Summer Light


Genre: Solo for Guitar

Description:A work for solo guitar in three short, contrasting movements.
Duration: 9 Minutes
Date: 2013

Programme Note

Summer Light for solo guitar (2012) is in three short contrasting movements. There are references to plainchant in the first piece. The final piece is a toccata in which a flexible approach to tempo is encouraged. The work was written for Paul Norman and dedicated to Jonathan Harvey. It was commissioned by the Park Lane Group Young Artists Series for January 2013.

Norman’s ability to bring out the contrasting characters and voices of his instrument came through most clearly in Hughes’ Summer Light (2012), a collection of four short studies that moved between a contemplative space created by a steady, but not quite predictable, flow of arpeggiated major harmonies and an energetic, agitated soundworld with rapid blurs of notes rushing into thick, dissonant strumming. Norman makes the guitar sing out Hughes’ rich harmonic colours, and it is alternately bright and mellow, beckoning and undulating, shimmering and violent.
— Melissa Hok Cee Wong, bachtrack.com