Score and parts here.

Programme note:

This piece utilises huge amounts of double-stop natural harmonics on both instruments. It's quite a bizarre sound, but worth the effort to play - and isn't really so hard when you get the hang of it.

There's also a certain amount of playing around with folk music in this piece - which I played an awful lot of at one stage in my life. It's slightly kept at a distance and eventually gets absorbed into the more 'classical' style of the later sections.

Duets often play with the illusion of presenting more instruments than are actually playing, or alternatively perform a dialogue between two protagonists. In contrast, this piece treats the two instruments as a single enormous viola. The ‘drama’ is the new instrument’s search for a pure, real tone, which eventually breaks through late on in the piece: sul ponticello harmonics are released and allowed to crack down to their fundamental.

The music was written for a friend who lives a long way away – hence the focus on sounds that require a lot of energy to make but are heard as though from a great distance.