Adagio and Variations after Mozart for chamber ensemble (Beamish)
Movements
Notes
Sally Beamish is one of the UK’s most distinguished composer’s with a catalogue of works for soloists such as Hakan Hardenberger, Martin Frost, Steven Isserlis and Janine Jansen. Originally a viola player in the London Sinfonietta and Academy of St Martin in the Fields, she moved to Scotland in 1990 to focus on composition. Her output contains many pieces for saxophone(s) and for viola, in addition to three oratorios and many concertos.
This is her second wind quintet, with the first, “The Naming of Birds,” written for the Reykjavik Wind quintet in 2001. This work however, was initially commissioned purely as an arrangement rather than a fresh composition.
“When the New London Chamber Ensemble asked me to make an arrangement of this Mozart ‘Adagio’, I was much taken with the glass harmonica performances I found on Youtube! I wanted to try and capture some of the strange beauty of the instrument. I used cor anglais rather than oboe to give a warm, dark quality to the quintet – but didn’t want to add anything of my own, as the music is so complete. However, when I’d finished, I had the impulse to launch into a set of variations, and here I cast each of the five instruments in turn as a soloist, sometimes with a duo partner. The Adagio theme returns at the end, with each player adding a fragment from its own variation.”
Sally Beamish
The piece was first performed at the Wigmore Hall, London, by the New London Chamber Ensemble, in July 2011.
