Memoria
Memoria is dedicated to Sidney “Jock” Sutcliffe (1918-2001), one of the finest oboists of the post-war era and, in his later years, an inspirational ‘cello supervisor at the Yehudi Menuhin School, with whom I spent some of the happiest hours of music-making.
The work is based on Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No.2 in D minor: in discussion with Jock’s three daughters, I discovered that it was one of his favourite pieces, and that he had practiced it privately for some fifty years before feeling ready to play it in public (he would joke that Casals had been hasty in performing the work after a “mere” ten years’ preparation). Using the Bach Suite seemed doubly appropriate, as Jock had spent many an hour helping me with the piece (resulting in one of the handful of performances that I was truly happy with).
There was a deliberate intention to avoid literal quotation: rather, the skeletal harmonic and structural form of the Bach is magnified so as to provide the framework of my work. This framework is then “ornamented” with original material, hopefully resulting in a piece that sounds nothing like the Bach but at the same time is deeply indebted to it.
Hopefully, Memoria can stand on its own, while at the same time being closely linked to the ‘cello suite that gave Jock so much pleasure.