Concerto for Orchestra

My Concerto for Orchestra was written in 2023/24 and is in one continuous, through-composed movement, lasting about 25 minutes. It has a subtitle - Ghosts - as the music seems to be haunted by other, earlier musical spirits and memories. Right from the start of the opening section we can hear allusions to folk-dance forms, an eastern European hymn and Scottish traditional music.

Various chamber groups emerge from within the orchestral fabric and there is much deliberate focus on soloistic playing throughout. Duets and trios are important - the work opens with an eleven-note theme being thrown between two trombones, and later there are other duos for clarinets, piccolo and tuba, and two violas.

Trios are also prominent - three bassoons at one point, as well as a quotation from Beethoven’s Ghost Trio (which gives this work its subtitle), and allusions to the famous Debussy trio of flute, viola and harp. Also in the spotlight at various points is a string quartet, a wind quintet and a brass sextet.

The work has four main interlocking sections. The first is fast and presents most of the initially important materials. The second section is slow and elegiac, and operates like a two-part canon, presenting many different combinations of the two lines, sometimes fully orchestral, other times soloistic and in chamber dimensions.

The third section, a scherzo, is marked presto. Its main “refrain” is an energetic, rhythmic theme based on my memories of the dance forms my children used to listen to when they were teenagers… The episodes between these focus on some of the chamber groups mentioned above. Eventually we hear a brief moment from the Beethoven Ghost Trio, but the piano is replaced by a celeste. This is then smudged into the Debussy memory and finally a new trio (cor anglais, bass clarinet and vibraphone) joins, all forming a trio of trios.

The Concerto culminates in an Allegro finale, based on an unsettled and compulsive compound rhythm, containing nasal fanfares on horns and counter-rhythmic interjections on trumpets, piccolo and xylophone. The music eventually subsides to a more serene conclusion, where the hymnic theme (which has haunted the music throughout) is given its final statement.

Programme note © James MacMillan 2024

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This virtuosic orchestral work bears the subtitle ‘Ghosts’, which James MacMillan links to Beethoven’s Ghost Trio Op. 70 No. 1. As he notes “the music seems to be haunted by other, earlier musical spirits and memories”. These not only rise up from the classical repertoire but also from folk and traditional music across a wide geographical range. The Beethoven memory is heard in an interlude for trio, one of a series of chamber music groupings, where a brief quotation from the Ghost Trio adopts phantom-form through the replacement of piano by celeste. This is one of MacMillan’s most personal scores, with its polystylistic approach perhaps descending from Shostakovich’s enigmatic final symphony and the wild fusions of Alfred Schnittke.

"...a succession of dazzling workouts for the various sections of the orchestra, with the players often spinning through prestissimo passagework in tightly knit pairs or trios."
The Times

“...a remarkably effective showpiece.”
The Guardian

"The music’s satirical energy and striving for transcendence were riveting."
Daily Telegraph