Memories of Scotland

Description

I wrote Memories of Scotland in 2018 after a beautiful and sometimes spectacular driving holiday in Scotland with my wife, the dedicatee. It is based on a number of traditional Scottish Dances for solo violin, which are arranged into four paired movements. Each pair begins with a slow introduction, evoking the scenery of the Highlands. In the first movement, ‘A Mhairi Bhan Og (Fair Young Mary)’ I imagined a young woman singing to herself by the shores of a loch, while in the third ‘Huntingstone Castle’ I thought of a long abandoned and crumbling fortress, with centuries of history contained within its walls. The second movement begins with a breezy solo violin melody and continues with a series of lively, contrasting dance tunes. There is a slower, more whimsical central section based on ‘I Have a Bonnet Trimmed with Blue’ before the music builds again to a furious conclusion. The final movement begins very calmly with a depiction of  ‘The Heights of Dargai’, before we hear in the distance ‘The Inverness Gathering’, as if we are looking down on a growing crowd of revellers. The following dances include the rather inebriated ‘Loch Torridon’ and the wild ‘Devil in the Kitchen’, and the music builds to its end with the return of ’79th’s Farewell to Gibraltar’ from the second movement. ‘Memories of Scotland’ was first performed in Cambridge by Anna Downes (Violin) and the composer, and it has pleased audiences on many occasions since as a regular part of our repertoire.