11'45"
Date 2009
Because I disliked concertos in which one person shows off while everyone else recedes into the background, I attempted to write a kind of anti-concerto in which two soloists would blend both into each other and into an ever-changing orchestral background, just as a chameleon changes its camouflage according to its surroundings: a concerto for a musical chameleon. When the original version of the piece came to be performed however, I realised to my dismay that I had entirely failed to undermine the powerful cult of the virtuoso: in unfamiliar surroundings, the work changed colour dramatically and became much more menacing than I could have imagined.
When the opportunity arose to make a chamber version for the London Sinfonietta, I tried with renewed vigour to fulfil my original aim. Imagining the piece on a much smaller scale led to yet another dramatic transformation of its character for me and the revision became a fraught process of recomposition, wholesale deletion, and insertion of new passages so that at times the original piece is thoroughly camouflaged in an entirely new context.
© James Olsen
