Patrick O'Malley composer+conductor

All 15 sections performed without break.

The music of Between Two Chasms exists somewhere between the worlds of paradise and dystopia. It takes its inspiration from the paradoxical abysses of modern technological life: from urban landscapes and pastoral ruin, from supreme connectivity and acute loneliness, from the eternal present and distant memory. The violin soloist traverses these many disparate, often opposite worlds in search of that which is so absolutely necessary yet often overlooked: a world of balance.

There is no concrete narrative that I associate with this concerto - only a parade of impressions and visions, whose evocative nature I have tried to capture in music, and in the short titles of the piece's fifteen sections. The music is not meant to literally portray the many dualities which inspired the piece, but to evoke a continuous and abstract juxtaposition of ideas. For instance, the 1st and 8th sections are a rhapsodic riff on the opening bar of Bach's organ Toccata BWV 564 that generates a strange meeting of "old" and "new." The section X cadenza warps the concept of a cadenza into a comedic circus act, to be followed by the anti-cadenza (or actual cadenza) in section XII as a two and a half minute sustained high G flat for the soloist (no less virtuosic than typical violin concerto writing). Sections V and VI reflect on the contradictions of city life by placing ugly-sounding ideas in the midst of pretty textures, and so on and so forth.

A handful of melodic themes, as well as the persona of the solo violin itself, act as guides and anchors through these varied universes. In searching for a title for this concerto, I stumbled across a quote from Franz Liszt describing the carefree 2nd movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as "a flower betwixt two abysses." While my concerto has nothing musically to do with Beethoven nor Liszt, the pursuit of a personified ideal set between endless dualities and chasms of nature and man is captured completely by Liszt's words.