Umoya

For recorder orchestra.
Playing time: ten to eleven minutes.

Umoya in Xhosa means the wind. Two years ago the Recorder Orchestra Nordwind (north wind) from Hamburg asked me for a composition on this subject, and I let myself drift by it. In the beginning, you hear the wind howl in autumn - I come from Northern Germany, not far from the coast of the North Sea, and there is always a wind coming from the sea, blowing through the old farmhouses and chestnut-lined avenues. In the first theme you see some lonely leaves and how the wind plays with them, takes them up in the air, lets them float and fly before they fall on the ground again, more and more leaves, our famous golden autumn leaves.

Suddenly there is a kind of dance; the sound universe of the French Impressionism is replaced by my beloved African melodies, rhythms, and harmonies. Obviously, some celebration is going on. But then, all of a sudden, it is quiet again, we hear the wind howl again, and then the third, sentimental part of the piece is beginning: the memory of how comfortable it was as a child to watch the wind go through the woods and to lie in bed and listen to it. For us people at the coast, the wind always had a very special meaning: it fills the sails of the ships that take us far away to the other end of the world.

I wish to thank the Recorder Orchestra Nordwind for commissioning this piece and for playing a brilliant premiere on June 26 this year in Hamburg. Further, I wish to thank Antje Susanne Kopp for the great conducting and the idea with the wind sounds, Tom Beets, Joris Van Goethem, Maya Schröder, Walter Koester-Stölting and Axel Bodendieck for the corrections and John Tyson and Caillan Crowe-McAuliffe for helping with this translation. May this piece spread like the wind! I like it very much.

number of pages: 
24
Price: 
39,90 Euro