A Walk to Brahms' Violin Concerto (2023)

My Walks form a series of – up to now – more than 20 pieces, all of them composed since 2016. The first two Walks, for string orchestra, were written for a concert in which my Violin Concerto was combined with Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and Biber’s Battaglia. On that occasion, I wrote A Walk to Britten and A Walk to Biber – one-minute pieces which, on a background of ‘wandering’ pizzicato playing, included small quotes from the piece that was to come.

Since then, many other Walks have followed, from one to ten minutes in length and written for a range of forces from viola and double bass duet to symphonic wind orchestra. The concept, though, has remained the same: it is always a rhythmical, wandering music which serves as an introduction to another composer’s work. The idea is to take a musical stroll and catch a glimpse of the next work on the programme, similar to when, from far away, one can begin to make out the silhouette of an approaching town.

A Walk to Brahms’ Violin Concerto (2023) was, as the title indicates, commissioned as an introduction to Brahms’ beautiful concerto. It is mainly material from the first movement that can be discerned in my piece – written for exactly the same orchestral forces but without the soloist. And as in all my Walks, the piece begins with small steps from nowhere and dies away quietly at the end, as if the music is passing by like a marching orchestra.

- Britta Byström, 2026