Instrumentation

nine cellos

Availability

Score and parts for hire

Programme Notes

A Palinode is, in poetry, a recantation, or more simply, second thoughts. The term applies twice over to this work, since in the first place it reflects the fact that, having set out to write a series of short studies for solo cello, I became distracted by a study in slow tempo, and this became – contrary to my original intention – the basis of the whole piece. But it also relates to the contrast between this work and my orchestral piece Broken Symmetry, completed a week or so before I began work on Palinode, and whose 200 pages of hectic activity last only just over twice the length of the four pages of this score.

Palinode consists in effect, of a sequence of variations on the opening melody, rising gradually to a climax which quite quickly dies away.

Colin Matthews

Palinode (nine cellos)

BBC Radio 3 (United Kingdom)

Palinode (nine cellos)

St John's Smith Square (London, United Kingdom)

Alexander Baillie/Bremen Ensemble

Palinode (nine cellos)

Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building, St Hilda's College (Oxford, United Kingdom)

Alexander Baillie/Bremen Ensemble

Palinode (nine cellos)

Church of St Mary the Great (Cambridge, United Kingdom)

Alexander Baillie/Bremen Ensemble

Palinode (nine cellos)

Chelmsford Cathedral (Chelmsford, Essex, United Kingdom)

Alexander Baillie/Bremen Ensemble