La Belle Captive
2011
Taking its name from a painting by René Magritte, ‘La Belle Captive’ sees the tuba and piano create a directionless wash of harmonic and melodic material. The music seems to float serenely through a barren landscape until violent interjections begin to appear, first in the tuba then lagging behind in the piano. Rather than enacting a dialectic, the serenity and violence seem to coexist on different planes without interaction, drifting unpeturbed past one another at various points in the music. A similar relationship exists between the tuba and the piano – sometimes they are playing similar material, sometimes highly differentiated material, but any interaction seems almost co-incidental.
‘La Belle Captive’ was written for Jack Adler-McKean.
Instrumentation: Tuba and piano (4 hands)
Duration: c. 5″
Premiere: 2 June 2011 by Jack Adler-McKean at final year recital, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.
Further Performance: 17 June 2011 by Jack Adler-McKean at Royal Northern College of Music Gold Medal Recital, Manchester.