Bring Me All Your Dreams

Bring Me All Your Dreams for Solo Piano by Charlotte Bray.

This work was first performed on 10 June 2019 in Snape Maltings Concert Hall at the Aldeburgh Festival by Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Commissioned by Snape Maltings for the Aldeburgh Festival.

Programme Notes

To write something as perfect, precise, beautiful and enchanted as everything Oliver Knussen wrote is most likely to be a lifelong quest for me. The lessons he so generously, openly and readily provided me will remain close to my heart, as will the conviction he instilled in me as a composer. Bring Me All Your Dreams is written in memory of Olly, and for my son Caio, who entered the world just a few months after Olly suddenly, sadly and unexpectedly made his exit.

The piece seeks to mimic the imaginings within the dream of a newborn child. The music floats and dances with tiny flutters and fleeting smiles, moving rapidly through various states of a luminous, secret world. The title is taken from the poem The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes. The ‘heart melodies’ wrapped ‘in a blue cloud-cloth, away from the too-rough fingers of the world’ describe exactly the newborn’s dreaming I write about - innocent, inventive, playful and curious. Echoes of Olly’s Ophelia’s Last Dance pervade the work, hauntingly yet affectionately.

© Charlotte Bray

Duration: 6 minutes