'I must confess to you that I am a profoundly melancholy man, that black wings are incessantly flapping above us ...'
The paradoxical nature of the music of Johannes Brahms – deep, heartfelt melancholy embodied in the most vigorous structural logic – never ceases to amaze me as a composer. To me, his Third Symphony Op. 90 is a prime example of this paradox.
Black Wings is based on the opening of the Poco Allegretto movement of this symphony, and is scored for solo celesta.