Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Sheridan's search to find new and original harmonic idioms to voice today's instrumental music was inspired by Lyndall Hendrickson after she heard the premiere of his First Symphony in 2006. It led her to suggest to Sheridan that the time was ready for a Violin Concerto combining the instrument's sonorities and its own inherent percussive elements, with Sheridan's "sound palette" associated with the traditional language of percussion, in an orchestral context.

To meld these two distinctive sound elements into a single melodic fabric and create "new textural sonorities", the composer omitted reliance on the traditional background of woodwind and brass instruments in favour of the harp and mallet percussion. Sheridan saw this as providing the work with a multitude of rhythms and allowing the solo violin to "surge forward" as it follows and blends with music colours deriving from Celtic, Asian and European folk sources.

Work Details

Year: 2009

Instrumentation: Solo violin, percussion (4 players), harp, strings.

Duration: 20 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Solo part demanding. Harp and mallett percussion parts are quite demanding, but very practically written.

Dedication note: Dedicated to Lyndall Hendrickson

First performance: by University of Western Australia Orchestra, Semyon Kobets, Burhan Guner — 2009. Gala Opening to the 2009 triennial Australian Strings Association National Conference, Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle, WA.

This is a tonal work.