Description

Commissioned for the 26th International Organ Festival at St Albans 2011 and funded by the RVW Trust.
Duration: 7.45

Performance notes

Registration: the performer is free to determine the entireregistration scheme except at bar 60 where a solo reed is mandatory.
Pitch: manual passages at bars 25, 32, 38 are written for a solo 4′ stop (s). The Pedal is at 16′ (ad lib 32′) unless otherwise indicated (bars 31, 37where a solo 8′ is required).
III – Sw.
II – Gt.
I – Pos/Ch

Composer’s note

Esperanza is named after Camp Esperanza (Camp Hope), the location of the mission to rescue the thirty-three minerstrappedunderground for seventy days in 2010 at the San Jose Mine in Chile, a rescue that was televised live and was one of the most moving, and inspiring, things I have ever seen. By the most extraordinary coincidence, I hadalready done a good deal of sketching for this Organ piece before this all happened and had determined on a ‘darkness-to-light’ kind of piece – so the coincidence, as well as my feelings of elation, were both too strong toignore.
The piece persues a course from a fairly knotty slow beginning (heralded by a few chords that recur at the very end), full of rising themes (another coincidence – the material had already been sketched before theminers were trapped underground), and reaching a loud climax, the quick, toccata-like second section bursting vigourously out of the tension which is created at the beginning of the work.