Programme note Pastel & Oil takes inspiration from four paintings.  ‘Morning Song’ relates to The Sunlit Tower by Australian artist Lloyd Rees, ‘Scherzo’ and 'Nocturne' to Nicotiana and Jack-in-the-Pulpit, paintings of flowers by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe.  In ‘Nocturne’ the flower’s black petal and oriental-like white stamen are reflected by the oboe and bassoon duet in the piece’s middle section, with a sense of richness and dark mystery.  ‘Waltz’ follows an untitled pastel by Cheryl Stoll Thygeson, depicting a celestial form in the shape of an S-like spiral.  This radiant being dances to a gentle, easy waltz with some rhythmic play between twos and threes.
     One of my main aims in this suite was to give prominence to all five instruments, and in particular to bring out the melodic and expressive character of the horn and bassoon, often the cinderellas of woodwind ensembles.

Programme note The original version of this suite was composed for clarinettist Deborah de Graaf and the Ku-Ring-Gai Virtuosi, who premièred it in Sydney in 1999.  For a Radio Suisse Romande live broadcast concert in 2000. clarinettist Thomas Friedli suggested enlarging the suite, resulting in the present first and fourth movements.  All five movement are essentially songs without words, inspired by poetry.  The first and third relate to poems by Rabrindranath Tagore of children at play.  The second and fourth take a very contrasted stimulus from Walt Whitman’s moving poems about death and the American civil war.  The dark mood of the fourth movement is dispelled by the finale, which takes inspiration from an Ancient Egyptian text in praise of the sun (Ra).  As a point of technical interest, movements 2,3, and 5 closely follow the rhythm of the poetic texts that inspire them, while the longer movements 1 and 4 more freely explore their poems’ atmosphere and structure.

Programme note String Quartet takes inspiration from several sources.  The first movement is based on a somewhat gypsy-like melodic cell, juxtaposed with tarantella episodes that reflect the explosion of nature in spring.  Navajo Sandstone was inspired by a photograph in a friend’s calendar, of a narrow sandstone canyon carved out by what must once have been a river.  The stone is smooth and undulating, and light is filtering down from above, caressing the beautiful colours and curves of the rock.
    Snow, wind and water was stimulated by Turner’s famous painting of a steamer at sea in a snowstorm.  The music takes the perspective of a snowflake driven wildly by the exultant elements, with the muffled beating of the ship’s engines in the background.  The guardian or angelic presence subtly visible in Turner’s seascape takes the voice of a muted viola that sings and guides the steamer through the storm.
    In the form of these three movements the Quartet received its première from the Quatour Terpsycordes, at the 2001 Amadeus Festival, Geneva.  Summer Air was then added to provide some contrast and aeration against the relative density of the other three movements; it reflects a magical moment when the composer saw insects flying and seeds floating in a meadow in a soft summer light.  It was thus by chance that the quartet in its final form follows the sequence of the seasons.