flow

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This orchestral work was commissioned by the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy and is dedicated to the memory of Yehudi Menuhin on the occasion of his hundredth birthday.

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Yehudi Menuhin was one of the greatest musicians of his generation. His violin playing fascinated the audience with its complete naturalness. It seemed freed from all earthly constraints. Poetry flowed through him and time seemed to stand still.

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When a person manages to be completely at peace with themselves and to merge with their work, they reach a state that is also called FLOW. Thinking, feeling and acting become a larger whole, the ego disappears, and indescribable moments of happiness arise for both the artist and the audience.

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The following statement by Menuhin is also the guiding principle of my orchestral work:

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"Every moment in life is a new beginning, an end and a beginning, a convergence of threads and a divergence."

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At the beginning of my work we hear such a thread, a thin, slightly pulsating thread of sound on the top open string of the violins. This thread then begins to diverge and separate into more threads.

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The piece is something like a sequence of different yoga exercises taken from the famous book entitled Light on Yoga by Menuhin's friend Iyengar:  

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Tension builds up in several bursts, in several waves, this tension is held and then released in a wonderful feeling of relaxation. That is also the moment when something like a musical flow becomes noticeable.

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Towards the end of the piece, the sounds refocus into a thread of sound - a thread of sound with two ends: one in the past and one somewhere in the future

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