Programme Notes

This piece is the second of my commissions from the Stamford Chamber Orchestra, and is much larger in scale than the first!

After the premiere of my first piece with SCO, Arthur’s Seat, I was approached by Mark Austin to write a piece for the orchestra’s concert for children in the spring of 2025. This would be paired with the Toy Symphony and Mozart’s 41st Symphony. After discussions with Mark, the orchestra’s leader Anja Smith, and guest conductor Michael Smedley, we opted to create a piece that would tell stories from Mozart’s life, and would also include children playing instruments and singing. Michael came up with the story and the script, and Anja recruited young musicians from the local primary schools

I’m quite proud of this work for two reasons: firstly, I wrote it despite suffering a major bout of writer’s block nearly the whole way through the piece, and yet I was still able to complete the piece! Secondly, Michael and Anja worked very hard to create the other half of the work: bringing the schoolchildren together, rehearsing them, and writing the narration.

The piece is organised into four movements:

I - Mozart in London; quoting his first symphony and London sketchbook, this short movement is set out in a trimmed-down sonata form

II - Mozart vs Clementi; recounting Mozart’s piano duel with Muzio Clementi, where the children violinists join in with variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman!”

III - My Friend Joseph Leutgeb; a famous passage from the last movement of the Horn Concerto in E-flat K495, with the narrator yelling absurd instructions at the soloist!

IV - Jupiter Song; the children’s choir sing about Mozart’s symphonic writing, to the tune of the finale of Symphony No.41 “The Jupiter”