Symphony No. 2: Hawkes Pocket Score 1554

(Boosey & Hawkes Scores/Books). Scored for chamber orchestra and dating from 1999, this work is built on MacMillan's shorter Piano Sonata of 1985. That work was composed during a bitter Ayrshire winter: the composer recalls the barren trees and hard frozen ground of a landscape that was empty and silent but for the harsh, hollow cry from the rookeries. Throughout the three movements the music conveys a mood of elegy, despair and desolation. In Symphony no 2 the original has been 'opened up'...