Program Note:

Originally meant to capture humanity's imperfect knowledge of God, to be fully revealed only in the afterlife, the phrase "Through a Glass, Darkly" has come to generally refer to seeing an object as an imperfect reflection of its true form. As looking through a curved or tinted mirror, we can only see distorted impressions. 

The idea which opens this piece – a simple melody set against an ethereal shimmering texture – is reflected through many different guises as the music develops, continuously transformed but never quite reaching a full resolution.  While this initial idea is immediately interrupted by a radically different texture of tense 16ths figurations, it is quick to return in a broader more weighted context - another glimpse of an object whose true form we can only attempt to grasp.

The music quickly moves through a wide expressive range, from an exuberant tutti outburst to a mysterious texture of high string harmonics suspended in time, but the original idea is never absent for long. It soon reveals itself in the form of a muted brass chorale, set against a floating and meditative ostinato, here morphed rhythmically and harmonically so as to only resemble the original in melodic contour.  At the end of the piece, it expands into a climactic counterpoint of massive brass melodies set against a thick texture of string tremolos and ecstatically swirling woodwinds, whose bright harmonies belong to an altogether different world.  The final harmony of the piece offers both a feeling of finality and a sense that the music is not yet finished even after it stops.