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Concerto for Orchestra: full score and recording (BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis)

This work was commissioned from Roxburgh, as recipient of the Elgar Trust Award 2008 (administered by the Royal Philharmonic Society) for performance at the Barbican by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, on 8 October 2010 (audio CD submitted: BBC Radio 3 broadcast). This provided the opportunity to explore several experimental concepts:

1. Unlike other works with the same title, occasional instrumental solos include the use of unconventional extended techniques. In segmenting the full ensemble the role of the players becomes soloistic and virtuosic, a display which results in a visual, as well as musical, experience for the audience. Further experiments relate to the musical substance becoming complex in adapting contrapuntal material to an innovative process of cross-references between the various segments in the orchestral arrangement. By combining cross-rhythms with irregular pulse Roxburgh has sought to extend the pulse-related innovations of Boulez and Messiaen.

2. Virtuosity is conventionally delegated to solo instrumentalists and singers. In this work the conductor takes on this challenge, not in relation to technical display, but as an intellectual determinant in controlling the diverse elements displayed by the interacting sections of the orchestra, for example in the final section of 5/4 against 4/4. The work articulates relationships between composer and conductor that are further explored and explained in Roxburgh’s forthcoming book, _Conducting for a New Era_ (Boydell & Brewer, 2014). The composition, aside from its intrinsic musical content, is a statement on the exploratory factors involved in redefining the conductor’s role in music that extends the boundaries of convention in the symphony orchestra.

Independent critical reception of the work has commented: ‘A dynamic single movement, it is a late summary of the most vibrant and athletic aspects of the post-war 12-tone approach, and it dazzled.’ (Paul Driver, Sunday Times, 10 October 2010)