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01684 773883

Paul Lewis
CONCERTO ROMANTICO for harp and strings
Goodmusic Concert Originals No.172

Catalogue Number: GMCO172

Difficulty level: E What's this?

ISMN: 9790222311114

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Concerto Romantico  Pack image
Orchestration: Strings (Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Bass), Solo Harp

Sometime in the mid 1990s it was suggested that I might score a film telling of love found and lost, only to be rediscovered years later. With the briefest of storylines in my head I went to the piano and composed an emotive song-like melody. The film was never made but the melody haunted me. Some years later I devised a romantic CD for harp and orchestra, expanding the theme into a series of rhapsodic improvisations. The CD was never recorded and still the melody haunted me.
Then, some twenty years later in 2018, harpist Rachel Talitman heard my string orchestra piece "Rosa Mundi" and said it was her dream that I would write her a romantic concerto in similar vein. Little did she know that not only was it my dream to write a harp concerto but that I had just the material to hand, waiting for such an opportunity. Thus the melody that started life as a theme for a never-to-be-made film and became sequences for a never-to-be-recorded CD was reshaped and fashioned into the Cantilena that frames the concerto, giving the work a cyclic form that reflects the story of the would-be film:
Cantilena Rapsodica - love at first sight, Bitter-Sweet Blues - love lost, Moto Perpetuo - life goes on, and finally Cantilena Ripresa - love rediscovered.
The scenario coincidentally echoes my relationship with the music itself, twice abandoned but never out of mind. Indeed every so often I would take it out of its folder and play it lovingly through as one might take out and gaze at photos of a lost love.
After a long gestation and many months of intensive but ecstatic work, the score of Concerto Romantico was completed in February 2020. Paul Lewis

A PACK includes a full score, solo harp part and string parts 4/4/3/4/2.
Duration about 26 minutes

A recording of the concerto is available with Rachel Talitman and the Israel String Ensemble on "Paul Lewis: Romantic Music for Harp" - CD505046.

The Cantilena is also available in a version for solo harp - Goodmusic GM388.

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