The First
Concerto for Orchestra, an ambitious adventure in constructionist
modernism, took three years of very different intensity to
write: the
tumultuous first movement was drafted in a few days; the
lyric/reflective second followed quite quickly; the elaborate and
protracted finale, which combines and extends all the music preceding
it, took over two years. The whole forms an excited critique
of the recent Concerto for Orchestra by
Tippett where I'd felt, after the
marvellous first two movements, that the piecemeal finale, patched
together from his King
Priam, was a cop-out.
My own first two movements were given a thrilling public rehearsal
under the auspices of the S.P.N.M. by
the London
Symphony Orchestra in 1971. The first
complete performance, however, (Glasgow 1973) made the ordeal
by organ concerto seem like sweetness and
fun! The work's extreme difficulty, its featured trio of
saxophones, its ideal rather than realistic notation, and the undoubted
over-extension of the finale, took such a toll that it has never
been played again. Recent exposure via a tape of this one-and-only
to younger composer friends has persuaded me to try to accept if
not love this thing of darkness. Rebarbative, often downright
ugly, it burns with passionate sincerity and an authenticity that
cannot be repudiated. A revized score is in progress: the
notation more practical, the finale cut and concentrated, but the
original roughness not sweetened or smoothed over in the light
of subsequent experience, or aesthetic and stylistic shifts.
(Further notes about the reworking of this piece occur in the context of the Fifth Concerton for Orchestra, op. 107.) |