En blanc et noir

For this commission from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony the composer was requested to create an orchestration of Debussy’s late masterpiece for two pianos, En blanc et noir. Holloway suggested that "these pieces draw their colour, their emotion, simply from the piano. So the orchestration is intended to be an opening out of the music’s physical resonance, not in the manner of Debussy but as a homage and in the spirit of Debussy." Once again, Holloway has taken a lesser-known piece by a great composer and made it more widely accessible to the music-loving audience.

Repertoire Note by Peter Marchbank