My Mother Plays the Cello (2021)

orchestra (1.1.2.1 - 2.2.1.1 - timp - 2perc - harp - pno - strings)
c. 10’

My Mother Plays the Cello was commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for the 2021 Cybec 21st Century Composer Program. I dedicate this piece to my mother on the occasion of her 60th birthday. Even before I discovered that I loved music, it surrounded me. My mother plays the cello, and the sound of her playing underscored my childhood. In that underscore, no piece was more prominent than the ‘Prelude’ to J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major, BWV 1007. Material from the ‘Prelude’ is the basis of my composition. Excerpts from the Bach are stretched and stacked, reversed and recontextualised, exaggerated and expanded as the music journeys from a dramatic tutti to a central moment of stillness and back.