April 2024: at St Nicholas Church, Longparish, with Tim Redpath and Rachel Calaminus (2/3 of Trifarious) to try out our arrangements of Beethoven, St Georges, Gonzaga and Elkington.
One of the benefits of having six weeks ‘on the sick’ (see previous news item) was having time to complete the arrangements for this long-standing project. Chief amongst these were a condensation of the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony (including finding ways of moving out of and back into the arrangement in order to use it as a ‘container’ for the other pieces on the programme) and a transcription (for clarinet, bass clarinet, violin and viola) of Lilian Elkington’s Out of the Mist. Elkington’s piece was composed to mark the repatriation of the Unknown Warrior in 1920; reminiscent, perhaps, of Delius, Out of the Mist is a sombre, deeply lyrical lament that, like all of Elkington’s music, disappeared from public view until a chance rediscovery (some fifty years after its premiere) in a Worthing bookshop. It has been a great pleasure to help bring Out of the Mist back to life.
St Nicholas Church proved a wonderful venue and we are looking forward to playing the programme here early in 2025.
