"The orchestral piece "Oliver Twist Now - Symphonic Pictures", which I composed between November 2020 and February 2021, is based on a musical for children's and youth choir, which I had already successfully performed several times in 2016 as a stage work with choir, soloists and a six-piece instrumental cast. A great inspiration for my nearly one-hour orchestral composition were the works of Stephen Sondheim (musical), Danny Elfman (film music) as well as many classical models from Richard Strauss to Dimitri Shostakovich.
When working on the orchestral pieces, there were two main challenges for me: First, I didn't want to just create a blown-up orchestral version from the small original, i.e., simply distribute the already existing notes among 40 instruments.
Since I had decided on a large, romantic orchestra (expanded with electronic organ, piano and extensive percussion), it was important to me that the large orchestra interprets the musical numbers in a new way, elicits new facets from them and also makes use of compositional possibilities that one does not have with six solo instruments.
The second challenge was that one should not have the feeling of missing something while listening.
My "Symphonic Pictures" include eleven pieces that contain the most important motifs, melodies and songs. Some of them I designed as a medley, other pieces follow the flow of the original. The orchestral versions are meant to stand on their own as program music, and of course it should be possible to perform them in context or individually in concerts."
- Uwe Ungerer
