Written during a Fellowship from the Australia Council, which I was awarded in 1999, my Etude for solo viola was composed for Esther van Stralen, who had given terrific performances of my Viola Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra a few years before.
This piece, which exploits the wide range of tone-colours and technical effects of which she is capable, is very much for her. She is its dedicatee, and made many helpful suggestions about certain practical aspects. Moreover, the piece is built around a musical spelling of Esther’s name heard at the outset: E flat (‘es’ in German), C (from ‘ut’ – the designation of this note in solmisation), B (‘h’ in German), E and D (from ‘re’).