Frank Corcoran

My THREE ORCHESTRAL PIECES are for middle-sized orchestra ( I insist on the sub-title: ” Pictures From My Exhibition” ) . Three expanding time-pictures, ca. 2´, 4´and nearly 6´. I was thirty. Imagine.They won the 1975 Dublin Symphony Orchestra Composer´s Competition. Imagine.
Five years later in Berlin, I had departed Dublin. SYMPHONIES OF SYMPHONIES OF WIND was premiered by Lothar Zagrosek and the O.R.F. Symphony Orchestra in Vienna. My twenty three wind only. This work is “about” much more than Stravinsky´s grave masterpiece ( At its 1918 London premiere this Russian Caoine was a flop ; salutary thought both that and the death of debussy ) . Wewll, about what , then ? My Symphony is ” about” great masses of sounding air, families of woodwind and brass shaping slow sound-sculptures and structures in its twenty four minutes. enfolding musical argument.
What then separates my QUASI UN LAMENTO from my SYMPHONIES. eh ? Twenty five years , three other symphonies, many compositional bits and electro-acoustic, choral also, pieces. I had completed my “MAD SWEENEY” or ” BUILE SHUIBHNE” series , a collection of heterogenous works all triggered off by my setting in 1996 Seamus heaney´s version ( in English ) of the Early Medieval Irish epic ” SUIBHNE GEALT” .
By 2005 I was facing the end of the next ” Quasi” series, several works of manifold shape and form. QUASI UN CAOINE / LAMENTO is a ten minutes essay for small orchestra including three saxophones and accordeon. Then I wrote QUASI UN CANTO for the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and the World Music Days in Croatia. The brush sweeps wider, the orchestral forces are much bigger.