Revision of Mystical Dances

Report completion of a revised version of Mystical Dances, leaving just enough time for new material to be prepared for the performance at the Sage on 1 August. I thought I had written the last note last Friday, but I was still feeling dissatisfied with the ending till, in my insomnia, a solution came two nights ago. Before daring to implement it, I spoke to Tato, the long-suffering and hyper-productive music processing expert at Tritó, to ask if it would be too late for a last-minute change. Tato, a violinist and conductor in his own right, had already got on with some of the parts, but his reply was unhesitant: go ahead. After a frantic few hours the new ending was done and sent off to Barcelona. For those of you not familiar with the minutiae of orchestral concert preparation, most orchestra librarians require the material at least a month before the date of the concert. This leaves Tato with only a few days to go to copy all the orchestral parts, sort out the pagination, reproduction and binding and heaven knows what else that I don't know about, before the big parcel can be dispatched to Gateshead. Thank you, Tato! The new version has had some clumsy writing fixed throughout, and the third movement has been extensively rewritten so that the thematic material holds together more tightly. The first performance last November, aside from the disengaged conducting I could do nothing about, exposed weaknesses in the last movement which I could do something about. I think the job is done now.