from the Book of Longing

The works on this album span ten years of my life, a period during which my ideas about and reasons for composing changed considerably. BIG (1991) is one of the earliest pieces I still recognise, written originally for myself to perform and obviously betraying the post-Minimalist influence so favoured for a time by a number of composers of my generation. The opening phrase provides the impetus for the subsequent four sections, each one being an expansion of some idea or motif found there. This stylistic approach was continued in Drive (1992) although within a less rigid formal scheme, its lyricism almost bordering on the overtly romantic once or twice.