Nine Scenes from Daniel’s Dream for Orchestra

The piano suite Nine Scenes from Daniel’s Dream was written in 1986 and the orchestral version in 1993; it was first performed by the Novi Sibirsk Academy Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arnold Katz. The cycle of nine inter-related movements was created from the poetic tales about the various happenings from the rather long dream of the composer’s then three-year-old son Daniel. Each movement constitutes a closed lyrical or dramatic unit that is in contrast to but picks up from the previous section. Thus in order come a balloon flight, a joyful gravity-free entry into the dream, a depiction of an uncommon antediluvian animal, a waltz of glass objects that come into conflict with a phenomenon that frenziedly smashes everything around it, the first experience of love expressed in an erotically lulling tone picture of a collective tango-habanera or milonga, the steady lulling of a barcarole with the stirring experience of a storm at sea, a march of trees and grass interrupted by a trio of sleepy wooden soldiers, a minuet of white chess queens, the song of a group of completely identical books gone lost in the dark dressed in pilgrims’ robes and the final tempestuous and dangerous bellicose toccata filled with powerful explosions and the wild barking of raging arms. The epilogue of the composition is a hazy memory of the preceding waltz, in which the dream with all its scenes gradually fades and ultimately dissipates. (Dubravko Detoni)