Going Home

Item details

• Description +

  • Going Home is dedicated to my dear friend, Lauren Vogel Weiss.
    
    The piece has a Scottish traditional ‘Slow Air’ feel, and can be interpreted as lyrically and expressively as possible, with ebbs & flows within the phrases, rather than metronomic.

• Instrumentation +

  • Marimba

• About the composer +

  • Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest orchestras, conductors and artists. Evelyn paved the way for orchestras globally to feature percussion concerti when she played the first percussion concerto in the history of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1992. Evelyn has commissioned over 200 new pieces for solo percussion from many of the world’s most eminent composers to vastly expand the percussion repertoire. She regularly provides masterclasses and consultations to inspire the next generation of musicians. The film ‘Touch the Sound’ and her enlightening TED speech remain key testimonies to her innovative approach to sound-creation.
    
    Leading 1000 drummers, Evelyn had the honour of a prominent role in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
    
    Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and now has over 100 international awards, including the Polar Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. She was recently appointed the first female President of Help Musicians, only the third person to hold the title since Sir Edward Elgar and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
    
    Evelyn is currently creating The Evelyn Glennie Collection with a vision to open a centre that embodies her mission to Teach the World to Listen. She aims to ‘improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening as proven in her book ‘Listen World!’. We want to inspire, to create, to engage and to empower’.

• Reviews +

  • Review (Percussive Notes, June 2024)
    
    Most of us are well familiar with Dame Evelyn Glennie’s extraordinary performance talents, but some may not be as aware of her compositional output. With almost a dozen compositions to her name, “Going Home” for solo marimba is the latest of her pieces. Written in 2020 and dedicated to Glennie’s friend Lauren Vogel Weiss, the piece is a luscious and emotional chorale that would be a beautiful addition to a recital, and a lovely option for a short but expressive encore piece.
    
    Glennie writes, “The piece has a Scottish traditional ‘Slow Air’ feel and can be interpreted as lyrically and expressively as possible, with ebbs and flows within the phrases, rather than metronomic.” The piece begins simply, with a single line in the right hand floating over a single note in the bass. This transparent opening develops as the melody becomes more rhythmically intricate and adds an alto line, now sounding over an open drone of fifths in the left hand.
    
    The melody intensifies, moving up in register and building to its first peak with ringing octaves in the right hand, ascending to the highest pitch heard thus far in the piece. After this build, there is a dramatic drop in dynamic and register, returning to the intimate melody from the beginning of the piece before building one last time to a full, rich, fortissimo octave melody for the final climax. A plaintive return to the opening theme closes out the piece.
    
    “Going Home” may appear simple enough technically, but there are several demands placed on the performer to execute it effectively. The stamina required to perform a 6-minute rolled chorale smoothly is challenging, as is the accuracy of shifting between chords and maintaining the octave placement in the upper voice. Additionally, pacing and phrasing chorales like this is an exercise in musicianship and interpretation, asking performers to craft their individual version of the piece. Glennie’s composition would be an excellent choice for younger students to develop their technique and voice, and for more advanced performers to hone theirs.
    
    —Hannah Weaver

• Credits +

  • Front Cover Graphics: Veronique van der Neut
    Photo: Jim Callaghan
    Engraving: CPH Engraving
    Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark
    © 2023 Faber Music Ltd
    Reproduced by permission of Faber Music Ltd
    All Rights Reserved.
    www.editionsvitzer.com

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