Ballad Of The Fading Light (Instrumental Parts)

Other Info: Commissioned by violinist Vicky Jolliffe, this evocative and gently flowing work is written for solo violin and and piano accompaniment.

Vicky Jolliffe writes:

"In 2016 I commissioned Will Todd to write a piece for me for violin and piano which would capture the space and ethereal quality of his choral works.

The result was Ballad Of The Fading Light and I am still overwhelmed by extraordinary beauty.  It combines a sense of the vastness of space and time with the feel of an improvisation giving an utterly captivating immediacy to the work.

Opening with a pulsating heartbeat in the piano, long contemplative phrases in the violin line rise and linger.  A central section marked 'rippling and expressive' shimmers like a Kandinsky painting before a return to the languid melody of the opening, reworked in different octaves.  At the end we feel alone and yet not lonely, pensive yet not maudlin."