Coming to an arrangement

‘I think that’s rather good, actually’ is what Sir Harrison Birtwistle said, according to pianist Nicolas Hodges, when he listened to a mockup of my arrangement of Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum for percussion quartet. Nic assured me that that, coming from Birtwistle, is high praise. It’s taken about five years but finally Nic has secured the rights for me to bring this arrangement to fruition. This is good because I first heard the piece live on the radio in 1987 (the London Sinfonietta with the late Oliver Knussen conducting—the performance has never been matched, in my view), and fell in love with it immediately. I still have the tape somewhere, full of drop-outs which signify the amount of times I rewound it to hear particular sections again. It is an enormous shame that Birtwistle passed away before he got to hear the arrangement performed, sometime in the autumn by Nic and co. We’ve lost a great.