Description
Programme notes by Graham Sheen
The theme upon which the Variations on a Theme of Shostakovich is based comes from the March from Shostakovich’s Six Piano Pieces for Children. It is deceptively simple, even naïve, in character, but it offers surprising side steps from its home key of C into A flat and B flat majors – fertile ground from which I developed seven increasingly free variations. I initially wrote the variations for bassoon quartet in 2012 as part of an extensive collection of original works and arrangements for bassoon ensemble classes at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I subsequently produced this version of the piece for clarinet (or bass clarinet) quartet and, in 2020, another version of the piece for wind quintet.
Graham Sheen is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and became a professor there in 1979. He was principal bassoonist of both the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1983-2017) and, until 2016, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, having completed forty years’ service. He has appeared extensively as soloist with both orchestras and in April 2013 gave the première of a new bassoon concerto by Judith Bingham. He has recorded two solo CDs with Elizabeth Burley for SFZ Music. Graham is also a composer, editor and arranger with over sixty published works. He has written several graded albums and studies for bassoon and bassoon ensemble, including Mr Sheen’s Miscellany, a series of 13 pieces for the Trinity Guildhall Examination Board.
