Winter sunrise

Forces or Category: Violin, viola, cello

for violin, viola, and cello
This piece owes its title and much of its elegiac but optimistic character to a poem by Mary Webb. Webb's fine ...

Winter sunrise

Description

for violin, viola, and cello
This piece owes its title and much of its elegiac but optimistic character to a poem by Mary Webb. Webb's fine lyric verse is echoed in the song-like directness and simplicity of form captured in this single movement work.

Programme Notes:

Winter Sunrise, for violin, viola, and cello, was premièred by the Firebird String Trio at the 1996 Huddersfield Festival. It was written at the request of Shelly Frape in memory of her husband, Andrew, a close friend of the Festival. The piece owes its title, and much of its elagaic but optimistic character, to a poem by Mary Webb whose fine lyric verse is somewhat overshadowed by her novels.
The piece is a single movement, song-like in its directness and simplicity of form.
© Howard Skempton
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Winter sunrise

Howard Skempton

Composer Information

Howard Skempton (b.1947)

Howard Skempton has worked as a composer, accordionist, and music publisher. Renowned for the distinctive clarity of his musical language, in recent years he has concentrated increasingly on writing choral and vocal music. His choral commissions include works for the BBC Singers and the Belfast Philharmonic Society.