For flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano
Duration: 20 minutes
Published by Oxford University Press

For clarinet, two violins, viola and cello
Duration: 11 minutes
Published by Oxford University Press

The music is based on a tune suggested by the melodies and rhythms of sixteenth-century carols and lullabies. The strings are treated as a separate concertante unit.

For flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, harp, violin, cello, gongs and piano
Duration: 12 minutes
Published by Oxford University Press

The first performance of this work was at St. John's Smith Square, London, 18 April 1991, conducted by Odaline de la Martinez

For violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano
Duration: 12 minutes
Year of composition: 1985
Published by Oxford University Press

For the Savage Messiah was commissioned by the Schubert Ensemble of London with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

The music begins with a large boulder of sound on the piano that triggers off a scrambling burst of notes on the other instruments, with whom it is frequently in conflict. As the composition developed I became more and more conscious of a very physical relationship with the music. I felt as I imagined a sculptor must feel, moulding and chipping away tangible textures, and at this point I reread H.S. Edes Savage Messiah - a remarkable portrait of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, the French sculptor who died in the trenches in 1915 at the age of 24. The preceding years were filled with dynamic, not to say demonic, creativity, passionate love and tragedy. Gaudier added the Brzeska to his name having fallen in love with Sophie Brzeska, a disturbed Polish woman almost twice Gaudiers age, who died in an asylum in 1925. Their life in Paris and London was marked by extreme poverty and work of real brilliance. Gaudier was a fabulous draughtsman, but coupled to his delicate lines there seems to me a boulder-like massiveness born of frenetic energy. But it is perhaps most of all the awful inevitability of his life and the appalling waste at its ending that are echoed in the music. The boulder, like the Savage Messiah, is both the man and his destiny.

For flute, harp, violin, viola and cello
Duration: 12 minutes
Published by Oxford University Press

This little nocturne belongs to a group of early pieces written at the beginning of the eighties. The essence of the piece owes more to the sensations of Mediterranean nights than those closer to home. A dreamy mood pervades with only the occasional click of the cicada, a brief moment of passion and a final awakening snap interrupting an otherwise languorous evening.

Seven

Published by Oxford University Press

For flute (+alto flute), oboe, clarinet, tam-tam, harp, violin and cello
Duration: 7 minutes

Seven is based on Second Still Life for oboe and harp, which Berkeley wrote for the 2007 Presteigne Festival. That work is founded in turn on a 'short and very spare' phrase which the composer remembered from his score for the 1986 feature film Captive . In the film it marked what the composer calls 'a moment of absolute but menacing tranquillity'; but in its new context, stripped of narrative, the music loses any sense of menace and rejoices in a meditative purity. Seven is the result of Berkeley's feeling that he could elaborate the material further and use contrasting voices, while still retaining an utter simplicity. As for the title, the work is for seven players - well, six and a mystery seventh; it lasts seven minutes; and it plays with the juxtaposition of seven characters and the way they can inflect lines with their own colour and individuality.

For two flutes, two oboes, bass clarinet, two clarinets, two basoons, four horns, three trumpets and tuba
Duration: 4 minutes
Published by Oxford University Press

Shooting Stars is a complete re-write of a short piece called Hunt that I wrote for Tim Reynish and Sir John Manduell some ten years ago. I initially thought of calling it Dodgems since it has a feel of the fair ground, of bright lights and of being jostled. Near the end there is even that empty sensation of putting your foot down in a dodgem and finding the power has been momentarily cut off by all the pushing and shoving. I also recall childhood days in the shooting gallery when the targets where placed at the centre of a star. However as I was working on the music I witnessed the brief spark and flash of a shooting star flying across the night sky and, since this short piece for symphonic wind can act as a prelude to the more substantial Slow Dawn, I opted for the ambiguous, though related, title.

For flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and cello
Duration: 12 minutes
Published by Oxford University Press