I completed my first commission for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – my Second Symphony, which was premiered by legendary conductor Stuart Challender and which the orchestra included on its concert tour of the USA in the same year. 

Carl Vine

Over the following decades the orchestra commissioned me for another two symphonies and four concertos concertos, one for trombone co-commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and another for piano co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Over that time, it released three commercial albums of my music, with one featuring all of the first six symphonies in 2006. 

So, it is gratifying for this new composition, Dreams Undreamt, to join that long history as part of the orchestra’s 50 Fanfares project, which is otherwise focussed on young and emerging composers.  In this, I wanted to create music that was energetic and enticing, to engage the audience’s ears and to function as a welcoming concert overture at the start of an orchestral program. 

 

I pondered what sort of musical ideas one would least expect to hear at a traditional symphony concert. Could one create a musical sequence so unexpected, so otherworldly, that you...