Composer's Notes: It was a pleasure to be asked to write a piece to celebrate such a fine artist as Michael Collins, and to have him play it on his 60th birthday. The title, Romanza and Scherzo, shows two sides of the player, and the form of the music. The clarinet initiates with a ‘romantic’ phrase, then the piano answers with a snatch of ‘scherzo’: they continue to converse upon these shapes; then the piano has a more continuous lyric passage, the clarinet commenting before setting out in the...

• Holloway: Romanza and Scherzo