Amy Dickson - Richard Blackford: Canticle of Winter (for soprano saxophone & piano, or B flat clarinet & piano)

Canticle of Winter was written during the early months of 2019. Looking out at the still white snow and walking through the crispness and stillness of the lanes and fields around my home in Oxfordshire I was inspired by the last stanza of Robert Frost�s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Canticle of winter was written for and dedicated to Amy Dickson who records here courtesy of Sony. Amy intents to include Canticle of Winter in the orchestral and Piano version to her touring repertoire. The sense of restlessness, of something unresolved, despite the beauty of the winter landscape, permeates the music. It is written in rondo form, soft, sustained and melancholic, contrasted with rhythmic string writing against which the saxophone plays exuberant flurries that evoke the stillness of the winter night and the traveller�s journey through it. - Richard Blackford