In the new light of spring (2024)

solo oboe, strings
21 min.

As a composer of vocal music, I have a natural attraction to instruments that mimic the human voice, and the oboe sings more soulfully than perhaps any other. Some years ago, after working with oboist Anni Haapaniemi, deeply impressed with her musicality and sensitivity, I asked if I could write her a concerto. I’ve always loved the clean, transparent sound of oboe and strings in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s concerto, and very much wanted to use the same instrumentation for mine.

While I had no intention of challenging the oboe’s pastoral, lyrical idiom, Anni expressed a desire to touch on its darker qualities, to tear at the fabric of beauty, as it were. This fit nicely with an image that was part of this piece from its inception, and is a recurrent theme in my work: the slow, gradual change between winter and spring at northern latitudes, specifically the mutable light of the season. It manifests ever so haltingly at first, then fills the sky in a rush, extending the days and carpeting the forests in flowers, ferns and all manner of new life.

The piece unfolds in a single, rhapsodic span, but over time it coalesced into a fairly traditional three-part form, with a moderately paced, discursive opening movement, a rapidly flowing, exhilarated scherzo, and closing with an aria-like slow movement. The work opens with a gently morphing harmony of high string harmonics, like sunlight filtered through moving clouds. The oboe steps into this landscape with an unhurried soliloquy, whimsical and bright. This music is immediately contrasted by a darker, more anxious version of itself—much as the Nordic climate viciously snatches away early hints of spring.

This dichotomy between light and shadow animates the rest of the piece. The quality of light is forever changing, clouding over and reappearing in sudden shafts, such that the music retains a certain volatility throughout. The “tearing” effect is achieved by emphasizing the oboe’s throaty low register and harsh cluster chords in the strings, as well as through lamenting pitch bends and multiphonic sonorities that warp and distort the otherwise lyrical fabric of the solo part. The protean character lessens gradually, letting in the first warm rays of the sun and leaving the oboe to sing itself into stillness over a long pedal in the strings.

In the new light of spring was co-commissioned by the Vaasa City Orchestra and Tapiola Sinfonietta for Anni Haapaniemi, and is dedicated to her.