Sonata for Solo Double Bass

This three-movement piece of 1999 is an extra pressing from Holloway’s Concerto for Double Bass and Small Orchestra written three years before. The concerto’s scoring is very spare; its soloist holds the principal line almost continuously; fashioning a solo sonata was more transcription than composition, though there is some new material too.
I – con moto non allegro, “with stealthy undeviating steadiness” – is a modal journey based upon all the white notes in turn, in the order A, F, D, G, E, C, B (the climax), and back to A.
II is a jazzy pizzicato scherzo, marked “tight/precise/footling”, alternating with a fluid lyrical section played col arco.
III is more sectional and fantasia-like; a meditative cadenza introduction, a slowish expressive melody, a pizzicato valse-episode, a vigorous allegro work-out, expanding into a slow eloquent ending that ties the finale’s cadenza-opening into the close of the first movement.