Church on a Hill

This is a substantial one-movement piece with at times an impressionist feel to it. It begins with a bell-like motif before an initial theme emerges that crosses time Signatures as it goes and constantly introducing new themes and ideas at it progresses. At times one wonders where this is leading because one idea morphs into another for quite a substantial time without anyone theme emerging as the main idea. However a chordal idea does subsequently take precedent out of the complexities at the beginning only to disappear again into a section where everything appears to be rushing around at breakneck speed. I might be wrong but it seems to be that every new idea is perhaps a new individual in or near the church, who appears with his/her own themes and personality. For then, after a brief reminder of the chordal melody, a tune that can only be described as a whistling kind of tune takes centre stage for a while, with its attractive lilt and occasional semiquaver triplet runs. This then suddenly goes double tempo for a headlong run up and down some semiquaver chordal sweeps, then stopping for a brief reminder of the bells at the beginning. The chords then recur before the bells finally take over and the piece dies away pianissimo. This is an intriguing piece that took me a while to get to know because it is complex, but it was definitely worth the effort, It was however so pictorial in style that I would have loved to have had the composer's own take on what the musical themes were conveying, if indeed there was intended to be a story element to its many little sections. Nevertheless this is a more than interesting piece that requires quite a mature technique do play it to its full capacity.

Chris Dumigan (Classical Guitar Magazine)