for string orchestra is, despite its small dimensions, a piece of special importance to me. I am a concert cellist and the string orchestra is not only well known but also especially close to me. While composing I tried to identify with the individual parts, so as to give each instrumentalist a chance to co-create the interpretation. 

As the title suggests, the mutual interaction of solo and tutti sections plays a key role in this piece. While writing it, I have frequently asked myself what special emotional values solo playing has for the musician, and what the values of playing in a collective are. I mostly focused on the borderline area between these two forms of expression. 

Even the smallest melodic segment, constituting a musical gesture which carries a maximum emotional load, is in a way the quintessence of a much longer, extensive artistic utterance. It is responsible for the highly expressive character of this work, also emphasised by microtonal harmonies, spectral structures, and shifting harmonic fields. 

Tomasz Skweres