World music premiere on Dartmoor

The world premiere of a new composition, inspired by Dartmoor and composed by Michael Alec Rose, will take place on Saturday 18 June at a Summer concert in Moretonhampstead.

Il Ritorno: A Perambulation for Unaccompanied Violin will be performed by internationally renowned violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved on a 1629 Girolamo Amati violin (Amati’s son taught Stradivari the craft of violin making).

The concert is being held on Dartmoor at the express wish of the composer, whose work has been performed widely in Europe, the United States and South America.

It has often been said that Dartmoor has inspired writers, artists and musicians – and it could not be more true than for American Michael Alec Rose, who has had a 25 year love affair with the National Park.

Michael Alec Rose said: "I have grasped – with a lingering romantic resistance – that there is, with all its "wildness", no wilderness to speak of on Dartmoor. Even the farthest reach of Foxtor Mire is favoured by certain sheep, who know its crossing by heart. Such interdependence between human beings and the natural world holds, of course, in all places. But Dartmoor is an objectively special case of the fragile harmony at work in the transactions of humanity and nature.

"It’s what’s taken me a quarter-century to figure out: how to translate my experience into a music that reflects every aspect of the moor’s astonishment; how to compose something fit enough for Dartmoor’s beauty and strangeness to course through it.

"That’s why I have called my piece Il Ritorno – The Return. The title points in the first place to my own endless homecoming, and in the second place, to the cyclical staying power of the moor through ages of alteration. At the heart of the Italian word Ritorno is tor (naturally). As for the subtitle of the work – Perambulation for Unaccompanied Violin – there is, of course, an appreciation of the ancient term for a comprehensive circuit of the moor (in this case, through music) and an affirmation of Dartmoor’s great gift of solitude."

The concert, which will also include music from the 17th, 18th and  20th centuries, will be held at St Andrew’s Church, Moretonhampstead, 7.30 pm, 18 June. Tickets are available for £10 from www.greenhillarts.co.uk , Greenhill Arts, Fore Street, Moretonhampstead, Devon TQ13 8NL telephone: 01647 440775