Instrumentation
4 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion (4 players), strings
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Other Information
Commissioned by the Gloucestershire Youth Orchestra for the opening concert of the Three Choirs Festival 1986.
Performed by the Dudley Schools Symphony Orchestra at the National Festival of ´Music for Youth´ at the Royal Festival Hall in July 1996.
´Downes talent is unquestionably a lyrical one, as is immediately demonstrated in the work´s evocation of the Cotswold landscape in the song-like opening melody for strings...it stilled Gloucester Cathedral before the first bar-line had been reached. But as if fully aware of this picture postcard world, Downes soon clouds his musical vocabulary with more jagged, strident, wholly 20th century utterances depicting the modern world of the town. The climax comes when the two sound worlds are set against each other, with the enduring beauty of the Cotswold landscape triumphing over all assaults. Instrumentation is lavishly bold and technicoloured...´
CLASSICAL MUSIC FORTNIGHTLY
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