Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings | Michael Nyman

Written for Elisabeth Chojnacka

Orchestration
str
Soloistsharpsichord (amplified)
Duration22 min

CategorySoloists and Orchestra

Composer
Michael Nyman

Performances
View Past Performances

Programme Note

This Concerto was composed during the winter of 1994/95 for Elisabeth Chojnacka, who gave the first performance with the Michael Nyman String Orchestra on 29th April 1995 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Its history is eccentric and cumulative. I had met Elisabeth in Paris about a year earlier while I was working on the soundtrack for Diane Kurys' film A la Folie (Six Days, Six Nights). I was attempting to persuade her to play my solo piece The Convertibility of Lute Strings (1992) but she expressed a passion only for tangos. As luck would have it, one of the cues of the Kurys score was what I fondly called a tango. Elisabeth showed interest in this and I subsequently turned it in to a harpsichord solo. Sadly, during the writing of the piece my friend the composer Tim Souster died tragically. Elisabeth's enthusiasm for Tango for Tim encouraged me to write the Concerto for her.

The Concerto is shaped as a very simple ABA form - the outer sections, derived from The Convertibility for Lute Strings, enfold an elaborated version of Tango for Tim. After the first performance, Elisabeth decreed that the true potential of the Concerto could only be fulfilled by the addition of a cadenza. This was duly composed in the summer of 1995 - a toccata derived from harmonies first heard in the immediate post-Tango for Tim, Convertibility material. (Elisabeth subsequently ordained that the cadenza could also have a life outside the Concerto as a concert piece if it had a few extensions added. Hence - inevitably, the title of the piece - Elisabeth Gets Her Way.

© Michael Nyman