Rose (2007)

Rose is one of seven ‘birthday candles’ commissioned by the Mobius Ensemble to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Each ‘candle’ features a member of the Ensemble as soloist, the others accompanying. My soloist is the wonderful violinist Philippe Honoré, who told me that a formative book during his childhood was Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Little Prince lives all alone on a planet with the sinister Boabab trees until one day a beautiful single rose grows and completely entrances him. She is beautiful, beguiling but capricious (and coughs whenever she doesn’t get her own way!). We hear her theme for the first time, alone with little echoes amongst the other instruments to depict her solitude on an empty planet. Then her melody becomes slowly more and more lushly accompanied, until the third time it occurs, when the other strings play chords in a rhythm that depicts the irregular breathing of a Little Prince in love...

Roxanna Panufnik, 19 June 2007