The middle three waltzes started life as tiny jottings for my son, Raphael, following his birth early last year. Later in 2020, on being asked to write a piece for the wonderful violist Lawrence Power, I expanded these sketches for viola and piano, at the same time adding an opening valse-gigue and a closing valse-nocturne. After the work’s premiere at Wigmore Hall it occurred to me to make a new version with orchestral accompaniment. The instrumentation calls for a regular group of woodwinds, pairs of trumpets and horns, one trombone, tuba and harp, and omits all strings apart from double basses.
