Dances from Crete - Adam Gorb (born 1956)

This work was commissioned by Timothy Reynish as part of a series of commissions to commemorate his son William Reynish who tragically died in a mountaineering accident in 2001. The world premiere took place at the Royal College of Music in London in November 2003.

Adam Gorb writes:

Dances From Crete is in four movements and is intended to celebrate the good things in life, drawing much of its material from the dance music from the Greek island of Crete, where many of the ancient Greek myths took place.

The first movement, Syrtos, is intended to serve as a portrait of the Minotaur, the famous creature that was half bull, half man, and fed upon young men and women that were sacrificed to him every year before being killed by the hero Theseus. The character of this movement is harsh and ruthless.

The second movement, Tik, is a more graceful dance based on the sinuous movements of young women, but it is also characterised by a certain roughness; and is in 5/8 time. Tim Reynish writes that 'in this movement the whole orchestra should feel the pulse like a Cretan Peasant on the threshing floor.' Following on from this the third movement in a slow 7/4 time is darker in mood and inspired by a steep and perilous walk down the Samaria Gorge; one of the most spectacular of all walks. The movement eventually rises to a triumphant peroration, depicting a welcome plunge into the Libyan Sea.

Following distant offstage fanfares the finale, a modern Greek dance, Syrtaki, which bursts in with the offstage trumpeters swaggering back on stage playing a deliberately vulgar theme. The music soon becomes very fast and eventually ends in total festive anarchy, although before the final apotheosis the ghost of the Minotaur can briefly be heard joining the party.

Dances From Crete lasts about eighteen minutes.

Adam Gorb is one of the leading young British composers of wind music today. His first work for wind was the exciting and exacting Metropolis (1993, Maecenas), written for the Royal Academy of Music Wind Orchestra, which won the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize. Since then he has written a number of works for less experienced bands, Bermuda Triangle (1995, Maecenas) and Bridgewater Breeze (1996), a Euphonium Concerto (1997, Maecenas) for Richard Jones, and a brilliant “post-Bernstein” Overture, the virtuoso Awayday, (1996, Maecenas). His most substantial work for wind to date is a Percussion Concerto for Evelyn Glennie, The Elements (1998, Maecenas) premiered at Bridgewater Hall on 6th April, 1998. Adam is Head of the School of Composition and Contemporary Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

He comments about Yiddish Dances:

Two generations ago, my family was Gorbalewsky, we actually left Russia at the start of the 20th century and arrived in Germany; thank goodness we did not stay there, we went to Belgium, some went to America and some of us went to England. The Yiddish culture is about travelling and picking up influences, it’s about a certain sense of irony, comedy and tragedy at the same time. The thing that interests me about trying to write comedy is the proximity of tragedy, they go together hand in hand. In the film, Schindler’s List, I think some of the most wonderful scenes were in the ghetto, people who were doomed who were making the best of it, telling jokes. I found this incredibly moving, and I wanted to have a sense of this in this piece.

When we talk about good or bad music, this (Yiddish Dances) is quite bad music really, basically it’s rather crude, the melody is somewhat obvious. The thing that stops it being a total disaster is the relationship between C# and G minor, the tension between that C# and the harmony - I could have written something which could have been written in about 1820, a bad Hungarian piece of dance music, quite rightly forgotten over the past 150 years so a certain harmonic tension stops it being totally disastrous.

Gorb’s first work was the exciting and exacting Metropolis (1993, Maecenas), written for the Royal Academy of Music Wind Orchestra, which won the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize. Since then he has written Bermuda Triangle (1995, Maecenas), on commission from Martin Sutton for the Northampton Schools, a Euphonium Concerto (1997, Maecenas) for Richard Jones, premiered on 10th May, and a brilliant “post-Bernstein” Overture, Awayday, (1996, Maecenas). His Yiddish Dances, (1998 Maecenas) is a marvellous five-movement work based on the Klezmer tradition, about Grade 4 but requiring an expert Eb player; his most substantial wind work to date is a concerto for percussion, written for Evelyn Glennie, The Elements (1998, Maecenas), premiered at Bridgewater Hall on 6th April 1998. Two more elusive works tap a gentler soundworld, Ascent, commissioned by Felix Hauswirth for the lamented Uster Festival, and Towards Nirvana, which begins as a hedonistic whirl, reminiscent of the sound-world of Metropolis, but ends in a Buddhist trance of chanting, recorders, repetitive motifs, dying away to nothing. “Too long and too quiet” was the criticism levelled by one distinguished wind band aficionado!

He is now Head of Composition and Contemporary Performance at the Royal Northern College of Music, but wears his learning lightly; as well as a number of charming pieces at Grade 2/3 level, Gorb has often nailed his colours to the mast over “light” music. The hilarious trombone concerto, Downtown Diversions (2001, Maecenas) demonstrates the ease with which he skates near the thin edge of popular cliché without ever falling into that easiest of ruts. In his most recent work he returns to the populist mode of Yiddish Dances; Dances from Crete, (2003, Maecenas) is a four movement rumbustious suite of dances in which vulgar high-spirits and virtuosity are juxtaposed with deeply felt tragic lyricism.