Concerto for piccolo, piano and orchestra

The idea for the concerto came about after a successful first performance of the Sonata for piccolo and piano that took place in The Goods Shed in my hometown of Tetbury in November 2018. What started off as a mere pipedream, well aware that few orchestras, if any, were desperately waiting for an opportunity to premiere such a novel concept, became a genuine ambition for me.

I set to work regardless of practicalities as soon as I didn’t have any other commitments and produced four movements within a year. When I began writing the music another triumphant performance of the sonata had meanwhile taken place in Amsterdam, followed later in the year by a CD recording, launched at the end of 2019[1]. As the sonata’s fourth movement became a particular favourite of the musicians I pondered if a version with a light orchestral accompaniment couldn’t feature as the slow second movement. However, after finishing all four movements I started having second thoughts about it and decided to compose a new one in its place.

The approximate durations of the individual movements are as follows:

Total duration is approximately 35 minutes, allowing for pauses between the movements.

The concerto is dedicated to Ilonka Kolthof and Ralph van Raat.

While a live performance of the work is still pending, I put a provisional audio, made with NotePerformer3 from the Sibelius score, on my Music Page.

[1] The CD is entitled HALO and is available from trptk.com. It contains other new works by Dutch composers for the same combination and for piccolo solo, performed by Ilonka Kolthof and Ralph van Raat. It is the result of a project initiated by Ilonka and the Dutch Piccolo Project (www.dutchpiccoloproject.com).