A suite for Brass and Percussion

A Suite for Brass and Percussion began life almost a decade earlier as a string quartet and found what its composer calls a far more suitable home in early 2019, when he rediscovered the manuscript while tidying his home studio. Remembering how much he had enjoyed writing it — and how awkward it had been for strings — he rebuilt it for winds, cutting the fourth movement altogether as insufficiently finished. The writing draws on his years in British brass bands, on composers such as Philip Sparke, Peter Graham and Paul Cooper, and on the late-romantic and mid-twentieth-century music he was absorbed in at school when the first version was written. Each movement has its own character and themes, but recurring material runs through all three and binds them: an insistent ostinato and short, sharp low brass chords drive the first with relentless momentum; a pensive yet optimistic second follows; and the suite closes with a dancing scherzo full of skip and high spirits. It is scored for piccolo trumpet, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, euphonium, timpani and percussion, and runs about nineteen minutes. The Sofia Philharmonic gave its Bulgarian premiere on 13 June 2021 in Bulgaria Hall.