Night Music

Duration: 19 minutes

Premiere: 2002, Recital Hall of the Yehudi Menuhin School, Vlad Maistorovici/David McCarroll, Valery Sokolov, Mary Elliott

Awarded the Grand Prix at the George Enescu International Festival

This work was composed in the winter of 2002, in my first few months as a boarding student at The Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, UK. Homesick but excited about the new environment, I suffered from insomnia and spent many nights composing. The music starts from without, inspired by the cricket song of the Surrey countryside. The second movement is inspired by the "cântec cu noduri" (north-Romanian folk song featuring a special vocal technique) made famous by Grigore Lese. The third movement contemplates feelings of anxiety, while the last opens towards a different realm, inspired by Romanian traditional flutes and horns.