For Orchestra. aka Symphony No. 2, First Movement
Program note:
Awakening is conciously a traditional first symphonic movement (complete with exposition repeat that will never be taken....). This Neo-Classical impulse derived most directly from a love for Stravinsky's Symphony in C, and embraces several other famous first symphonic movements, namely: Brahms 1st Symphony, Rachmaninoff 2nd Symphony, Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony, and a few others to a lesser degree (Elgar 1st Symphony, for example, but this is more of an influence on the 4th movement of the symphony). There is a distinct extra-musical inspiration for this movement which supercedes its form in importance. The opening was composed upon waking from a dream about childhood. The movement is an awakening from a deep sleep in Autumn by a child. Very much in the spirit of Mahler's song (and 1st movement of his 1st Symphony), "Ging heut' Morgen Über's Feld" (albeit with a slightly Irish flair in the original tune), the child continues through a day, playing with and greeting Nature, full of thoughts, activities, visions, encounters real and imagined, dreams and fantasies, before returning to the warm sanctuary of sleep. The primary difference from the spirit of the youthful, upbeat Mahler movement is that this is in Autumn, and is infiltrated by a touch of the macabre and melancholy.
The clip presented here is the very opening, the awakening proper....
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