I wrote this little concertino back in 1986. It was performed in Boston by Alea III, under th baton of Theodore Antoniou. The soloist was Joseph Foley. The piece comes from a time before computer notation programs, so I only had an ink copy. I had fond memories of it and had long intended to computerize the score and perhaps make a few small corrections here and there. But as I looked at the score, I realized that the orchestration showed my inexperience at the time. The general sense of orchestration was promising, but far from complete. So this new version should be considered as the completion of an older sketch. Instrumentation is the same, except that I moved the mallet parts to a separate player. The earlier version (what I now consider as the sketch) had mallets covered by one of the percussionists. While there is some amusement in observing a player covering so many parts in such a short time, it’s not very considerate. There’s still plenty on everyone’s plate.
There is always a danger of a composer revisiting an older piece. There is a strong temptation to ‘recompose’ the music, moving it into the composer’s mature style and possibly losing the original intent. That’s not what I’ve done: it’s exactly the same piece—just properly orchestrated. The piece is something of a musical mirror. There’s a hint of that in the fact that it ends as it began, with slow, mysterious music. But the harmony and melodies are all reflections around the pitch of G: Harmony below G is an inversion of the harmony above. Some thing goes for the tunes. The result is an uncertain sort of tonality. I’ve not done another piece around this idea, although I possibly should.
At any rate it’s an enjoyable piece from a much younger me.