Concerto for Double String Orchestra

The Concerto for Double String Orchestra is one of Michael Tippett’s earliest acknowledged works, the first fruits of his long study of sixteenth-century English madrigals and Bach fugues, and like all his early music it celebrates contrapuntal virtuosity. Its rhythmic exuberance also comes out of his response to jazz and the balletic music of Stravinsky and Bartok, and much of the energy of the Double Concerto comes from its exciting play with additive rhythms. Beethoven is behind the structure of the work, the blues inflects much of its harmony – all the essential Tippett characteristics are there already, and its joyful, melodic vitality is infectious and disarming.