Live recording performed by the Esker Festival Orchestra at St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin.
Instrumentation: 2, 2, 2, 1 - 2, 2, 2, 1, timp, str
Type: orchestral
Year: 2015
Premiere: Performed by the Esker Festival Orchestra, conducted by Peter Joyce, 10th July 2015, Aula Maxima, NUI, Galway.
Duration: 8’
The Space Inside was the winner of the Esker Festival Orchestra Call for Scores 2015 and was premiered in Galway, and subsequently toured to Limerick, Cork and Dublin by the Orchestra.
The Space Inside was written as the first movement to a three part orchestral work, ‘Inside, Outside and the Space Between’. It is also intended to work as a standalone piece.
The original idea behind the work was that of a journey from internal or ‘inside’ spaces to outside spaces. The Space Inside therefore represents this sense of movement; as people wake up in the morning, moving from room to room, taking in the day as the light plays about them. Each theme can be seen to represent a different room or space along the way. Lastly they move in, to greet the morning sun, represented by the final triumphant calls heard in the orchestra.
The piece is written in sonata form with an added fugato section leading to the finale. The various sections are often framed by what I describe as the ‘brass pillars’ which also provide a kind of structural and harmonic basis for the piece. They act as tonal centres around which the other sections develop.