<<  -- 8 --  Roderic Dunnett    LISZTIAN SPARKLE

'This was my first orchestral piece for some ten, probably fifteen years; I'd written pieces for cello and strings, that kind of thing, but nothing for full orchestra.' [Small's Piano Concertino, recorded on 4TAY 4020, dates from 1978, and his Suite for Strings and Piano Concertante from 1990; both the last have been performed in Carnegie Hall.]

'Fantasy of the Red-Eyed Creature was a collaboration with eight year olds, high school Third Graders. These kids (from Fort Hunt Elementary School) have a wonderful imagination : the story they came up with, involving this slimy, slithery creature inside a crystal cave, was just so colourful. It runs something like this : A group of young children is on a beach playing, they wander into the water and they find themselves out of their parents' protection -- they've kind of slid down the coast a bit -- and they end up getting washed ashore on this island with a sheer cliff. They climb up to the top of the cliff and discover a hole, a sort of crack in the mountain; they fall in and are trapped inside this cave.

'So they start exploring, and they see these red eyes, and they are lured by this fascinating creature -- merely fascinating, because they don't know about evil yet -- into his crystal cave. Then they see all these sparkling little eye-like lights, and they realise that what they're seeing, the shimmering crystal effect, is in fact humans who have been frozen in the crystal. Anyway the story goes on from there.... ! But the point is that, coming back to composing for orchestra after a gap, I was at first quite apprehensive about what I would remember. But the colourfulness of the Red-Eyed Creature story helped me so much with orchestration, in the sense of suggesting ideas, it just wrote itself. I was pleased with the result, and it was a lot of fun to do!' The premiere was in April 2001; the success of the enterprise makes me wonder if Small shouldn't essay something along the lines of Oliver Knussen's post L'Enfant et les Sortileges operatic double bill, Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!

Small is a gift to the instrumentalist seeking fresh and original repetoire. He has written a clutch of chamber and instrumental pieces, including a Suite for Solo Cello, which 'filters' Bach through a host of 20th century ingredients -- Jazz, Kodály, Shostakovich (not surprisingly, the word 'Scherzando' appear twice; the economy of the surrounding allegri is typical, and the subtle, varied use of the instrument perfect); Phoenix, for the unusual pairing of flute and violin; A Game of Go, for two pianos [recorded alongside Corigliano, Dello Joio, Rzewski, Lutoslawski and Copland by Quattro Mani on Klavier Records K11106]; and Tweet for Two -- a delicious interweaving canonic banter between a pair of oboes [vividly recorded by Dan Doesher and Jeanine Reinier on 4TAY 4020].

In addition to The Twisted Pine Branch (with horn), there is a clutch of songs, to texts by James Joyce, William Carmichael, Emily Dickinson and Peter Viereck. For Short Story, commissioned for members of Washington's Georgetown Symphony Orchestra and recorded by the composer with members of the Dorian Wind Quintet, the four-part chamber ensemble of Twelve Snippets is extended to a quintet with the addition of an oboe (flute, oboe, clarinet, cello and piano).

Furthermore, two of Small's works have formed the basis of successful ballets : his Trio (for flute, cello and piano), first choreographed as 'Shikar' by Lynn Cote for the Washington Ballet's 1994 autumn series, has just been awarded the February 2000 Marin Ballet Dance Score Competition, serving as the inspiration for choreographer Cynthia Pepper's new work Babes -- a 'multi-generational' piece based on the relationships of sisters, aunts and girlfriends; and his Symphony for Solo Piano was used as the music for Subterranean, an ingenious piece of choreography by Lynn Cote set in a subway, performed live by the composer as part of Washington Ballet's 1997 Winter Series at the Kennedy Center. Cote depicts the interaction of eight characters waiting underground for a train : as one audience wag observed, 'If that's what goes on in the subway, I'm heading down there tomorrow!'

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