Sunshine And Showers

A youthful impression of a showery spring day in a rural village…

The work's origin was a dream I had, in which I saw a string orchestra down-bowing each note of the marcato opening music in unison, giving visual impact with a quite comical bouncing effect.

Like a Scarlatti sonata, this work is more concerned with blocks of nice tunes than much organic development. The opening block of 'sunshine and shower' theme plus variant repeat is repeated, followed by an impassioned predominantly legato bitonal development which ends with an exuberant antiphonal variant of the opening marcato theme.

After a repeat of that block several new ideas are presented, now with the feel, perhaps, of an evening village celebration in the sunshine now that all those showers have died out. Indeed, one of the themes has a distinct hint of Drink to me only. A little development of these ideas leads into a brief jubilant variant of the opening theme (without the shower), which closes the work. Listeners 'in the know' may like to amuse themselves trying to spot the fleeting allusion to Sibelius' 5th Symphony somewhere in the work.