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Kamperduin
Kamperduin was to date my twelfth work for orchestra and my second for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra but this was the first time that any of my orchestral works had been performed in Dundee ,suffice to say that when I was approached to compose a new work to commemorate the Battle of Camperdown to be premiered in my home town it brought with it an added excitement.
As this work is essentially a concert opener or indeed overture it did not permit a detailed exploration of the battle and the debates that rage around it ,and as such the work is in no way programmatic.Although it is in fact one of the most traditional orchestral works I have written ,with a smaller ,more conservative battery of percussion and less detailed orchestral writing the work still utilises techniques I have used in the past like the deliberate smudging of obviously traditional harmonies to suggest past histories reinterpreted and coloured from afar.
The structure of the work is fairly straightforward using long unison lines,fanfares and a slower central section which could be tentatively described as Admiral Adam Duncans Air . Although the work does not tell the story of the battle there are passages which are directly inspired by the playground at Camperdown Park ,a huge depiction of the battle with strange shipwreck climbing frames adrift on a sea of sand .
Kamperduin ,the title of which refers to the original Dutch spelling ,was commissioned by Dundee City Council with a financial subsidy by the Scottish Arts Council. The work is dedicated , like so many things ,to my parents.
Instrumentation
3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/harp/piano/timps.3.percussion/strings
First Performance
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Alexander Lazarev/Caird Hall Dundee 1998