Reflection Op.31a for violin and piano

Composer: Oliver Knussen (b. 1952)
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Composer: Oliver Knussen (b. 1952)

Performance date: 01/07/2017

Venue: St. Brendan’s Church

Composition Year: 2016-17

Duration: 00:07:17

Recording Engineer: Richard McCullough, RTÉ lyric fm

Instrumentation: vn, pf

Instrumentation Category:Duo

Commission: written for and dedicated to Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins.

Artists: Huw Watkins - [piano]
Tamsin Waley-Cohen - [violin]

This
beautifully crafted work is made of tiny brushstrokes suggesting
water, ripples mirroring each other and bursting out in expression
and high line.

Fiona Maddocks

As
a ravishing 8-minute interlude between the two Sonatas from 1917,
today’s performers have offered to play this musical reflection
composed a hundred years later.
Reflection
is
the composer’s first work since
Ophelia’s
Last Dance

from 2010 and it was written for and dedicated to Tamsin Waley-Cohen
and Huw Watkins.

The
composer says:
The
main melody began as a response to Gauguin’s painting of a Breton
woman painting and there is also, perhaps, an echo of the lonely
underwater world of an ondine, eventually breaking the surface at the
end of the piece.