I composed my Double Concerto in the summer of 2016 as a belated wedding present for two violinists. Although its basic dimensions are from the baroque period, my intention was not to write pastiche. Instead, the challenge I set myself was to use melodic motifs and textures associated with the high baroque but to take them in unexpected directions. Listeners and players may well recognise some of these but they were chosen not for their association with any particular baroque composer but rather, because they were part of the ‘common stock’ of the time, used by many composers in an age when the manner in which ‘given’ musical material was treated was often considered to be of more importance and interest than the ‘originality’ of the material itself. However, there are also deliberate textural references to specific composers from the classical period, particularly in the second and third movements. In the last movement, the music gradually breaks completely free from its initial baroque parameters to mirror the process by which the thematic material of the whole work develops away from its origins.

Although what I have written above is an accurate representation of my compositional thinking at the time, the description possibly makes the piece seem rather more ponderous than I meant it to be! Although it has its serious and (for performers) challenging moments, the concerto is primarily intended to be fun on multiple levels for both listeners and players. The concerto was first performed by Laura Stanford and Jenny Sacha with the Musicians of All Saints conducted by Andrew Sherwood at Southover Church, Lewes on the 23rd September 2017.