Windows (1999)
for orchestra

 

Instrumentation:  3(pic)3(ca)3(bcl)3(cbn)/4431/timp.3perc/pf/str

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Commissioned by Richmond Ballet, Stoner Winslett, choreographer

 

COMPOSER'S NOTES

Windows was commissioned in 1998 by the Richmond (Virginia) Ballet as the concluding section of choreographer Stoner Winslett’s ballet of the same name. The complete ballet consists of four sections, each section a work by a different composer — Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Boris Blacher, and me — and each work based on the well-known theme from Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 for Solo Violin. The premise of the ballet is that one is looking through the 'window' of the time in which each composer lived, with music, choreography, costumes, and set design reflecting elements of that time frame.
    Windows was a 'new millennium' commission and, as such, reflects a sonic landscape at the turn of the twenty-first century, with influences of popular, folk, and rock music, and mixed with contemporary classical orchestral writing styles. The sixteen-minute work is scored for large orchestra with antiphonal trumpets placed at opposing sides of the hall. It opens with a 'call and response' of trumpets and horns, culminating in a resonant brass fanfare, then progresses through a sequence of twelve brief episodes of varying dynamic, rhythmic, and melodic/lyrical character.

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Premiere performance:  Richmond Ballet and Richmond Symphony, Ron Matson conductor, Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts, Richmond, VA, 1999