About this Piece

uncertain planning was written in the midst of 2020. Though my work rarely explicitly intends to convey any message, meaning or certain evocation, it’s hard not to let living through a year like 2020 influence you—for your own inner workings to not colour, ever so slightly, your art. Knowing my new commission would be premiered alongside Dvořak’s “New World” Symphony, a work which looked forward with a joyous sense of optimism, strangely brought these feelings into stark relief. Spending my days in my writing studio became an escape from the new world, as did creating art; these also became spaces for catharsis. While diving deeper and deeper into the music itself, in the day-to-day practice of writing’s beautifully abstract ways, taking small musical ideas and obsessively reworking and exploring permutations, unfolding floral fractal-esque layers that all-encompass gestures and whole structures, searching for systems to carve out imagined spaces with sound, a broken world continued to turn outside my window and the uncertainty outside inevitably spread in—anxious stillness, distant, constant uneasiness, and unknowing; overwhelming frustration, searing anger; gentle hope and burning determination. —Connor D’Netto 

This work, written by Connor D’Netto, was made possible through the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 50 Fanfares Project and was commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, supported by Christine Bishop. 

Premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on 10 February 2021, conducted by Simone Young.