(2015) – Piano Trio
This piece is about remembrance, and above all explores various approaches to memory and grief. The music moves between an objective, meditative, even ceremonial character on the one hand; and a more personal, heart-on-sleeve expressiveness on the other. Further retrospection can be heard in musical references to memorial-like pieces such as Britten’s War Requiem, Strauss’s Metamorphosen (itself a reference to the ‘marcia funèbre’ movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No.3) and Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. In some cases musical material was drawn from the idea of engraving a name into a headstone or cenotaph.
Epitaph is dedicated to the memory of the harpist John Jones (1800-1844)