middle of the Outback.'25 January 1987