The Third Concerto for
Orchestra had been simmering
on the back burner ever since its stirring origin in the sights
and sounds of Brazil and Peru back in 1981. Inhibited at
first by the theft of all the sketches made in direct contact
with some very vivid places (the thieves must have been chagrined
to find this rather than money), it was delayed later by endless
dithering over its actual commission. Perhaps the long
period between raw and cooked helped this huge beast into shapely
being. Impulses that might, too soon, have led merely to
picture-postcard evocation deepened and thickened into a complex
structure of pure abstraction.
Or so I thought till, arriving late for the first rehearsal,
a sectional for strings alone, I plunged instantly into a sound
that reeked of hot clammy fecund strangulated Amazonina jungle...