Aurora
(2000) for string orchestra
Duration: ca 9'
str
Commissioned by the Colburn School of Performing Arts

World Premiere: 20 May 2000, Los Angeles
Student Orchestra of the Colburn School of Performing Arts
Daniel Lewis, conductor

Chinese Premiere: November 2000
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Shanghai and Beijing

Publisher:  Novello & Co, Ltd

Composer's Note:

This work was commissioned for the young students of the Colburn School of performing Arts to play, and it seemed to me that Aurora — Dawn — or the coming of light, would be an apt title. It would represent the potential and the musical burgeoning of young talent.

The music thus starts mysteriously, even tentatively, with a short melodic theme played by solo viola and accompanied by low soft chords emphasizing the note D. These two elements, in a variety of guises, keys and continuations, build in a gradual crescendo, till after a brief moment of darkness where "ghosts troop home," dawn finally arrives in the shape of a luminous D major chord. The music becomes "full and joyous" and in a brief coda, where the music seems suspended, all clouds dissolve and the D major turns out to be a dominant and on the very last note resolves to a G.

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