NAOMI

PINNOCK

Chamber (2–5 players)

Music for Europe


2016  | 20’


Commissioned by Ensemble Adapter with funding from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung 


for flute (= alto flute), clarinet, percussion, piano and harp


SCORE

Hoch und strahlend steht der Mond. 

Ich habe meine Lampe ausgeblasen, und tausend Gedanken erheben sich von meines Herzensgrund. 

Meine Augen strömen über von Tränen.

Paul Klee (1916)


High and radiant is the moon. 

I blew out my lamp, and thousands of thoughts rise up from the bottom of my heart. 

My eyes overflow with tears 


Paul Klee created a text-painting using these words a hundred years ago, the year he was conscripted into, though never fought for, the German army. I saw this painting just days after the UK voted to leave the European Union. I was touched by it’s simple, fragile vulnerability made at a deeply fractured time.


Performances:     Ensemble Adapter                                 hcmf//, Huddersfield UK, 2016 (premiere)

                                                                                                               Ultraschall, Berlin, Germany 2019

                                      Psappha                                                      Manchester, UK 2019

String Quartet no. 2


2012  | 13’


Commissioned by the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik and hcmf//


SCORE

The circling, persistent viola solo, with which the quartet begins, is repeated, chopped up, magnified, distorted and stretched out. This treatment of musical material is similar to my manipulation of text in recent works. It has a lot to do with memories - how sometimes a vividly experienced dream can suddenly vanish upon waking and all you can grasp hold of are fragments. And how these fragments often linger but finally fade away.


Performances:         Arditti Quartet                                        Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Witten, Germany 2012 (premiere)

                                                                                                                  hcmf//, Huddersfield, UK 2012

                                         Siggi Quartet                                            Iceland, 2015


CD: the premiere performance by the Arditti Quartet is features on Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2012 Dokumentation CD

everything does change


2012  | 5’


for clarinet, violin and cello


SCORE


Note: this version is without film

Everything changes it is extraordinary how everything does change.

Getrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography


everything does change is a re-working and extension of a piece I wrote for a film – Klatov - by the Czech artist Pavla Scerankova. After the death of her grandfather, Pavla unearthed reams of Standard-8 footage that he had taken of his family, friends and surroundings. With the digitised versions, she created an homage to the joyful beauty of a place and people she knew, but never experienced first hand. The music is my response to the everyday happiness that the film captures and to these forgotten memories. 


Performances:         Trio Magritte                                           Milan, Italy, 2012

                                          London Sinfonietta                              London, UK 2019

Everything changes


2011  | 5’


for viola and cello




Note: this version is WITH film

Everything changes was written for the short film - Klatov - by Czech artist Pavla Scerankova and was premiered by Ensemble Amorpha at the British Film Institute, London in December 2011

String Quartet


2010  | 8’



SCORE

The subtitle could easily be luminis (‘a light, an opening’), lucere (‘shine’) or lux (‘light’). 

Whilst I was composing I often thought about this image of light: an intense light source and, further away, a light that was much softer and paler. That is what the piece gradually became about – a set of three slow, luminous but fragile variations around a fiery core. 


Performances:         Quatuor Diotima                                  Centre Acanthes, Metz, France, 2010 (Workshop)

                                          Radar Ensemble                                   Rheinsberg, Germany 2012

                                          Skark Quartett                                      Berlin, Germany 2014

                                          Manon Quartet                                     London, 2017

RE-sonare


2006  | 10’


for accordion, cimbalom and two percussion



SCORE

‘re’ – expressing intensive force

‘sonare’ – to sound

‘resonare’ – to sound and resound


Exploring the resonance of intense musical gestures, this piece is a discovery of the ensemble’s inner sonorities. As the drama of the work slowly unfolds, these gestures are progressively transformed.


Performances: Les Percussion de Strasbourg, Françoise Rivalland (cimablom) & Pascal Contet (accordion) at Abbaye d’Royaumont (France), 2006

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