Nigel Osborne
In Camera
Duration: 19'
Instrumentation details:
1 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 0 - guit - 2 vln, vla, vc, cb
Osborne - In Camera for chamber ensemble
Work introduction
In Camera was written for the principal players of the
London Sinfonietta. It is intended to be a piece of real chamber music, and
although the work is scored for 13 instruments, it is unconducted.
The work is notionally
in three parts. The first is concerned with the essence of chamber music
playing: a warm and intensely social experience of statement, reply, dialogue
and accompaniment. The second part is more like a chamber concerto with sharply
contrasted interplay of solo and tutti writing, and in the third part, the
guitar, which has so far been submerged in the texture, rises to dominate the
ensemble as a soloist.
One may think of the
work as a set of three Nocturnes, the
first perhaps in the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffmann – a gathering of friends, a
punch-bowl, conversation and a gentle drift into storytelling and fantasy. The
second part is a more haunted Nocturne,
dynamic and charged with energy, whilst the third is closely related to a
guitar solo piece written for Rose Andresier called After Night, which is in turn a distant and very still reflection
of Schönberg’s powerful and moving Survivor
from Warsaw.
Nigel Osborne