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composer: Sir Michael Tippett

A song without words for orchestra

Commissioned work: Commissioned jointly by the London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the 90th birthday of Sir Michael Tippett
Premiere: February 19, 1995 London, Barbican (UK) Visions of Paradise Festival · Conductor: Sir Colin Davis · London Symphony Orchestra
Orchestra instrumentation: 3(3pic).2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn-6.3.3.1-4perc(glsp, xyl, vib, mar, tub bells, 2sus cym, gong, 2tam-t, s.d, b.d, 36r.toms, cast)-2hp-str(10.10.6.6.4 minimum)
Publisher: Schott Music Ltd., London
Duration: 25' 0''
Year of composition: 1991/1993
Material on hire

Fantasia on a Theme of Handel

‘During a holiday in Sengal, late in 1990, we were recommended to visit a small lake, known as Le Lac Rose, where at midday the impact of the sun was such as to transform its whitish green colour to whitish pink […]. As things turned out we reached Le Lac Rose at midday, just in time to see it turn a marvellous translucent pink. The sight of it triggered a profound disturbance within me: the sort of disturbance which told me that the new orchestral work had begun.’ Michael Tippett

Like Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony or Debussy’s La Mer, The Rose Lake is concerned with expressions of feeling rather than description. It is Michael Tippett’s last orchestral work and is a shimmering, singing, ecstatic response in musical terms to the visual transformation that he had witnessed. His deep, lifelong relationship with the natural world and its luminous power finds a distilled essence in The Rose Lake.