This is a piano concerto with the very different influences of Franz Schubert and jazz!
Commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and premiered by Clive Swansbourne in Glasgow in 1993, it lasts around 20 minutes. The orchestra is spatially divided into four groups surrounding the solo piano. The inspiration was Robert Pirsig’s cult novel “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, which describes a father and his son on a motorcycle journey across the USA, with allusions to Schubert’s haunting song Erlkönig. The “Phaedrus” of the title is a kind of beneficial alter ego of the rider. There are three movements.
