Programme Notes: This piece came about as a direct result of hearing Hannah Dawson(now a member of the successful Sacconi String Quartet) play at a concert in St John’s Smith Square in April 1998 and was written later that summer. The concerto is in one single movement which falls into five contrasting sections, with a cadenza, and was inspired by lines from Christopher Marlowe (1564 - 93) touching upon man in relation to the cosmos.....
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous Architecture of the world:
And measure every wand'ring planets course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always Moving as the Restless Spheres........
I have a long term obsession with space and this gave rise to an earlier work, "To the Stars - a Requiem for the Space Shuttle Challenger", first performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, in memory of the crew who perished at launch in January 1986. That accident was a defining moment in manned space exploration and for a while all seemed lost. This new piece is more optimistic and is essentially about journeys - the inward emotional journey, mirroring the hope that man will continue to look and travel outward to other worlds. The music begins and ends in the same distant and mysterious way - the traveller has passed by......but the journey goes on.”
