Judith Weir CBE has just been appointed the first female Master of the Queen’s Music. On the 1 September, during his second BBC Proms appearance this year (Cadogan Hall recital at 13:00), Benjamin Grosvenor has the honour of premiering Judith Weir’s new work ‘Day Break Shadows Flee’. In her programme notes, Judith Weir comments:

“Day Break Shadows Flee, written for Benjamin Grosvenor, is a Two-Part Invention, a piano solo composition in which the two hands work in close co-ordination but independently. My intention was generally to avoid using thick chords (although octaves and other clear sonorities are included) while allowing both the right and left-hand lines to be free, mobile and expressive. The treble and bass sectors of the keyboard are clearly contrasted and often widely separated.

In atmosphere and expression the music is another kind of two-part invention, contrasting bright, upwards-arching phrases (heard at the opening and evoking the arrival of light at the beginning of the day) with veiled, mysterious scurryings, suggesting the stranger, more nervous life lived at night and in the early morning.

Day Break Shadows Flee is around ten minutes in duration. It was commissioned by the BBC for the BBC Proms 2014.”