Concertante Works Since 1972

Thomas Adès - Märchentänze, for violin and orchestra (2021)


Ondine press release for album

In the Autumn of 2021, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its new chief conductor, Nicholas Collon, arranged a Thomas Adès festival in Helsinki. One of the highlights of the festival’s program was the world première of Märchentänze in its version for violin and orchestra performed by violinist Pekka Kuusisto.

Simon Cummings of 5:4 did not have much good to say about the work, but I enjoyed what I heard of it.

Programme note
I composed these four Märchentänze (“dances from fairytale”) in 2020, originally for violin and piano, then a year later made this orchestral version. The first movement is a fantasy on the folk song Two Magicians, immortalised by Steeleye Span, about the immemorial generative dance of the sexes. A hushed movement follows, the chant-like tune presented as a round. The third movement, A Skylark for Jane, is an outpouring of birdsong, each individual orchestra member freely echoing the soloist to create an “exaltation” of skylarks. The final dance begins with an energetic elfin theme, and grows into a writhing dance. Many themes grapple, twining around each other like otters, towards a decisive conclusion.

—Thomas Adès

MISSY MAZZOLI | Dark with Excessive Bright: Concerto for Contrabass and String Orchestra (ACO Originals, Live from City Recital Hall, Sydney, 2018)


Maxime Bibeau
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Richard Tognetti
Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises
℗ 2020 Australian Chamber Orchestra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Missy Mazzoli (born October 27, 1980) is an American composer and pianist who is a member of the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music. She has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral and operatic work. In 2018 she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera House.

She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band dedicated to performing her music. From 2012-2015 she was composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.

Anna Clyne | The Seamstress (2014-15)


Jennifer Koh
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Saraki Oramo, Irene Buckley
from the album, Anna Clyne: Mythologies
Released on: 2020-10-16
℗ 2020 Anna Clyne

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clyne began writing music as a child, completing her first composition at age 11. She formally studied music at the University of Edinburgh, from which she graduated with a first-class Bachelor of Music degree with honours. She later studied at the Manhattan School of Music and earned a MA degree in music. Her teachers have included Marina Adamia, Marjan Mozetich and Julia Wolfe.

Clyne was director of the New York Youth Symphony's "Making Score" programme for young composers from 2008 to 2010. In October 2009, Clyne and Mason Bates were named co-composers in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), as of the 2010–2011 season. She took up the residency in 2010, for a scheduled term of 2 years. In January 2012, her CSO contract as co-composer in residence was extended through the 2013–2014 season. After completing her tenure with the CSO, Clyne was announced as the composer-in-residence for Orchestre national d'Île-de-France from 2014 to 2016, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's 2015–2016 season, and The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra from 2017–2019. Clyne was appointed Associate Composer with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 2019–2022.

Linda Catlin Smith | Path Of Uneven Stones
for Solo Piano and Ensemble
Performed on December 3rd, 2017
Betty Oliphant Theatre, Toronto

Eve Egoyan, Solo Piano
Robert Aitken, Conductor
Doug Stewart - Flute
Max Christie - Clarinet
Chris Gongos, Bardhyl Gjevori - Horns
Ian Cowie - Trombone
Rick Sacks - Percussion
Erica Goodman - Harp
Stephen Sitarski, Carol Lynn Fujino - Violins
Doug Perry - Viola

Program Note
Path of Uneven Stones was commissioned by the Société de Musique Contemporaine de Québec (SMCQ) through the Canada Council for the Arts. Central to the work is the piano, which is soloistic, yet non-heroic - a kind of anti-concerto.

Throughout the work there are moments where I was trying to create a thicker texture than often found in my work, though at other moments the work thins to almost nothing. The work explores melodic line, (sometimes several lines in layers), which have a slightly uneven rhythmic nature, a path where the stones are unevenly spaced perhaps, though there are places where evenness is paramount. — Linda Catlin Smith

Helen Grime | Trumpet Concerto (2022)
(night-sky-blue)

The starting point for Helen Grime’s Trumpet Concerto was the theme of night, in particular nocturnal gardens. Her inspiration came from a book of photographs depicting scenes from the natural world taken after darkness had fallen. Images of organic growth and the nocturnal life filled the composer’s mind and are reflected in music that is in a constant state of transformation.

The concerto is in a single movement, the music evolving over a series of interlinked sections. It begins in a mood of hushed stillness, over which the trumpet introduces an expansive melody. Gradually the solo line becomes more elaborate and virtuosic. As the music moves into its second section, a rhythmic, percussive motif is fired back and forth between soloist and orchestra. The music continues to spin and gain momentum, whilst alternating with freer, dreamlike passages in which vibraphone and harp hover in the background. Increasing in speed and intensity, the concerto finally reaches its climax with an explosion of orchestral colour. In its wake comes a return to the stasis of the opening music.

The work’s subtitle, night-sky-blue, is taken from a poem by Fiona Benson.

Programme note © 2022 Chester Music Ltd.

Linda Catlin Smith – Wilderness


Wilderness was composed in 2005, and while it would be inaccurate to call it a work for violin and orchestra (still less a concerto), a solo violin has a role distinct from the rest of the instruments. However, the extent to which the violin is fully separate, i.e. representing the explorer of the wilderness created by the orchestra, isn’t merely debatable but changes throughout the course of the piece.

As wildernesses go, Smith’s is a relatively mild one, strange rather than directly inhospitable. The environment is one typified by clusters, forming a smeary texture in the strings, while the winds and brass tend towards shorter sustained chords. The combined effect is somewhat vaporous, more like a complex cloud formation than a solid wilderness of rock or land. As such, the solo violin’s halting journey through this is made through a process of floating and gliding. It’s this tone of elegance, even grace, permeating Wilderness that minimises how unsettling it feels, generally occupying a restful place, perhaps sparse but nonetheless colourful. (5:4 December 20, 2022)

Carter Pann - Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra (2019)


I. The Old Line
II. Aria: Injurious Graffito
III. Jump!
IV. Hymn: A Love Supreme

Christopher Creviston, soprano saxophone
Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra
Jeffery Meyer, conductor

Carter Pann studied composition and piano at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. His teachers include Samuel Adler, William Albright, Warren Benson, William Bolcom, David Liptak, Joseph Schwantner, and Bright Sheng, and piano with Barry Snyder.

Another good concerto by Anna Clyne:

Anna Clyne : DANCE - I. when you’re broken open
concerto for cello and orchestra


Programme Note
DANCE is dedicated with much love to my father, Leslie Clyne.

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

— Rumi

The work is in five movements according to the five lines of the poem.

I when you're broken open
II if you've torn the bandage off
III in the middle of the fighting
IV in your blood
V when you're perfectly free

“I’m struggling to remember the last time a piece of contemporary music made me cry. ... in the final movement of Anna Clyne’s DANCE, a cello concerto in all but name, a bear-hug of a theme emerges through angry, percussive col legno snaps that is so beautiful, so heartfelt that it instantly drew tears on first hearing. Repeated listening had a similar effect.” — Gramophone

Gubaidulina: Offertorium - Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
Gidon Kremer · Boston Symphony Orchestra · Charles Dutoit


Like many of her other pieces, Offertorium contains religious elements. Even the name is a reference to that section of a Mass (performed immediately after the Credo) that is sung while the priest is offering up the prepared bread and wine. The work takes as its overarching theme the concepts of sacrifice and offering: the sacrifice of Christ during the Crucifixion, God’s offering in creating the Earth, the sacrifice of the performer to the tone, the sacrifice of the composer to the art, and the sacrifice of the main musical theme to disintegration and, later, reconstruction.

The work is centered on the musical theme given by Frederick the Great to Johann Sebastian Bach which formed the basis of his Musikalisches Opfer (BWV 1079). The introduction presents the theme almost whole: it lacks only the last note. The soloist then enters, beginning a series of variations, each of which removes one note from the beginning and end of the theme. (After the third variation, the original theme is hard to make out.) After the theme's demise the central section is a free rhapsody.[citation needed]

The final section is a slow string chorale that resembles a Russian Orthodox hymn. Beneath this, the harps and piano reconstruct the theme note by note, in reverse (retrograde), a process that concludes only at the very end with a complete statement from the solo violin. In uniting her twin inspirations, Webern and Bach, and in the deep Christian symbolism of the theme's "death" and "resurrection", Offertorium is a work representative of Gubaidulina's mature period. (source)