HELLAWELL
Quadruple Elegy
(in the time of freedom)
for Violin and Chamber Orchestra
Full Score
PIERS HELLAWELL
Quadruple Elegy
(in the time of freedom)
for Violin and Chamber Orchestra
LEIP
Full Score
Written for Madeleine Mitchell
First performance on 16th April 1992, Queen Elizabeth Hall, by Madeleine Mitchell with the City of London Chamber Orchestra, Conducted by Christopher Zimmermann.
CD: This work has been recorded by Clio Gould (violin) and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Martyn Brabbins: Metronome MET CD 1059
PIERS HELLAWELL
Quadruple Elegy (in the time of freedom)
for Violin and Chamber Orchestra
I BAKU
In Baku, Azerbaijan a family was destroyed because the parents, from rival communities, returned to their two peoples only to be respectively rejected and murdered by them during the civil war in January 1990.
II TBILISI
In Tbilisi, Georgia a woman, dancing with her mother at the euphoric street demonstrations in the main square in April 1989, was murdered when Red Army soldiers, thought by observers to be drugged, butchered the unarmed protestors.
III TIMISOARA
The body of a young girl of great beauty among the terrible dead of Timisoara proclaimed that the protest belonged to everyone.
IV JAN PALAC AND THE FLAMING SKIER
JanPalac’s sacrifice in 1968 stands at the head of the long journey of protest, while a lesser known sacrifice was no less courageous and Frightful; in Romania in the late 1980s a party of British skiers saw a flaming cross-like apparition through the snow, and found that a lone skier had set himself alight in desperate protest at the Romanian regime and its secret police.
P.H.
Instrumentation
2 Flutes
2 Oboes
2 Clarinets
2 Bassoons
2 Horns
2 Trumpets
1 Percussion
(Tubular Bells, Bongos, Triangle, 2 Woodblocks, Glockenspiel. Tam-tam)
Solo Violin
Strings (8.8.6.4.3 is sufficient)
Duration c.24 minutes
Piers Hellawell
Piers Hellawell (b. 1956) has worked with leading artists such as the LSO, Schubert Ensemble, Dame Evelyn Glennie and the Hilliard Ensemble, who toured his Hilliard Songbook pieces worldwide. Orchestral works include Cors de chasse (for Håkan Hardenberger, Jonas Bylund and the Philharmonia Orchestra) and the BBC commission Dogs and Wolves (2006), while Syzygy was premiered in 2013 by the Stockholm Chamber Brass/Swedish Chamber Orchestra. 2016 saw Hellawell’s Wild Flow commissioned for the BBC Proms, and a UK tour of Up by the Roots – a collaboration with poet Sinéad Morrissey – as well as a composer feature at Detroit’s Great Lakes Festival. Hellawell has been Professor of Composition at Queen’s University of Belfast since 2002, and has spoken widely on issues of music and cultural ownership as Gresham Professor of Music in London, 2000–2003.
Piers Hellawell (*1956) hat mit vielen namhaften Künstlern und Ensembles zusammengearbeitet, u.a. mit dem London Symphony Orchestra, dem Schubert Ensemble, Evelyn Glennie und dem Hilliard Ensemble, das seinem Hilliard Songbook zu internationaler Bekanntheit verhalf. Zu Hellawells Orchesterwerken zählen Cors de chasse (für Håkan Hardenberger, Jonas Bylund und das Philharmonia Orchestra), das BBC-Auftragswerk Dogs and Wolves (2006) sowie Syzygy, das 2013 von Stockholm Chamber Brass und dem Swedish Chamber Orchestra uraufgeführt wurde. 2016 entstanden Wild Flow für die BBC Proms sowie Up by the Roots – ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt mit der Dichterin Sinéad Morrissey, das bei Konzerten in ganz Großbritannien und Nordirland zur Aufführung kam. Im gleichen Jahr bildete sein Schaffen einen Schwerpunkt des Great Lakes Festival in Detroit. Hellawell ist seit 2002 Professor an der Queen’s University in Belfast. Von 2000 bis 2003 hatte er die Londoner Gresham-Professur für Musik inne und setzte sich bei seinen Vorträgen mit Fragen des kulturellen Eigentums in der Musik auseinander.