Spring Masque celebrates the joyous energy of a violin and a viola in duet. Limiting one’s resources like this presents an invigorating challenge: to squeeze a complete musical environment out of two instruments.. rhythm, harmony, melody, invigorating figurations.. all in a way that is (hopefully) both engaging to listen to, and play.

Composers - including myself - frequently pre-meditate how a piece is going to work, and plan it out in meticulous detail before writing any actual notes. Spring Masque was different; it was written bar-to-bar, in a process of organic development and with no preconception, and was written with the instruments in my hands, alongside a laptop and microphone. I swapped between violin and viola, recording short phrases and figurations to see how they worked together, gradually extending the piece as I worked. Once I was happy with the result, I notated the whole thing on paper. Of course, recording and correcting at leisure is one thing - playing it in real-time performance without the opportunity to stop is quite another. The amazing players you’re now hearing are simply genius.

- Adrian Sutton

“utterly joyous; a dazzlingly infectious jig scored for only violin and viola, but it feels like a lot more” - Simon Thompson, MusicWeb

extract perf. Fenella Humphreys (violin) and Andrew Berridge (viola)