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My concerto is really a cycle of seven bleak and brooding songs-without-words. The viola sings, and the orchestra echoes its song in predominantly soft and gentle colours: flute, harp and tolling gongs. Each 'song' ends with a horn 'lebewohl' farewell and each contains an allusion, sometimes hidden, to an opera, a song or a madrigal. The trio from Cosi fan tutte, 'Soave sia il vento', invokes gentle winds to blow the lovers' ship back to shore; Penelope despairs, 'You, you alone make no returning' in 'Torna il tranquillo al mare' from Monteverdi's 'Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria'; there is the ghost of Schumann's allusion to Beethoven's 'An die ferne Geliebte', and the reminiscences of Tristan ('No ship there on the sea?') and Idomeneo ('Placido e il mar, andiamo...'). The last song comes from Monteverdi's madrigal 'O sia tranquillo il mare': 'Whether the sea is calm or rough I will wait for you to return'. The singer's laments are carried away on the winds, and the music resolves into a slow, dark rocking. Viola Concerto was commissioned by Paul Silverthorne and the Cheltenham International Festival, with funds from South West Arts.

© John Woolrich

" A melancholic sequence of meditations on lost love, the concerto poignantly alludes to Monteverdi, Mozart, Wagner and others." Barry Millington, Evening Standard, 20 January 2004