

Scott Michal
Remembrance
Short instrumentation: 2 1 2 1 - 2 2 1 0, timp, perc(2), hp, str
Duration: 24'
Solos:
flute
Instrumentation details:
1st flute
2nd flute (+picc)
oboe
1st clarinet in A
2nd clarinet in A
bassoon
1st horn in F
2nd horn in F
1st trumpet in C
2nd trumpet in C
trombone
timpani
percussion (2 players)
harp
violin I (12 players)
violin II (10 players)
viola (8 players)
violoncello (8 players)
double bass (5 players)
Remembrance
Sample pages
Work introduction
This first and last movement of this work are based on several compositions I was working on when my first wife died of cancer at the age of only twenty six. My shattered life was consumed with raising our two babies and the focus of my life shifted to simply surviving from day to day, substituted for my youthful dreams of composing.. When I took up composition again a few years later, I found myself emotionally unable to continue work on these earlier compositions and I set them aside. Instead, I poured my raw grief into an Elegy for flute and string orchestra with harp. 17 years later I was finally thinking of using the earlier pieces in a work honoring Kim, when Wendell Dobbs asked me to compose a flute concerto for him.
The new movements are paired around the centerpiece of the earlier Elegy.
Kim's mother, sister, and our daughter are all flautists, Our son plays french horn, and my instrument was the cello, and the concerto uses their instruments as their voices. The solo violin (my wife's instrument) appears throughout as a remembrance, along with a solo quartet of strings, Kim had been an avid member of the Griffing String Quartet.