The World Was Once All Miracle (2016-17)
Duration: 23’00”
Text: Anthony Burgess
Instrumentation: solo baritone, (picc.,2,1,c.a.,2,b.cl.,t-sax.,2,c.b.) - (2,2,1,1) - timp., 3 perc. (mar., t-bells, crot., sus-cymb. (with bow), small w-blk, claves, 3 bungkakas, xylo. snare dr., sand paper blk., rin, 2 log dr., 4 wine glasses, glock., 5 button gongs, 2 tri., tam-tam, large t-blk), hp., pno. (double cel.) - (8,8,6,6,4)
First Performance: Roderick Williams (baritone), BBC Philharmonic and Michael Francis (conductor); Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; 4th July 2017 as part of the Manchester International Festival 2017.
Notes: Commissioned by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for the centenary of Anthony Burgess’s birth. It was nominated in the large-scale composition category of the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards 2018.
“There’s wonderful ingenuity to Yiu’s writing, however: like Burgess, he taught himself the fundamentals, and it shows in his free stylistic range. I admired the lowing of a muted tuba under piccolo and silvery strings; tumbling chimes to accompany a line about “a shrill electric bell”; and in one particularly evocative number, the throbbing buzz of the Filipino bungkaka. If it’s not a masterpiece, it’s certainly euphonious. ”