PROJECT : ENCORE™: 10-15 minutes

Rio was composed in November 1993 for a workshop given by the BBC Singers at the Royal Academy of Music. It was subsequently selected by them for performance at the RAM’s ‘Schnittke at 60’ festival in March 1994, following which the work was revised. The premiere performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in November 1994, along with an interview with the composer. Rio later secured an honourable mention in the 1995 contemporary choral composition competition administered by the Roger Wagner Center for choral studies, California State University, Los Angeles.

In his famous canzone “Italia Mia,” Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) exhorts the warring families of Italy to lay down their arms, stop hiring mercenaries, and take up more peaceful pursuits. “If only,” he tells them, “you would show some pity, then virtue would take up arms against rage, and the battle would be short.” He invokes the “ancient valor” in the “Italian heart” to urge the families to stop fighting one another. At the end, he addresses himself to the poem itself, asking it to go “courteously” among the “haughty” people: “I go my way beseeching: peace, peace, peace.”