Concerto for 2 violins and small orchestra

It's near-impossible to get a new orchestral work performed. I'd always known that. So it was with astonishment that I awoke one morning knowing that I simply had to write a concerto for two violins. The idea made no sense, but I couldn't shake it.

Aware of the economics of the situation, I resolved to use an orchestra much smaller than the standard. Counting the two soloists, there are 29 players, whereas a typical orchestra may have 70.

To write a concerto was such a serendipity idea that I felt free to compose music that seems "happy". The first and last movements are lightweight and quirky, and even the slow movement gave me occasion to use the marking Grazioso (gracious) for the first time.

Hemiola, the title of the first movement, is a musical term for the ratio 3:2. Traditionally it has referred to small-scale variations of pulse. In this concerto movement, however, the hemiola is on a huge scale. Over the course of five minutes, we hear two pieces of music overlapping in the following way:

A	A		A
B		B

The "A" music is played three times by the first violin and its accompanists. Its beginning is always marked by castanets. The "B" music is played twice by the second soloist and accompanists. Its beginning is always marked by a timpani roll. When the hemiola is complete, the two soloists enjoy a cadenza before the orchestra rejoins to end the movement with a short palindrome.

The Grazioso movement takes up this new idea. The entire movement is an easy-to-follow palindrome of colors:

Passacaglia was the working title of the third movement. As in the Baroque form of that name, a series of harmonies is repeated many times. To make it more interesting, the two soloists play one passacaglia while the orchestra plays another. The two strands are never on the same harmony at the same time.

But it's more light-hearted than that description suggests. Bassoon and bass clarinet open the movement in a joking mood, as though mocking the two stars of the show. Several episodes follow, some soothing and some more agitated. After the climax, pairs of instruments resume the mockery: first an English horn and bass clarinet, then two horns, then two double-basses. The solo violins reclaim their rightful place with a cadenza, but their party is gate-crashed by the oboe and then everyone else tumbles in. The violins escape out the back door playing their passacaglia pizzicato, and vanish.

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