In Memoriam and Celebration

The piece opens in a sombre tone, an oboe solo standing for the composer's own weeping in a sea of mourning, then breaks into a more energetic section celebrating her mother's life. The bombastic melody that follows nods both to the jazz feeling of Bumble Bee Boogie and to the elegant passages of Rustles of Spring, which were her mother's favourite pieces to play. It ends with an enormous rising chromatic scale in the piano, an ascent into the sky, before closing with a small trio of oboe, horn and euphonium — the piano by then absent.