Dark Room
Instrumentation: Solo clarinet, flute/piccolo, oboe, bassoon/contrabassoon, horn in F, trumpet in C, trombone, harp, vibraphone/tenor drum/hi-hat cymbals/tambourine, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello, double bassDuration: 12'
Date of Composition: 2003
Commissioning Details: Commissioned by Jouko Heikura for Mark van de Wiel
Premiere: Ist perf: Mark van de Wiel (clarinet), London Sinfonietta, Martyn Brabbins (cond), 30 May 2003, Assembly Rooms, Bath (Bath International Music Festival)
Recording: London Sinfonietta, Martyn Brabbins (cond.) "The Jerwood Series 2" London Sinfonietta Label. Re. SINF CD2-2006
Availability: Score and parts available for rental, ref. HL356
Programme Note
A recent holiday in Morocco, and in particular Tangier with its
crumbling remnants of grandiose mansions, distilled some of the
essential inspirations behind so many of my compositions.
Decay
is therefore a major feature of this mini clarinet concerto – the
clearly etched textures of the opening becoming more opaque in later
transformations and the clarinet soloist moving away from a limited
collection of pitches to much darker (chromatic) areas.
Another
essential preoccupation of the piece (the reverse of the above) is the
idea of the darkroom in photography where an image comes into focus.
The two opposing types of material heard at the start abruptly
alternate and never quite resolve, but on each appearance become fuller
and more extended.
The sensuality … was supplied by music by other composers, most notably Morgan Hayes's Dark Room - a sexy, very operatic clarinet concerto.… Morgan Hayes's teeming but also convincingly evolving Dark Room for clarinet and ensemble.
Morgan Hayes's Dark Room, formally a short clarinet concerto, was a luscious wash of decaying and emerging patterns, inspired by the crumbling mansions of Tangier and the hardening images of developing photographs.
For further information about Morgan
Hayes and his works,
please e-mail Richard Bullen richard@stainer.co.uk
