James Murray - Landscapes of Lovers (2018)

I'd been longing for years to write something unselfconsciously, unashamedly romantic for its own sake. Risky territory of course, achieving sentiment without sentimentality requires treading a fine line. Honesty is the easy part, the key is balancing this impulse to express with enough emotional restraint for the listener to be able locate their own meaning at the heart of the music.

The title comes from consideration of the body itself as landscape, anatomy as geography. When Fluid first approached me I knew this was what I wanted to somehow explore, the act and experience of losing yourself in the physical environment of a loved one. Then I came to see the various movements of these two long-form pieces each as distinct notional portraits of a lover on their side, the frames turned ninety degrees onto the more intimate horizontal plane. Both feelings still stand, as does a strong narrative sense of coming together and of parting. The second piece "And So Goodbye For Now" and the tone of the final movement confirm this separation isn't final, no lasting sense of loneliness or melancholia is intended. The promise of reunion, in this world at least, softens whatever pain there may be in the anticipation of absence.