Prize-Winning Composition Performance
Congratulations to Phoebe White and Peter Regan on their stunning performance in the 2021 West Wicklow Festival.
The entire recital streamed from London and is now available to watch on YouTube here: Rising Star Recital where among Beethoven and Bartok, the fabulous Violin and Piano duo perform my work, Citadel of Light. Programme notes for the recital and the entire festival may be downloaded here: West Wicklow Festival 2021 Programme.
– I am delighted that my most recent work for Violin and Piano is selected as the winning entry in the 2021 West Wicklow Festival Competition for chamber music composition.
Phoebe White (Violin) and Peter Regan (Piano) will perform ‘Citadel of Light‘ at the festival on 31st May 2021 at 8pm (BST). The performance will be streamed online from London in compliance with current restrictions.
FREE tickets for the online streaming event and further details of this performance and the other festival performances can be found at: Programme | West Wicklow Festival
A little about the piece . . .
Citadel of Light joins several other works by Garry Wilkinson for Violin and Piano. La Legende de L’Oiseau Bleu, a substantial work, also completed early in 2021, awaits a world premiere. Constellations Set I, a series of eleven graded pieces for Violin and Piano, is published by Trinity/Faber. Exotic Birds is an album of 24 unaccompanied pieces for solo Violin that takes early players through more intricate pieces in carefully graded steps.
Citadel of Light was composed especially for the Violin and Piano duo of Phoebe White and Peter Regan and the West Wicklow Festival 2021. As with many of his recent compositions, the inspiration for the work is taken from places of outstanding natural beauty. The title is an English translation of the original Brittonic-Celtic (Welsh) place-name, ‘Dinas Oleu‘. It is an ancient hilltop site located in the historic county of Merionethshire at the mouth of the river, Afon Mawddach on Cardigan Bay in west Wales. The site faces west across the Irish sea rising quickly as a breath-taking hill-walk from the town of Barmouth. It also looks out to the Llyn Peninsula to the north. It is a place of such outstanding natural beauty that in the year 1895, it was the first land to be acquired by the UK’s preservation and conservation body, The National Trust.