Description

Definitely Arvo Part-driven, this is a relentless piece set in D minor.  Huge, lumbering trolls hurl boulders at each other in the mountains through a torrential downpour. The boulders and the rain are heavy, the rocks boom.  The fight in the monsoon continues from start to finish, if anything becoming more and more thick and stormy right to the end.

Melodically, it’s simply a descending whole tone scale on the trombone, played twice.  There’s a slip into C# minor between the two scales. Harmonically, we flit through keys relating to the notes of the trombone scale, until its final two tones, F# and E, when the rain music distorts and threatens. The trombone is the giants and the boulders, the piano is the rain.  But finally the E, not having reached its final D-estination first time round, resolves, though the rain pounds harder, and the giant conflict never does give in.