Rising Moon

Program Notes

Rising Moon (2014-15) begins in musical darkness. A single violin plays alongside bowed crotales, each shining gently like twinkling stars over a body of strings murmuring in their lowest registers. Against this night sky, the movement unfolds with three successive woodwind solos that represent an ascending pale moon. Each solo grows higher in register, leading to a final climax where the tutti orchestra joins in. Blossoming in wide spacings, the orchestra shimmers and the trumpet and horn ring out, glowing and luminescent.

In 2006, I spent a night stargazing in the “Maroon Bells” mountains near Aspen, Colorado. Huddled in the mountain valley, I noticed that light was emerging from behind a mountain peak, and before my eyes the moon began to steadily rise over the mountain, illuminating the entire valley. When I returned to the Aspen Music Festival in 2013 as a composition student, it was the year of Benjamin Britten's centenary, and while watching the lyrical, all-female, “moonlight” quartet from his opera Peter Grimes, I was reminded of the night I spent at the Maroon Bells many years earlier. It was from this inspiration that the piece was born.

— Daniel Temkin

Postscript:
I would like to especially thank Don Crockett, who led a 2014 performance of this piece as part of my larger orchestral suite From Distant Dreams, and Bright Sheng, who encouraged me to re-imagine the work as a stand-alone piece with a more complete and glowing ending. It was very special to have Bright premiere the revised version with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in April 2016. Thank you Don and Bright.