Variations for orchestra (1998)

…one of our most craftsmanly composers. In a lean, post-12-tone, conservative idiom, he fashions scores that go straight to their purpose. You can almost hear the clink of the anvil on which he hammers them out; but besides their brilliant clarity they have an athletic vigour. The introduction of these ten variations starts with a pole vault from lowest G to highest G sharp and soon has the strings striding across the registers. The little theme itself, stated by woodwind, is built from wide leaps, and clever play is made with those two intervals in two fugato variations (the first starkly scored brass alone, the second a Stravinsky homage quoting from, or coinciding with, a stretch of his late serial music) that prefigure the fugal finale with its culminating blaze-up.