Meditation and Dance

Description

The duet was written for orchestral colleague and occasional pupil Adrian Turner, when he first acquired his Cor Anglais.  We enjoyed many duets together and explored sound and repertoire. I wanted to write a simple little tribute to congratulate him. I watched him improve a great deal as a player and fully understand the frustrations with reeds, tone, stamina  and technique.

The Meditation shows some beauty of dissonance, its mood plaintive and mysterious. It is a good challenge to focus on precise intonation too. The Dance is a more conventional romp, bringing some challenge in breath control. The playing level is fairly even between the two players, who may then wish to switch around for a repeat performance, if they can muster up the stamina!