Five Highland Scenes

Movements I and III (Out on the Hills and Snowbells) were previously written on Sound and Music's Embedded programme as part of the Embedded: Radio 3's Composer in 3 project and premiered in collaboration with BBC Radio 3.

Out on the Hills was originally titled The Graig, and written, for solo violin only, to accompany poetry by Oli Hazzard. Both were recorded by Benjamin Baker (with Richard Uttley on Snowbells) and broadcast on 3 October and 12 December 2016 respectively.


Returning to these two short pieces at various points throughout 2017 and 2018, I began to think about reworking and combining them as part of a cycle of five miniatures for violin and piano.

Both of the original works deliberately conjured images of nature and the outdoors. Following a solo cycling and walking trip I made in 2017 I began to contemplate further exploring this theme in the remaining movements. (Mostly) fond recollections of the tendency for Scottish mountain weather to cycle between extremes of sun, gentle snow and heavy downpours all within a single day inspired the broad range of musical characters and evolving textures of the piece.