“…flickering instantiation…” hits the CD shelves!

On September 4, Luca Quintavalle’s new CD of new and revisited harpsichord works, Metamorphosen, will become available to buy or download or stream. Second-to-last in the running order is my “…flickering instantiation…” from 2024, surprisingly, the longest single arch on the disc.

Luca is a formidable player and he has managed to negotiate the challenges of my score with clarity, exactitude, and vivacity – the piece really lives. It’s an impressively musical performance, full of propulsive energy and momentum. It was pointed out to me recently that the majority of my pieces end quietly. This one does not!

The piece itself derives directly from the title, which is a phrase I found in a newspaper review from 2021 of Alan Garner’s extraordinary novel Treacle Walker: “…a glimpse of a world suffused with magic, of which our own day-to-day experience seems to be a flickering instantiation…”. This is why the title is in ellipses and quotes. I hope I have caught something of the oblique atmosphere of the phrase in the music.

The non-Dench works on the CD are by Wolfgang Rihm, Luis de Pablo, Hans Abrahamsen, Regis Campo, and others.

The title of the CD is explained thus: “Luca Quintavalle brings together composers from different generations and aesthetic backgrounds, to reveal a remarkable plurality of musical languages, where historical forms, transcriptions and new works intersect. Through these works, past and present meet in a continuous process of musical metamorphosis, and the harpsichord emerges as a living medium of invention”.