w17206
| Title | Surrounded Now By Strangers |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) |
| Composition date | 2007 |
| Duration (mins) | 17 |
| Category | concerto orchestra string |
| Instrumentation | Va / Str |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | |
| Notes | |
| Programme Note | I wrote this concerto for the viola player Seamus O'Grady, having regard to what I believe to be his artistic ethos and his view of the special nature of the viola. Seamus paid close attention to the work's evolution and to the composition process, but after the first draft was complete he virtually "lived" the piece for a period of time, making suggestions for widespread improvements to enhance the effectiveness of the solo part. I accepted almost all of these suggestions, and readily acknowledge that the present form of the concerto owes a considerable amount to Seamus's efforts. For all this advice and guidance I am eternally grateful. The title is borrowed from a line in my opera Re Your Tears, to a libretto by my friend David Barry. In the opera it refers specifically to the imagined experience of a severe confusional state but I have chosen it for its more general implications. It is a romantic concerto in the sense that it is "about" something and in its dramatic pitting of the lyrical soloist against the ungracious orchestra. It is all about mutual misunderstanding and he impossibility of communication. In the first half of the piece the soloist pathetically tries to find the lyrical core of the orchestra's coarse productions, bu he hasn't go much to go on! After a short but more intensely emotional central section (bars 115-153) in which the viola redoubles its efforts to make some sort of contact with the orchestra, the dynamic changes. Now it's the soloist who actively puts forward ideas, with orchestra appearing either unwilling or unable to find a response that doesn't end uncouthly. All attempts at rapprochement fail, and as the piece ends in a mood of retrospection, it is clear that neither party has understood the essential nature of the other. There was a certain amount of restrained theatricality in my original conception of the piece, consisting of changes in the soloist's physical attitude in relation to the audience. I accept that many viola players will probably find this fussy and unnecessary and I have removed it, but I authorise its use by those more extrovert players who might find such physical theatre a useful way of enhancing the piece's expressive potential. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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