Andrew Norman : Sabina from The Companion Guide to Rome, version for String Orchestra (2006/2020)
Sabina by Andrew Norman © 2020 by Schott Music Corporation, New York (ASCAP)
Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko, Conductor
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Like many of the buildings in Rome, this piece is the product of a long gestation marked by numerous renovations, accretions, and ground-up reconstructions. What has emerged is a collection of portraits-nine in all-of my favorite Roman churches. The music is, at different times and in different ways, informed by the proportions of the churches, the qualities of their surfaces, the patterns in their floors, the artwork on their walls, and the lives and legends of the saints whose names they bear. The more I worked on these miniatures, the less they had to do with actual buildings and the more they became character studies of imaginary people, my companions for a year of living in the Eternal City.
Sabina uses the same musical ideas as the last movement of the set. This material, sketched after an early morning visit to one of Rome’s oldest churches, has proven a useful vehicle for exploring the sonic range of string instruments.
(Andrew Norman)