Across it’s three-movement form, Thaleia takes us on a journey of transformation from melancholy lament, through entranced incantation, to joyful celebration. It is cast, you might say, in quite a traditional concerto form, with the soloist inhabiting a distinct expressive world and array of relationships in each movement. Special among these relationships - particularly in the second movement - are the orchestral piccolo, the viola(s) and the harp (with four strings re-tuned), affording a chance for moments of chamber music within a bigger picture. Orchestral textures are defined by various varied and varying cycles of repetitive elements, yet no two moments are ever quite the same. On the surface, melody flows ever-forward, a thread connecting soloist and orchestra, as well as past and future. This melody often proliferates into canonic interplay, resulting in a tightly woven web of instrumental interactions.

Beyond its obvious utility, the idea of canon - of multiplicity born from unity - might be seen to connect with the extra-musical ideas around the piece. Thaleia was - in Greek mythology - a Naiad-nymph of Mount Etna in Sicily, whose name means ‘the joyous, the abundance’. According to myth, she bore the twin children of Zeus, but fearing Hera’s jealousy asked to be swallowed up by the earth - and so her twin children, the Palici, were born from the earth to be Sicilian gods of hot springs and geysers. The root of the name Thaleia is thállein, which means "to flourish, to be green” and the music seeks to inhabit the elemental qualities of fecundity and flourishing that she - and her twin children - through myth embody. This elemental energy grows and fades, ebbs and flows, as the piece progresses, finally erupting, towards the end of the third movement, into a joyous dance between piccolo soloist and tambourine, set against a punchy backdrop of unison woodwinds, horns and pizzicato strings. When the dance calms, what remains is the plaintive voice of the piccolo musing over the melody in its purest form, with a halo of resonance from clashed crotales and natural harmonics across the orchestral D-strings.

The orchestration of this piece - though not the music - reflects Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1892-94), and the cadenza hints at Syrinx (1913), acknowledging the special role of that piece in emancipating the flute, early last century. Meanwhile, the first movement grew out of a more recent piece of my own: Lost in the Horizon (2022) for solo piccolo and layers of pre-recorded bass flutes, written as one the ‘200 Pieces’ for the bicentenary of the Royal Academy of Music, and dedicated to the memory of Harrison Birtwistle (1934 - 2022). The piccolo, like a figure in a landscape, sings a sad song, lamenting the loss of so singular a composer. The concerto as a whole, though, has a further dedication:

To the many flute players in my life (and their families) -

My friends Noémi, Gergely, and their children, Miriam and Abigail Madaras
My family, Audrey Milhères and Lucas Mason
My mother, Mary Mason, for her 80th Birthday (June 16th 2024)
My nephew, Malachy Middleton, who loves to play Syrinx
My teacher and friend, Sinan Savaskan, who first taught me the significance of Syrinx

(Christian Mason, February 29th 2024)