Music archive entry

Following the success of 'The Shell Adagio for Strings' commissioned and premiered in 2004 by Marios Papadopoulos director and conductor of The Oxford Philomusica, I have been interested in revisiting the concept of having a piece consisting of a single slow movement. Together with the Nocturnal Fantasia for violin & piano and The Magic Mountain for cello & piano, the Adagio for Wind Quintet is part of a project that has fascinated me recently.

The Adagio for Wind Quintet is of spiritual nature, a mixture of melancholy, serenity and pain. As in larger and longer works the interest lies in creating contrasts. For example tonal and atonal in succession or together, long phrases followed by short motives, quiet moments before the tempest of emotions.